William Meissner – Jesuit priest and analyst 

There are increasing numbers of accounts and research studies about the interactions between religion and psychoanalysis – differences, similarities, influences and so on. This is a huge change from when I trained in the mid-1980s, when psychoanalysis still operated along the lines put forward by Freud and Freudians that religion was somehow infantile, something you should/would grow out of, and thus was disrespected and seen as irrelevant to the ‘pure’ teachings of analytic theory. It’s largely thanks to the work of Wilfred Bion on ‘O’ [as in the last few posts], and the work of Donald Winnicott on creativity and the capacity to imagine that this change has happened. Both Bion and Winnicott believed in transformation and their work shows they had faith in the possibility that transformation could occur:

Bion observed,

‘Psychoanalysts have been peculiarly blind to this topic of religion. Anyone, recalling what they know about the history of the human race, can recognize the activities which can be called religion are at least as obtrusive as activities which can be called sexual.’

There are now analysts and therapists who are ‘owning’ and writing about their own experiences of ‘being religious’ and working analytically. Alistair Ross – Baptist minister, academic, and psychotherapist uses the term ‘sacred psychoanalysis’ to cover the growing interest in religion and spirituality in clinical work in the last few decades. Thus, there is a recognition of the limits of the Freudian approach to religion that has been so dominant, and, increasing respect for the experiences of practitioners working with their own and their patients spiritual and religious issues.

Reading some of these accounts, there seem three central issues that affect the analyst who owns both their interest and experiences of spirituality and religion. The first is that there can be an openness to a transcendent dimension which means that there is a belief in the possibility of ‘something more’ in existence. These experiences of the transcendent reinforce conscious beliefs in the possibility that ‘something more’ exists, and fosters openness to dimensions of experience and meaning that transcend what is perceptually apparent.

Secondly, a spiritual or religious perspective also offers the possibilities of ultimate meaning. Humans search for meaning – about life’s origins, purpose, suffering, and what happens to us after we die, and all these are hugely enriched by religious symbolism, religious books, and the idea of the transcendent. Religion itself, offers a setting of for communal expression of life’s meaning.

The third central issue is the idea of hope and compassion which constitutes general care and concern. William Meissner who was a Jesuit psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, reflected,

‘Hope directs the traveller’s footsteps neither in the path of despair nor into the presumptive quiet of overconfidence. It rests not on its being or its possession of being, but on it’s beginning to be. … Christian hope rests on a revelation of promise and directs itself toward a reality not yet realized. … Thus, hope is rooted in confidence about God’s promises, a confidence that assumes a dynamic ontology of history in which the future-orientation of [a person’s] existence makes the horizon of new possibilities real.’