Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

Meissner’s long and distinguished psychoanalytic career produced a wide range of highly
regarded psychoanalytic papers and books (Meissner 1966, 1968a, 1968b, 1970a, 1970b,
1971a, 1971b, 1972, 1973a, 1974, 1976a, 1976b, 1976c, 1976d, 1976e, 1977a, 1977b,
1978b, 1978c, 1979a, 1979b, 1979c, 1979d, 1979e, 1979f, 1980a, 1980b, 1981a, 1981b,
1981c, 1981d, 1981e, 1982, 1983a, 1983b, 1984b, 1993, 2000) alongside his important and
best known work on religious experience (Meissner 1978a, 1984a), the first in a series of
books and articles examining this theme from different perspectives (Meissner 1987, 1988,
1994, 1995, 2001, 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2009; Meissner and Schlauch 2003). Meissner’s
work provided the first major theological and psychoanalytic engagement in the USA and is
seen as seminal.
Ana-Maria Rizzuto moved to Boston in 1966, did her analytic training at BPSI, 123 and wrote
her ground-breaking study which was published in 1979. Her subsequent research and
prolific series of publications are highly regarded in the analytic world. 124 Rizzuto’s history
of philosophical, theological and psychoanalytic engagement has gained her a reputation as
a ‘Catholic analyst’ and ‘a defender of faith in psychoanalysis’ (Malone 2005: 27). 125
During this period BPSI split and the Psychoanalytic Institute of New England (PINE) came
into being. Meissner remained with BPSI whereas Rizzuto moved to PINE: however their
professional relationship existed outside these analytic organizations in small groups that
123 She was interviewed by three analysts, one Jewish, one Catholic and one who ‘didn’t know what he was’.
Her training analyst, while not religious, did not view faith as pathological, allowing himself to learn from her
(Malone 2005: 28).
124 A literature search using PEP v.1.7 (including most of the major psychoanalytic journals up to 2005) lists
35 single authored and 8 co-authored articles by Rizzuto.
125 A colleague of Meissner, Rizzuto reflected that Meissner was always getting difficult religious patients
because of being a Jesuit, and while she was seeing members of Opus Dei, her patients were rarely religious.
54