Finding New Ways of Belonging Through Religious Experience in the Framework of a Therapeutic Encounter

Abstract

One of the major innovations in contemporary psychoanalysis is the dismissal of Freud’s unilateral assumption of religious beliefs as nothing more than a childish regression, in favor of a more complex consideration of their evolving potentials in the framework of an empathic affective connection. Winnicott, Loewald, and Kohut have contributed to a revaluation of the primary process as a transitional space where rigid distinctions between subject and object are blurred so that creative and spiritual experiences can take place. My article relates to three clinical cases, outlining, in different ways, the transformative power in self and self-with-other representations inherent in a dialogue over intimate religious feelings, when beliefs and the search for spirituality are received as a crucial feature of a developing self, an essential condition for new relational patterns fostering a rediscovered sense of belonging within an accomplished sense of personal freedom. When this happens, analyst and patient may discover their shared personal disposition toward spiritual values and the transformative potential inherent in the dialogue over these issues, quite independently from the effective contents of their specific religious attitudes.