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This book assesses the legacy of Ana María Rizzuto, particularly The Birth of the Living God, her contribution to the psychoanalysis of religion. Contributors to.
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The idea of God is the psyche's projection onto the cosmos of infantile, unconscious wishes for omnipotence and protection, an effort to control the cosmos's impersonal harshness by personalizing it as a father-god. God is therefore only a psychic phenomenon, the product of wishful thinking — in short, an illusion.

For Freud, then, illusion is a pejorative concept, an adaptation that, if possible, should be overcome in favor of facing reality without illusion. Although Freud does distinguish between delusion and illusion the former definitely a false belief and the latter a belief that, whether true or false, is arrived at independently of rational means , it is nonetheless the case that by the strictures of the nineteenth-century scientific paradigm that Freud employed, religion is false because it is not real.

Psychoanalysts and other psychotherapists whose practice has been influenced by Freud, then, have little use for religion, seeing it as a defense the maladapted ego has formulated against the harsh realities of the world. In all likelihood, given a patient with a strong enough ego, such a therapist would work to encourage the patient to see that this defense is not needed. There would be some latitude here, because psychoanalytic theory has adherents at all stages of its development. There are Freudian psychoanalysts and also psychoanalytic institutes that represent the full range of Freudian thought from psychobiology to pre-ego psychology.

Typically, however, the faculties of these institutes come from backgrounds in psychiatry or clinical psychology and, more recently, social work and therefore are little influenced by religious perspectives. Few psychoanalysts after Freud were as concerned as he was with religion. Freud's pronouncements on religion receded from controversy and became the status quo in psychoanalysis until theoretical developments necessitated their being questioned. Psychoanalytic theory developed into two broad, interrelated categories, one continuing Freud's psychobiological interests and focusing on mechanistic descriptions of psychodynamics and the other pursuing the more holistic study of the experiential psychic life of the person.

In the first group, Anna Freud — and others contributed to the shift in psychoanalysis a shift that had actually already been begun by Freud himself toward the study of the ego and its defense mechanisms.


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In this way, the older view of the adaptation to reality at all costs began to be modified by this school, which came to be known as ego psychology. In the second group, Melanie Klein — and others began to study the earliest development of the person in terms of what have come to be called object relations theory. In psychoanalytic theory, an object is the psychological representation of a person in the most elementary terms — as a good object, one which is nurturing, or as a bad object, one which is persecutory.

Klein thus laid the groundwork for D. Winnicott's study of transitional phenomena, as well as for self psychology and the study of narcissism. Both theoretical groups unwittingly undermined Freud's attitude toward religion: The first came to appreciate less stringent adaptation to reality than had been advocated by earlier analysis, and the second prepared the way for examining the methods — including illusion itself — that the psyche necessarily uses to come to grips with reality. Three other psychoanalytic theorists who should be mentioned in a discussion of psychotherapy and religion are Eric Fromm — , Victor Frankl — , and Erik H.

Erikson — The first two are included not so much because they contributed in a fundamental way to the development of psychoanalytic theory, nor even because they advanced the psychoanalytic understanding of illusion, but because they took religion seriously on its own terms and thus began to break away from Freud's reductionistic methodology in studying religion.

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Fromm, as a representative of the first group of psychoanalytic theorists previously mentioned, saw religion's value from a broad cultural perspective, whereas Frankl, as a representative of the second group, appreciated religion's psychological function in assisting the individual's search for meaning. The work of Erikson must also be considered in the psychoanalytic examination of religion. Erikson, popularly known for his study of the "identity crisis," pioneered the discipline of psychohistory. With Young Man Luther and Gandhi's Truth , Erikson studied what he called homo religiosus , that is, the person whose nature and historical circumstance demand a religious existence — a kind of life that, Erikson insisted, can be psychologically healthy.

Erikson treats the religious quests of both Luther and Gandhi with dignity, humaneness, and compassion. Even two decades before, it would have been unheard of for an analyst of Erikson's stature to psychoanalytically examine a religious figure without reducing him to a case study in psychopathology.


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As the first pediatrician to be trained as a psychoanalyst, the Englishman D. Winnicott — was in a unique position to study the psychological development of infants and children, as well as the relationship between parents particularly mothers and their children. Winnicott's primary theoretical interest was the psychological emergence of the infant into the social world. In Winnicott's view, the bridging of these two worlds is accomplished through the presence of good enough mothering and the child's use of transitional objects.

For Winnicott, a good-enough mother is concerned about her child and sensitive to his or her needs, but she does not err either by psychologically impinging on the child or by traumatizing him or her with inconsistent care. She sees her child as progressively separate from herself; psychologically as well as physically, she weans her child carefully. In weaning, she often allows the child transitional objects: physical objects such as teddy bears and blankets that, through their association with the mother, help to ensure the infant's own psychological continuity.

As such, they ward off insanity, which Winnicott saw as psychological discontinuity. Winnicott's central theoretical breakthrough is his study of how transitional objects are used by the child as a bridge from the child's inner reality to the outer reality of the adult world. By studying these phenomena, he became the first psychoanalyst to study illusion systematically and, thus also, to study the psychoanalytic correlate of religion.

In his paper "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena," Winnicott placed the antecedent of religious development in the period of transitional phenomena and, in this way, illustrated the object-related nature of religious experience. He did not, however, trace the development of the representation of God.


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For Winnicott, transitional phenomena are located in the psychological space he calls intermediate space or potential space. In successful psychological cultural development, this space becomes the location of all cultural experience, including religion, which he also ties to good enough mothering: "Here where there is trust and reliability is a potential space, one that can become an infinite area of separation, which the baby, child, adolescent, adult may creatively fill with playing, which in time becomes the enjoyment of the cultural heritage" Winnicott, , p.

What was pejorative illusion for Freud becomes for Winnicott positive potential space or the location of cultural experience.

Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study

Winnicott redeems the idea of illusion in psychoanalytic theory and thereby redeems the psychoanalytic study of religion. Whereas Winnicott fully recognizes pathological illusion, he contends that illusion per se is by no means pathological. For Winnicott, although illusion is not real, it is not untrue. The psychologically healthy person is one who can use the transitional phenomenon of illusion in a healthy way.

He writes, "We are poor indeed if we are only sane" , p.

John D. Caputo: "Deconstruction and A Religion of the Future."

Rizzuto develops Winnicott's idea of transitional objects and applies it to religion in a systematic way by focusing on the development within the individual psyche of what she calls the God-image. In this way, she avoids the argument about the reality of religious experience.

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Rizzuto argues that the God-image is a necessary and inevitable part of the human psyche whether it is used for belief or not , and she traces its origins from the infant's earliest object-relations. The God-image is a specific object, she states, because it is formed not through experience or reality-testing, but instead is created out of imaginary materials. Further, she argues that even though the God-image may be subject to repression, it can never be fully repressed.

Instead, it is evoked at crucial times of life, such as the transitions between major stages of development. Rizzuto's contribution is especially important in two ways. First, departing from Freud and aligning herself with Winnicott's positive appreciation of illusion, she comes to the conclusion that religious belief is not a sign of immaturity, let alone pathology.

Rather, she asserts it is simply a part of the psyche's development. Second, by tracing the personal development of the God-image, she points up the differences between the official God of religious doctrine and the living God of personal experience. She implies that for religion to continue to be a living force the personal, living God must be recognized and incorporated into organized religion.

The profound influence of Winnicott's work has also led psychoanalysts from outside objects relations theory to employ his theory in the integration of psychotherapy and religion. Ann Belford Ulanov, a Jungian psychoanalyst and a theologian, applies Winnicott's idea of potential space to what she sees as the space between the human and the divine. In Finding Space: Winnicott, God, and Psychic Reality , she suggests that Winnicott's focus on the experience of being real can help counter the sense many have of contemporary religion as passionless. In general, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists influenced by the work of Winnicott — and their number is likely to increase as the profound importance of his work continues to be recognized — appreciate the importance of transitional objects of all kinds, including religion and religious beliefs.

The aim of such a therapist would be to provide a good enough therapeutic environment through the therapeutic relationship and not simply to interpret unconscious conflicts, so that clients' natural ability to develop transitional objects emerges and they can become their own resource for bridging the psychological and social worlds. In part, this bridging can result from playing, an activity Winnicott devoted considerable theoretical effort to understanding and an activity such as the arts and religious ritual and experience that is in the intermediate area between inner and outer realities.

The correlation of play and religious practice may well be an area explored in future applications to religion of psychoanalytic thought as influenced by Winnicott. As they have in the past, those who seek to integrate psychotherapy and religion look to new developments in psychoanalytic theory, not only to justify religion against the historical onslaught fueled in part by psychoanalysis itself but also to deepen understanding of these facets of human experience.

Self psychology, a school of psychoanalysis developed in the s by Heinz Kohut — , and relational psychoanalysis, a second school developed in the s primarily by Stephen Mitchell — , are late twentieth-century developments in psychoanalytic theory used in this way. Like Winnicott, Kohut was not directly concerned with religion. He worked with patients suffering from narcissistic personality or behavior disorders, conditions classical psychoanalytic theory considered unable to be analyzed because such patients were so self-preoccupied that they could not sustain meaningful relationships with others, including analysts.

Kohut was able to analyze the narcissistically arrested because he saw that parental misattunement and not only overindulgence created narcissistic disturbances in children. He reasoned that if these patients were responded to empathically i. In contrast to traditional psychoanalytic theory, Kohut held that narcissism has an independent line of development, so that the extreme self-love of primitive narcissism is not transformed by maturation into object-love but develops instead into mature forms of narcissism e. In the course of his writing, Kohut shifted his focus away from narcissism itself and came to recognize that these patients suffered from what amounted to disorders of the self thus, self psychology in contrast to ego psychology.

In contrast to Kohut's developmental arrest model, relational psychoanalysis argues that "the pursuit and maintenance of human relatedness is the basic maturational thrust in human experience," as Mitchell writes in Relational Concepts in Psychoanalysis, An Integration , p. Relational psychoanalysis, then, emphasizes the social over the individual.

Although it is a very influential perspective in psychoanalysis, it is not a unified school of thought that represents a single point of view.

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Rather, it is inclusive of the many psychoanalysts who have become disenchanted particularly with classical psychoanalysis. Still, there are some points on which these analysts agree. For example, Mitchell portrays the analytic process as the analyst's struggle to disentangle from the patient's preset relational configurations. Further, in one tie to the classical psychoanalysis of Freud as well as Klein's object relations theory, relational psychoanalysis sees aggression as inborn and thus part of every relationship including the analyst — patient relationship.

Although psychoanalysts of both self psychology and relational psychoanalysis have occasionally written on religion and pastoral counselors have occasionally utilized both psychoanalytic schools, no single voice has yet emerged from either discipline uniquely employing the insights these theories might provide in the understanding of psychotherapy and religion.

Even mainstream psychoanalysis, then, has moved from considering illusion in a pejorative to a positive light. Many other disciplines, including those considered in this article, start from the experiential basis of illusion. In a consideration of the relationship between psychotherapy and religion from the perspective of the concept of illusion, a unique position is held by analytical psychology popularly called Jungian psychology or theory, after its founder, Carl Jung , — Jung and the Jungians have been outside the mainstream of psychoanalytic theory since the early decades of the twentieth century — a divorce that has impoverished both mainstream psychoanalysis and the Jungians themselves.

The isolation of the Jungians has slowed the humanization of classical psychoanalytic theory, narrowing its field of study by excluding the consideration of many common human phenomena, and it has isolated the Jungians to the extent that, with a few exceptions, their vocabulary and model of the psyche has little relation to the rest of psychoanalytic theory. Moreover, the separation of the Jungians from classical psychoanalysis has had the effect of further divorcing the disciplines that make use of these two schools of psychoanalytic theory.

The leading journal in psychoanalysis in Latin America for this period, you will find in its contents many of the classic original contributions. Spanish-English is remarkably good. In each film an eminent analyst discusses one of their most important and influential papers. Interviewees to date have included Warren S. Poland, Otto F. This overview film includes excerpts from 29 of the interviews filmed so far. Watch it here. You do not need to be logged in, the video is available to everyone. It is with huge pleasure that we announce the launch of The Chinese Annual of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

We believe that making the IJP more accessible to Chinese speakers is crucial to promoting the interchange between Anglophone and Chinese speaking psychoanalysts, and a significant step in further opening up the IJP to non-English speaking psychoanalysts. The Chinese Annual is a Chinese translation of a selection of papers chosen from the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. Available immediately on PEP-Web, we have:. We also want to call your attention to a new journal entry: Psychoanalysis, Self and Context.