Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

produced further discussion and publications on religious and psychoanalytic issues
(Malone 2005).
Midway between Boston and New York, New Haven in New England is the location of the
Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute and Society, and home to Hans Loewald and
Stanley Leavy. 126 Loewald is increasingly recognized as a psychoanalytic pioneer, whose
ideas predated postmodern approaches and a pluralist vision (Mitchell 1998; Teicholz 1999;
Chodorow 2003; Balsam 2008). 127 Clinically, Loewald linked the pre-Oedipal and Oedipal
phases through focusing on unitary processes that exist in the infant before objectivity and
subjectivity emerge. Such unitary processes find symbolic expression in, and can be
accessed through, art and religion. His understanding of developmental processes can be
synthesized with healthy and mature religious processes leading to a psychological unity
and transformation through ‘redemption (or self-responsibility) and atonement
(reconciliation, the restoration of unity)’ (Nields 2003: 712f.). Loewald also focused on the
being of the analyst who is ‘potentially limited by time, place, culture or neurosis.
However, by exercising intellectual, honest, compassion, and an openness to art, a life rich
in creative instability and spiritual growth could be achieved’ (Downey 1994: 841). Late in
126 Leavy trained at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute where ‘Naturally my faith has always been looked
on as odd. In the NY Institute, I found out that there had been some hesitation about admitting me because I
was a believer and a Christian convert. This was looked upon by some as being impossible to tolerate, since
believers were crazy, and converts --! They let me enter, I’m not sure why. True, there were a few Catholics
around who were admitted to institutes with condescending tolerance as indication of broadmindedness. In our
institute and society I have never met with unfriendliness in this regard’ (Leavy 2005b).
127 Many of Loewald’s papers (spanning 1951-1979) were published as a book making his work more
accessible and providing a development and contextual framework of his ideas (Loewald 1980). Whitebook
examines how Loewald revised classical theory and laid foundations for later postmodern approaches, though
did not advocate such developments (Whitebook 2004). Teicholz argues Loewald and Kohut represent a
development towards postmodern approaches to psychoanalysis (Teicholz 1999). Kaywin states Loewald
‘distinguishes himself as someone who manages to give fresh meaning to classical psychoanalytic ideas by
integrating them with object relations and developmental perspectives, thereby transforming a polemic into a
higher level of synthesis. His contribution to psychoanalysis, itself a beautiful example of internalization and
sublimation, mirrors his ideas about individual potential and the analytic process’ (Kaywin 1993: 113).
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