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Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

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disciplines <strong>of</strong> reflection, meditation, prayer, expressed in ritual and worship (Del Monte<br />

1995; Ross 1997, 1999).<br />

7. Human beings have an intrinsic desire for love, relationship, meaning and purpose. This<br />

results in a desire to communicate and seek out relationship. However unless a person<br />

experiences relationship at a level <strong>of</strong> being able to form a sufficient degree <strong>of</strong> trust, they<br />

are not able to fully apprehend the God, Thou or Other. A therapeutic relationship<br />

<strong>of</strong>fers a redemptive relational way <strong>of</strong> being that can allow for the possibility <strong>of</strong><br />

relationship with Thou or Other which appears revelatory (Ross 1999; Buckley 2008).<br />

8. Being human involves the creation <strong>of</strong> psychic/soul space.<br />

As we evolve from foetus to adult, we metamorphose from an ontological existence<br />

in spacelessness and timelessness to an identity and a dialectic between Self and<br />

Other which is defined in space and time … ‘dropping’ from the third dimension <strong>of</strong><br />

space/time into the null dimension <strong>of</strong> no space and no time. The journey into the<br />

labyrinth may become uncanny when one moves from the third dimensionality <strong>of</strong><br />

the outside world into its zero dimensionality (Grotstein 1997b: 600)<br />

9. Spirituality and the sacred, rather than just being individual experiences, also value<br />

community <strong>of</strong> which the Christian Church is a particular expression. Defined<br />

Christianly, it is a dialogue <strong>of</strong> that who is Other with those who know and experience<br />

that self is incomplete without this. The result is a revelatory encounter, through text,<br />

word, experience, emotion and psyche. These experiences are regulated and formed into<br />

histories or continuities <strong>of</strong> meaning that match with people’s shared experiences, across<br />

cultures and centuries, encapsulated in doctrines and rituals that form the experience <strong>of</strong><br />

church or faith community. Tillich describes this in terms <strong>of</strong> co-relational being leading<br />

to the ground <strong>of</strong> Ultimate Being, a theological stance that requires a capacity for paradox<br />

(Macquarrie 1966; Ross 1997).<br />

10. Spirituality and the sacred can be experienced powerfully outside, alongside and inside<br />

faith traditions and communities - <strong>of</strong>ten linked to notions <strong>of</strong> vision, seeing and the<br />

aesthetic (Lynch 2007b; Pattison 2007; Elkins 2004; Sullivan Kruger, Harrison, and<br />

Young 2008).<br />

11. Part <strong>of</strong> being human is a capacity to create and bring to life ideas, emotions, and<br />

relationships. This is <strong>of</strong>ten focused on the highly creative and distinctive evolution <strong>of</strong><br />

our own gods, idols and rituals – sacred and pr<strong>of</strong>ane (Gamwell and Wells 1989;<br />

Loewenberg 1992; Lynch 2002, 2007a; Burke 2006).<br />

393

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