Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER THIRTY. ‘SACRED PSYCHOANALYSIS’- CONCLUSION
At the start of the thesis I noted that Freud’s distinctive voice, like that of a large operatic
tenor, dominated the stage on which psychoanalysis was performed. I also recognized that
within Freud there was another, more muted voice, that has in the last thirty years come to
be heard. This research has focused on my reflexive voice as the researcher, the textual
voice of the burgeoning literature and the living voices of interviewees engaged in the
analytic task or working with religion and spirituality. This thesis has identified four further
and distinctive voices that are responses to my initial research question ‘Why has religion
been re-discovered and spirituality emerged in contemporary psychoanalysis?’, leading to
another related question ‘Is this a new Weltanschauung that can be called “sacred
psychoanalysis”?’
Firstly, what is striking is the determination of the individual to be heard, despite being
viewed ‘as a voice crying in the wilderness’ (Isaiah 40:3; Matthew 3:3; John 1:23) and at
considerable risk to psychoanalytic reputations. 563 Just as Luther nailed his 95 theses to the
door of Schlosskirche (castle church) in Wittenberg (unaware of future events that formed
the Reformation), Rizzuto, Meissner, Leavy, Symington and others nailed their religious
and spiritual theses to the door of Berggasse 19 in Vienna (unaware of future events that
were to shape contemporary psychoanalysis). The public expression of religious and
spiritual beliefs situated such psychoanalysts as non-conformists to prevailing
psychoanalytic cultures (Malone 2005). Many contributors in this thesis have drawn on
their own personal experiences, including their religious and spiritual biography, as a source
563 Especially in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
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