Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER FOUR. RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL ENGAGEMENT IN
BRITISH PSYCHOANALYSIS – AN OVERVIEW 94
Identifying how religion and spirituality became an openly addressed subject in the British
psychoanalytic world requires piecing together fragmentary narratives of psychoanalytic
colleagues, friends and analysands - some working together, others pursuing a lone path,
with points of cross-over, divergence and contradiction. Recent origins are often dated to
Symington’s Emotion and Spirit (1994) 95 but stem from influences two decades earlier.
Symington was an analysand of Klauber, who stated ‘The psychical roots of Christianity ...
Freud virtually ignored ... most psychoanalysts have done the same’ (Klauber 1974: 249). 96
Klauber’s thinking stemmed from a patient whose religious upbringing had been disastrous,
leading him to offer an account of religion fitting ‘post-Christian man … more dependent on
psychoanalysis than on religion’ (Klauber 1974: 250). Religion, despite being ‘highly
improbable’ and transcending reason, offers symbolic representation of early internal
experiences lying beyond consciousness. Klauber adopts the term ‘keeping faith in’ with its
literal and spiritual meaning and was one of the first writers utilizing Winnicott’s recently
developed ideas, 97 focusing on religion. 98 He noted the struggles psychoanalysts faced in
94
This chapter is more detailed than the following chapter on the USA due to the location and existing
knowledge of the researcher.
95
Sub-titled ‘Questioning the claims of psychoanalysis and religion’.
96
‘Notes on the psychical roots of religion, with particular reference to the development of Western
Christianity’ (Klauber 1974).
97
Playing and Reality was only published in 1971, although Winnicott had been presenting his ideas in
piecemeal fashion throughout the 1960s.
98
We keep faith in ‘the indestructibility of good internalized objects … Religion, Winnicott (1971) said, is one
of the transitional phenomena in the potential space between mother and infant. Perhaps this accounts for the
fact which puzzled Freud, that the first deities were the great mother goddesses. Religious belief proclaims the
infant’s knowledge that, come what may, ‘the everlasting arms’ of the mother will be there’ (Klauber 1974:
249f.). This biblical phrase is taken from Deuteronomy 33:27, when Moses, close to death, blesses each tribe
of Israel. The full verse reads ‘The eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms’.
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