Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

of strength, wisdom and insight that enabled them in this ‘prophetic’ task. 564 While not
ushering in a Reformation, Counter-Reformation or a new zeitgeist, they did form the basis
for a ‘third wave’ that has ongoing influence in challenging the ‘tendency toward an
atheistic philosophical position [that] has prevailed among many leading psychoanalysts’
(Kernberg 2000: 452). In the last decade there has also been an increased engagement with
the Christian tradition moving beyond the work of such pioneers as Meissner and
Rizzuto. 565 Sacred psychoanalysis therefore can be interpreted as a new Weltanschauung in
the making, but one which requires new ways of engaging with an enormously complex
subject area. One way of advancing this can be found through utilizing the interpretative
framework (detailed in chapter twenty-six) that evolved out of a critical immersion in the
narrative and literature of religious and spiritual engagement.
Secondly, from an ‘inside’ perspective psychoanalytic belonging appears to be like one very
large, multi-generational and dysfunctional family, where some branches do not speak to
each other, meeting occasionally and metaphorically at births, marriages and funerals
(Grosskurth 1998). Belonging has a local dimension often determined by the analytic
institute, 566 attending key conferences and events, and through links formed through a
person’s training analyst or analysts and supervisors (Kirsner 2000, 2001, 2004). Multiple
links occur through personal influences, professional relationships, and theoretical or
564 Freud also viewed himself as a prophet, quoting ‘a prophet is never known in his home country’ when a
visiting student and patient Abraham Kardiner discovered that Freud was relatively unknown in Vienna
(Kardiner quoted in Gay 1976: 13).
565 For example Lowell and Marie Hoffman combine their Christian faith with their analytic trainings and have
established the Society for the Exploration of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapies and Theology. Marie
Hoffman’s book, Towards Mutual Recognition: Religion, Psychoanalysis and the Christian Narrative is due
for publication by Routledge in late 2010.
566 There are other contexts that offer a form of community generating belonging, such as the ‘Tavistock’ in
the UK, the New York University Postdoctoral Psychology Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in
the USA, and the recently established International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and
Psychotherapy.
350