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CHAPTER FIVE. RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL ENGAGEMENT IN
AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYSIS – AN OVERVIEW
Unlike the geographically confined British Isles with its one psychoanalytic society,
American psychoanalysis has established psychoanalytic societies in most of its major
cities, with each society possessing a distinctive identity related to its history, theoretical
stance and the significant figures that often dominated psychoanalytic politics, locally and
nationally. Boston, New England and New York spawned emerging forms of religious and
spiritual engagement, though in Boston and New York this was external to the established
psychoanalytic societies.
Boston was the location of Elvin Semrad, a psychoanalyst whose clinical and teaching
acumen were renowned. He was a dominant figure in the Boston Psychoanalytic Society
and Institute (BPSI) and the psychiatric world from the 1950s until his death in 1976.
Semrad’s life-long Catholicism rarely appears in his work, yet was known within the Boston
analytic world and Schwaber recalls being sent to Semrad as a training analyst as he would
understand her religious commitment (Schwaber 2002). It did set a context in which others
were to follow, notably William Meissner and Ana-Maria Rizzuto.
Though dealt with in detail in chapter seven, Meissner, a Jesuit priest based in Boston from
the 1960s engaged theology, psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis in critical dialogue.
Meissner remained in Boston for the rest of his career, becoming Professor of
Psychoanalysis at Boston College, 121 and a training and supervising analyst at BPSI. 122
121 A renowned Jesuit-based University.
122 One of the first psychoanalytic institutes in the USA (Hale 1995b).
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