Description
This book provides an accessible introduction to spiritually sensitive psychoanalysis, an analytic tradition characterized by sensitivity to the spiritual and religious dimensions of human life and oriented towards spiritual growth.
Psychoanalysis has historically evinced severe suspicion to all ideas and ideals of religion and spirit. However, in recent years, a new analytic approach is emerging, which recognizes faith and spirituality as crucial parts of full, satisfying psychic life. This book explores the unique ways in which this approach refers to and understands core analytic issues such as transference, interpretation, psychopathology and psychic development. It goes on to expound the approach’s understanding of the analytic relationship and the way it influences the spiritual person. It also discusses the tensions arising between this emerging school of thought and the existing body of psychoanalytic knowledge.
Psychoanalysis is a practice that deals with the most profound questions of life and creates shifts in the way reality is perceived. Discussing freely and deeply its spiritual aspects and aspirations will enlighten analysts new to the emerging spiritually sensitive tradition, as well as those who are more familiar with it, and who are looking for a comprehensive description of this fresh approach to analysis.
Table of Contents
Introduction: A breath of life Part I - Spirituality in context 1. Things in heaven and earth: Psychoanalysis and spirit 2. A very peculiar science: A brief cultural history of psychoanalysis Part II - A spiritual model 3. Religious instinct, sacred unconscious and the area of faith: Towards a new model of the psyche 4. God-representations, mystical addictions and spiritual bypasses: Adaptive treatment goals 5. Morality, selflessness, transcendence: Transformative treatment goals Part III - Essential spirituality 6. The window is the absence of the wall: Psychoanalysis as a spiritual practice 7. A love through cure: The spirit of analytic relationship Conclusion: Ecstasy and suffering resting in one another: The contribution of spiritually sensitive psychoanalysis
