Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

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DB: Is this a Church of England or Church of Scotland
AR: It’s a Baptist Church
DB: Oh really (quizzical)
AR: Yes a Pastor, so which places itself very much pretty much as a denomination
within an Evangelical tradition so it’s something about the conformity but I did write a
book about 9 years ago called Evangelicals in Exile talking about wrestling with
theology and the unconscious which was partly autobiographical but looking at events
I had been through and wanting to look at them, understand them from a theological
perspective but then also wanting to understand them from a psychological
perspective and finding correspondence and language between the two
DB: Now that sounds extremely interesting
AR: That’s the source of I mean that’s my background in trying to find a commonality
of language in communication for which things are ultimately very profound, uh
(pause) so profound it’s difficult to put words to it but that doesn’t you can’t then use
that as an excuse for not doing the thinking or reasoning or making the connections. it
feels to me with that chapter you really wrestled hard to make these connections
between psychoanalysis and neuroscience and religious traditions. I think I guess one
of the reasons why there are not very many analysts that do write about religion and
spirituality is because to do it properly you actually need to have done a great deal of
reading and thinking you know you do actually need both a knowledge of your
analytical tradition and of a theological or other spiritual tradition and of a good
working knowledge of philosophy and in your case too an addition of science as well.
It’s actually there are not that many people David that actually have that combination
of interests I’m discovering and because we just let some other people think these
things well actually you discover there are lots of people that don’t
DB: Yes, yes
AR: They just want to inhabit the middle ground they don’t want to make any
connections with any other tradition or discipline. Finally David do you know of any
other people I could or should be talking too in terms of interviews like this or
discussing this further?
DB: In Britain?
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