Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

esponse gave Symington the impetus to develop his work further, dealt with in detail in
chapter nine. 109
The positive response to the Freud Museum publication led to the 1996 110 conference
‘Psychoanalysis and Religion’ and this growing interest is further evidenced by Black and
Symington contributing autobiographical perspectives on psychotherapy and religion (Stein
1999) 111 . Symington was also the focus of a featured article in a broadsheet newspaper
early in 1998, ‘God goes into therapy’, as the growing engagement within psychoanalysis
spilled out into the broader public sphere. That same year Britton, writing from a Kleinian
perspective, explored belief and imagination through advocating a ‘third position’, a
triangular psychic space where the subjective self relates to an idea, as a belief rather than a
fact, and illustrated this through the Romantic poets (Britton 1998). 112 This concept of a
‘third position’ has some correspondence with Black’s ‘contemplative position’ (Black
2006) and also links to ideas by Ogden and Grotstein (in an American context) also
examined in the next section.
109 The book was reprinted in 1998 when Symington added a preface commenting that a significant number of
people had written to him to say that it had had a transforming effect on their lives (Symington 1998).
110 The following report was written by Ivan Ward and appeared on the Freud Museum website
www.freud.org.uk, but is not currently posted there. Religion and Psychoanalysis, 1 June 1996.
Following the publication of Is Psychoanalysis Another Religion? (Freud Museum Publications, 1994) a
conference was held in 1996 on a similar theme. In setting the intellectual scene in his introduction, our
chairman David Black commented that such openness to religion from the side of psychoanalysis would have
been unthinkable only a few short years before.
Three themes reverberated throughout the day. Firstly the concept of 'spiritual journey'; secondly the
recognition of a human desire to go beyond the boundaries of the ego; and thirdly the quest for a sophisticated
conception of 'God' which transcended the notion of a concrete 'personality' … The conference ended with a
long plenary session and discussion, expertly chaired by David Black. His essay 'What sort of thing is a
religion?' is published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol. 74, Part 3.
111 ‘What an interesting idea to set psychotherapists on the trail of the spiritual’ (Hinshelwood 1999: xv). The
contributors were drawn from a range of psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and psychiatrists.
112 Traditional Kleinian thinking is based on a two position theory (Hinshelwood 1989).
49