Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

A picture of two distinct psychoanalytic cultures emerges. In Britain it became a paradigm
of accommodation, although psychoanalytic identity was established by belonging to a
specific training group. In the USA it became a paradigm of conformity and exclusion,
leading to a focus on technical and clinical innovation within existing psychoanalytic
societies or splitting to establish new psychoanalytic trainings accommodating new ideas,
but these did not always achieve recognition by the APsaA. 92 These distinctive
psychoanalytic cultures made it difficult for religious or spiritual engagement due to the
need to belong to a group whose identity was shaped by an implicit atheism. 93 Freud’s
question ‘Why believe in God?’ addressed in The Future of an Illusion had become ‘Why
are you asking that question at all?’ (Aron 2004).
92 Some psychoanalytic societies, initially excluded, have over time become recognized by the APsaA.
93 This arose from Freud and Klein’s explicit atheism and the prevailing influence of Modernism allied to the
scientific enterprise. This is not just a historic practice, as seen in the work of Arnold Cooper (Cooper 2005,
2006, 2009).
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