Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

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(pause) has there been any, have you had any particular responses to that chapter,
(pause) or has anyone written about it or at all (soft)?
DB: I don’t think, It’s certainly only been published for a few months so it’s fairly
early days yet. Uhm no, a few people have said kindly things about it but as yet its
not transformed the world (laughter – shared)
AR: although I’m not sure you set out to transform the world but uh
DB: (noise of agreement)
AR: when you talked about that particular idea with your colleagues what has their
responses been? Maybe you haven’t tried that out with your colleagues?
DB: Uhm I haven’t actually presented that paper in a strictly psychoanalytic context.
I mean I gave it, earlier versions of it, in two or three places including the Birmingham
talk (soft) and basically it seems to have attracted quite a, you know, quite an
enthusiastic response in the moment (emphasis last 3 words). People having a lot of
questions, thoughts and reactions to it so you know I haven’t felt discontented with it.
AR: okay now thinking a bit more about religion and spirituality, what do these terms
mean for you? And what do you think are the key aspects of religion and spirituality
and I mean, I know these are really straightforward and simple questions (laughter -
shared), but thinking about what do the terms mean for you?
DB: Well I remember when Dana Breen asked me if I would edit that book she said
you know ‘you could call it psychoanalysis and religion’ or you know, you might
think in terms of spirituality and I found myself saying rather definitely I wanted to
call it religion, because I thought spirituality was just such a kind of cloudy and
indeterminate term that I didn’t quite know what its boundaries were in any direction.
Uhm (pause) Since then, I’ve been less sure of that reaction. Uhm (pause) I suppose
the more I think about these questions the more I feel that we are in a very new era
and the traditional religions well certainly traditional versions of Christianity that I’m
aware of uhm seem to be losing their hold on educating people, I mean obviously they
have been doing that for the last 200 years. They seem to be doing so very rapidly
right now with all this, uhm the rise of a very kind of simple-minded religion as it
seems to be, this rightwing evangelical American thing that is so powerful over there,
and makes very little impact on most educated people over here. But even the
Catholic Church, and the Anglican Church, or the Church of England uhm seem to be
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