Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Despite these forms of engagement, the overall psychoanalytic responses to religion were, at
best, an ambivalent tolerance (Herold 1952; Black 2000a, 2006), at worst, incredulity and
hostility (Paul 1995; Aron 2004), and generally, an ‘ignorance of psychoanalysts on matters
of religion … only equalled by the ignorance of psychoanalysis on the part of the faithful’
(Leavy 1993b: 488). This pattern has changed in recent decades in some contexts, with an
increasing interest in spirituality, Buddhism and mystical experience (Rubin 1985, 1991;
Stein 1999; Black 2006; Epstein 2007). Such responses to religion and spirituality have also
been shaped by the institutional structures of psychoanalysis and where psychoanalysts
locate their sense of community and belonging (Kirsner 2000, 2001; Davies 2009).
The evolution of psychoanalysis in the UK and the USA took different institutional forms
influencing the ways ‘official’ psychoanalysis responded to new developments, theoretically
and clinically, and new applications to other disciplines. Britain retained a single
psychoanalytic society, the British Psychoanalytical Society (BP-AS) 86 , while in the USA,
the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA) required a medical qualification
followed by training and membership of an individual geographically-based society. All
‘societies’ were members of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) who
maintained standards for training and retained the power to include or exclude individual
psychoanalytic societies. The BP-AS held together different theoretical strands and
personalities in an uneasy alliance accommodating Anna Freud, Melanie Klein and the
Middle, later to become the Independent group adopting Winnicottian and object relations
86 Also referred to as the British Psycho-Analytical Society. Most psychoanalytic organisations exist as a
society and a training institute, performing two separate but closely-linked functions. For clarity I shall refer
to the ‘society’ or use an acronym to refer to both psychoanalytic institutional and training functions.
42