I hope that I am not perceived as stepping on anyones "spiritual" feet but for me the experience of spirituality may be fruitfully integrated into the concepts of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis when it is conceptualized as naturalistic and immanent rather than mystical and transcendent.
My ideas largely came about in my working with 5 ex - 12 step patients who I would describe as "God obsessed" but who left, unable to accept the 'higherpower concept." In the copious notes I kept I noticed that they were all preoccupied with what I will refer to as "spiritual" issues. These issues are: trust, faith, hope, love, and persistence. Note that all of these concepts are associated with a theme of primary motivation.
I also noted that these themes might well be thought of as the essence of year one consciousness - a combination of what I refer to as kaleidoscopic consciousness and symbiotic consciousness. When discussed from the perspective of self psychology, affect intolerance, the need to construct a cohesive self, helping each patient learn to regulate their own self esteem - each, over the period of one - two years was able to begin to fill what they had referred to as a life long "hole in their soul."
Each also began shifting from from the compulsive need to project their final authority either to a transcendent God, me or other idealized authority figures, to an acceptance of themselves as their own final authorities.
If any one is interested in viewing these ideas in greater breadth and depth I invite you to look at my web site gibbsonline.com . Press the theories tab and look for my paper on Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Spirituality.
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Comments: 10
Psychoanalysis may transcend its own previous boundaries, and yet; faith alone is what ultimately matters in a spiritual path. Not the analysis of faith or the dynamic imaging of brain centers activated while in a meditative state. The therapist who would perform any analysis would need to have had the level of integrated spirituality of the client in order to be of any substitive help.
To sum up, what I am saying Gibbs, is that in my life I reached that boundary some twenty years ago, when I realized that the actual "moment" that I experience is of a "supra-rational" level. The only meaningful communication with another being at that moment is through the very intentional meaning of the word "communication" itsef; namely, communion. There is only the outsider's view of this in analysis.
Just my thoughts...........
Faith for me is the experience of persisting in the face of confusion, doubt, not knowing, with the feeling that as one is alive and can breathe it is worth the effort to continue being.
Obviously different people - such as you and me - will have different conceptualizations and different experiences of faith. So be it.
However what you take as an ending point re faith - pure non verbal shared communion - I take as a good starting point. I am not of the belief that the most important experiences in ones life are unable to be verbalized.
You, for example locate the essence of the experience of faith in what you refer to as the "supra- rational" level. For me the supra rational level is what I would refer to as a state of pure being.
However - over and above what I think - the proof about faith is in the eye or soul of my individual patients. I am only conveying what has worked best with respect to the 5 patients I described.
There are quite a few Nichiren Buddhists in the SGI-USA who are in private practice as clinical psychologists. Even within our same faith, discussions on the ultimate value and possible limitations of the psychotherapeutic approach bring about challenging twists and turns. I believe, though, that through the efforts we make in the relam of a dialogue, we are able to recreate our internal programs of knowledge and grow beyond where we were previously. Thank you Gibb and Meryl for your meaningful engagement here.....Peace & Light.
1. Faith equals daily life; our jobs, family relations, actions in society, etc... are in truth the real expression of ones faith.
2. Faith is expressed in and through practice. Our daily prayers, study and helping others is faith. The hope, courage & confidence to face things as you describe Gibb ("Faith for me is the experience of persisting in the face of confusion, doubt, not knowing, with the feeling that as one is alive and can breathe it is worth the effort to continue being.") is a result/effect of our faith.
Oh - and as to supra-rational and "pure being"; my meaning is simply that the experiences we have in daily life - not just an experiental state of mind and consciousness in a given moment - but the actual proof we obtain through this practice; the workings of all of this is beyond the capacity of our rational mind to comprehend. It is akin to realizing that eternity and the infinite are not subject to closed parameters. I look for you, my friend, in the infinte moment.
Perhaps there is and I think as well perhaps there is not. I don't concern myself at all as to the ultimate answer. If there is and life persists in some altered probably disembodied form then we simply persist in that form and go on "living" so to speak. And if not - then finito. Eternal sleep never to awaken again. So be that too.
I am prepared to accept either one as if I had a choice.
Each time we emerge again from the dormant state (death) and return to the active state (birth) we do so in a manner such as a footprint left in the sand. Such that wherever we leave off in one incarnation; there we begin anew in the next.
The great beneficial result of this view being adopted globally is that each person comes to take 100% responsibility for every cause made. Karma is created first through thoughts, then words, and finally by taking action; which makes the cause much more concrete (dense); and thus more difficult to eradicate.
Just an interesting point of personal history - When I was a very young boy, I would lie in bed, and among the many other odd and diverse thoughts that would come to me repeatedly was this: my thoughts, it seemed to me, could never just stop ("finito"). It made no sense to me that this could occur. Odd how some 50 years later I am ever so more convinced of this earliest spiritual thought that spontaneously arose within my mind.
Too, the laws of physics suggest that this could not happen. Both matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only transformed. Your responsive thoughts, Gibbs..........?