Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

had taken up this challenges and he was joined by Rizzuto from a Christian perspective
(Rizzuto 1979, 1998) and Spero from a Jewish perspective (Spero 1992).
God-representations – a new analytic concept 211
In 1979 Ana-Maria Rizzuto, an Argentinean psychiatrist and psychoanalyst practising in
Boston, produced her foundational text, Birth of the Living God (Rizzuto 1979). Having
researched ‘the psychological foundations of belief and pastoral care’ in 1963 for the
Pontifical Seminary in Cordoba (Rizzuto 1979: viii), Rizzuto moved to the USA and trained
as a psychoanalyst. 212 Although her Roman Catholic beliefs were not generally shared by
the analytic community, she did find support from Semrad (Rizzuto 1979). 213 Rizzuto
fellow believer in the war between psychoanalysis and religion, he offers a challenge to those who do not
agree with him. They will have to come up with fine and well-articulated arguments to show how, in the vast
universe of knowledge and in the hearts of some analysts, patients, and theologians, the so-called enemies can
live together at relative peace’ (Rizzuto 1989: 497f.).
211 The principles on which Rizzuto bases her concept of god-representations are to be found in appendix five.
212 Rizzuto originally studied medicine and philosophy in the University of Cordoba, later teaching child and
adolescent development also at Cordoba. While in Cordoba, Rizzuto was involved in a lay education reform
movement within Catholicism which features in her text ‘madurez y laicado’ literally the ‘maturing of the
laity’ (Rizzuto 2000).
213 Semrad was a highly influential figure in Boston psychoanalysis from the early 1950s and ‘probably the
single most important educational influence on several generations of psychotherapists in Boston’ (Smith
2001: 493). Semrad was recalled as ‘one of those much-admired teachers who published very little & left no
archival papers or correspondence’ (Gifford 2010). While Semrad did publish a great deal in conjunction with
others, he never produced a seminal text on theory or practice but put his energies into training. Yet very little
is said about his religious background. Rizzuto writes he ‘was very interested in religion and agreed to talk to
me whenever I requested it’ (Rizzuto 2007: 27).
Evelyne Schwaber, a former analysand was asked in an interview ‘I wonder if your religious
background and your interest in religion may have influenced your thinking and way of working as an analyst.
Being religious and an analyst are often viewed as incompatible positions. How have you been able to
reconcile them?’
Schwaber replied ‘It is very likely that my spiritual leanings have influenced my analytic thinking. I
believe they affect my understanding of the significance of fantasy, metaphor, and psychic play, as examples.
They have lent to my effort to search for the inherent legitimacy in another's way of thinking or feeling, (and
of course, this is to be differentiated from how one puts this into action, from one's behaviour in the world, or
from what is objectively measurable), to seeing possibility in perspectives that might alternatively be
dismissed as simply “magical thinking,” or otherwise irrational. They help me to be less certain, while at the
same time, to recognize that the uncertainty is not bottomless. You ask about being religious, which I see as
reflecting a way of feeling, an inward state, that may coincide with a sense of spirituality. It is different from
being observant, which has to do with how one practices one's religious beliefs. One can be religious without
necessarily being observant by the standards of organized religion. In my own Jewish practice, I am
moderately or flexibly observant by Orthodox standards, though to others, I may seem rather strict about it.
There was a time when being religiously observant was considered at odds with being an analyst; I personally
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