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Appendix 8. Is it possible for religious thinking and psychoanalytic thinking to coexist?
Irma Brenman Pick, ‘I think it is difficult and, if you take religion in a bigger context, then
one has to respect that there are things beyond our knowledge or beyond our capacity to
know. I feel absolutely sympathetic to that and it becomes easier if rephrased as spirituality.
To have some kind of respect for forces that are beyond us, as it were, becomes more
manageable. But ritualised religion, or rituals of any sort, are a problem’ (Stein and Stein
2000: 32f.).
Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel, ‘My propensity would be to say “no” because, like Freud, I am
an atheist. Psychoanalysis is supposed to destroy religious belief because of the way in
which it tries to understand the core of religious thinking … I would say that you have to
look at each person and try to understand how they function, rather than saying “yes” or
“no” in a definitive way’ (Stein and Stein 2000: 70).
Peter Fonagy, ‘ I was brought up as a Communist - very anti-clerical, very anti-religion.
But I think it can. I've seen a lot of very good analytic patients who had very strong
religious beliefs. I think there are neurotic and psychotic aspects to every human activity.
Religion is a very good example of this and has larger than its fair share of both. But there
are normal adaptive aspects to it as well. Although I'm not personally persuaded as to the
existence of a deity I don't think they are mutually exclusive. People with strong religious
beliefs should pursue a career in psychoanalysis if they can. Nina Coltart was a Buddhist
and Donald Cohen … is a very religious Jew. Quite honestly if there is a meeting on Yom
Kippur at the British Psycho-Analytical Society and the attendance isn't quite as high as it
would normally be. The true sign would be to look at how many Jewish analysts have their
sons circumcised - just in case’ (Stein and Stein 2000: 83).
David Malan, ‘I'm not religious any more, but I have been, and I have certainly deliberated
about the possibility of reconciling these two conflicting ideas. I am now an agnostic as I
don't know whether I believe in God and not. Psychoanalysis certainly makes it more
difficult to believe in God, to believe in religious teachings and to believe in the sort of
superstructure that our religions have’ (Stein and Stein 2000: 262).
Joyce McDougall, ‘If people obtain sustenance and help from their religious thinking, this
can go along with psychoanalytic thinking. Freud, however, was rather virulent on this
question … but then he tended sometimes to put psychoanalysis into the position of religion
and give it the same reference. We have to be careful not to deify different schools of
psychoanalysis … unfortunately Western religion seems to put the Divine outside the self
rather than looking within the self, which is a more eastern or oriental tendency … I was
very impressed with the Dalai Lama's tremendous insight into many of the things that we
have been struggling hard to formulate over the last century’ (Stein and Stein 2000: 282f.).
Malcolm Pines, ‘There are quite a number of people who do combine their psychology and
their theology … I don't believe one has to be an atheist to be a psychoanalyst … these
rather mysterious, intangible, non-scientific, non-materialistic entities like soul and spirit are
absolutely vital to psychoanalysis, otherwise we will become a dead, materialistic,
positivistic science … I can't think of many people from the British Psycho-Analytical
Society who are religious or actively practise religion, but then one doesn't know of their
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