Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

CHAPTER SIX. NEW FOUNDATIONS: WINNICOTT AND BION’S
THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENTS FOR RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY
AND THE SACRED
The developing histories of psychoanalysis in relation to religion and spirituality were
linked to clinical theory developed by Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion that offered new
forms of theoretical correspondence. 136 Though not writing as ‘religious’ persons or with
this intent, Winnicott and Bion advocated ideas that went beyond traditional psychoanalytic
understanding, and which were to become highly influential in the evolution of religious
and spiritual engagement.
Winnicott and the origins of a transitional paradigm
Winnicott was the key architect in the development of transitional forms of engagement in
psychoanalysis. 137 For Winnicott the development of being is interpersonal, a mother/baby
always relating to the other, within and without the psyche. This radical departure had
origins in aspects of Klein, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Balint, and Bowlby’s thinking (Greenberg
and Mitchell 1983; Hughes 1989; Gomez 1996) but reached its apotheosis in Winnicott.
136 Another psychoanalytic writer who engaged with issues of religion was Harry Guntrip. Although he never
formally trained as a psychoanalyst, Guntrip is known within the psychoanalytic world for his elaboration of
Fairbairn’s concepts allied to his own ideas on schizoid phenomena (Guntrip 1968), and his detailed accounts
of analyses with Fairbairn and Winnicott (Guntrip 1975). Many of his ideas find parallels in Winnicott and
‘his work provides a bridge between that of his two analysts, and also between object relations theory and the
self psychology of Kohut’ (Hazell 2006). Less well known is his contribution to the development of pastoral
theology and pastoral counselling (Guntrip 1949, 1956, 1964), especially his influence on Frank Lake (Lake
1966; Ross 1993) drawing on his earlier philosophical and theological training (Dobbs 2007). Guntrip’s work
that spanned the pastoral and the psychoanalytic is yet to be fully explored. Unpublished letters by Guntrip are
the subject of a forthcoming article, currently in draft.
137 Winnicott offered a different conception of being from Freud. Freud saw the development of being as
intrapersonal through a closed drive system and while he evolved other theories of mind he retained his
intrapersonal focus on the embodied evolution of the psyche through psychosexual stages. His topographical
model of the mind did allow for some external engagement: however this was always interpreted through the
internal focus utilizing the unconscious.
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