Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

ultimate reality and truth – the unknown, the unknowable, “formless infinite” … the
evolution of ultimate reality (signified by O)’ (Bion 1970: 31). Faith enables transition and
movement in the conscious and unconscious as a person evolves into who they are, which
Bion also termed transformation (Bion 1970; Sandler 2005). For Eigen this transition
requires an act of faith but unlike Bion, he drew on wider religious and spiritual traditions,
and this theme runs throughout his subsequent work (Eigen 1981a, 1998, 2001a, 2001b,
2001c, 2002, 2004, 2005) 549 . Knowledge in and of itself, is not sufficient, it needs to be
able to move a person beyond where they are into another sphere. ‘One may also experience
an I-sensation or God-sensation, a foreboding, a premonition, a faith’ (Eigen 1992: xi).
Faith, adopting a biblical definition as ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of
things not seen’ (Hebrews 11:1) finds expression as a dynamic within psychoanalysis that
has the potential to change a person as they move in transition from one psychic location to
another, yet not abandoning the old for the new. Safran argues that faith is required by both
the analyst and the patient, which if certain conditions are met, can result in a healthy
outcome. When challenged by a colleague about using the term faith, given its spiritual
associations, rather than hope, Safran replied,
Faith has a paradoxical quality to it, implying both a fundamental trust that things
will be all right and a tolerance for not knowing what the final outcome will be or
how it will emerge. For example, one can have both faith in the existence of a
divine principle and the acceptance that ‘God moves in mysterious ways’. Thus
faith implies something beyond simple hope. 550
549 ‘This faith has in it the love of life. It is passionate about living. It opens heartwide and cannot stop
opening … Faith does not exclude other capacities but opens up a larger sense of who we are for one another,
so that we can not only survive the destructive aspects of aliveness, but grow through the profound enrichment
mutual impact can have’ (Eigen 2002: 738f.). These texts are a representative sample of the prolific range of
Eigen’s work.
550 Safran adds, ‘This is captured beautifully in Eliot’s (1963) ‘East Coker.’
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. [p. 186] (Safran 1999: 22).
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