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Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21stCentury:

Competitors or Collaborators? (review)

Article  in  American Imago · January 2008

DOI: 10.1353/aim.0.0035

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Nurit Novis-Deutsch
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Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Competitors
or Collaborators? Ed. David Black. New York: Routledge,
2006. 278 pp. $99.00 (hb), $36.95 (pb).

Say what you will about the differences between psycho-

analysis and religion, they are both survivors. Despite being
buried time and time again by critics, they are alive and kicking
at the start of the twenty-first century, perhaps in part because
of the fine line both fields tread between loyalty to tradition
and adaptation to an ever-changing present.
The relations between the two have been in flux ever
since Freud defined religion as one of the “mass delusions”
of humankind (1930, 81) and claimed (1927) that its origins
lay in wishful thinking. Did he pinpoint a rift so deep that no
passing of time can patch it up? Or have those on both sides
of the divide mellowed in their views of each other?
The short answer to these questions is: it depends on whom
you ask. For the long answer, try reading this book, in which
fourteen scholars present “radically divergent” (15) opinions on
this matter, as editor David Black writes in his introduction. Each
of the essays offers interesting insights but the real fascination of
the collection lies in juxtaposing the views of the writers, creat-
ing an internal conversation. Using an array of methodological
perspectives, they discuss how (and whether) they would like to
see psychoanalysis become involved with the religious sphere
of life. In so doing, they shed light not only on the encounter
between religion and psychoanalysis but also on the striking
diversity of opinion about religion within psychoanalysis itself.
Five of the authors—David Black, Rachel Blass, Jeffrey Ru-
bin, Kenneth Wright, and Rodney Bomford—begin by noting
the changes that have taken place in the way psychoanalysis has
approached religion since the 1980s, when several books (e.g.,
Meissner 1984; Rizzuto 1979; Spero 1980) promoting a dialogue
between the two were published. This change accelerated in the
1990s when other writers (e.g., Symington 1994; Eigen 1998;
Kakar 1991; Jones 2002) took up the spiritual dimension of psy-
choanalysis. However, the contributors vary in their appraisals of
this development: whereas Blass argues that the reconciliation
between psychoanalysis and religion is lamentable (23), Rubin
American Imago, Vol. 65, No. 4, 616–623. © 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

616
 Book Reviews 617

bemoans that spirituality is still not more fully integrated into

mainstream psychoanalysis (132).
The book is organized into four sections: the essays in the
first ponder questions of religious truth; those in the second
analyze religious stories from a psychological perspective; those
in the third consider religious experience; and those in the
fourth examine the connections between psychoanalysis and a
range of religious traditions. Another way of grouping the pa-
pers, however, is by the questions they address and the methods
they use to answer them.
Viewed from this standpoint, one set of papers belongs to
the field of the psychology of religion, posing such questions as
“What does psychoanalysis have to say about a certain religious
phenomenon or myth?” Ronald Britton’s “Emancipation from
the Superego: A Clinical Study of the Book of Job,” for instance,
casts Job as the ego and God as the crushing superego. Britton
argues that the message of the Book of Job is not that God is
beyond comprehension but rather that the superego-qua-God
must be put in its place and judged for being a cruel and un-
realistic master.
Similarly, David Millar’s “The Christmas Story—A Psycho-
analytic Enquiry” looks first at the “myth about God becoming
man” (98), then at the gospel nativity stories, and finally at
Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” Millar elaborates on
these myths from a psychoanalytic perspective, reading the
relationship between God and man in “A Christmas Carol” as
a metaphor for the complex and evolving relationship between
ego and superego. Continuing in this vein, in “Reflection on the
Phenomenon of Adoration in Relationships, Both Human and
Divine,” Francis Grier uses clinical examples in order to clarify
the concept of “adoration” both in the mother-baby dyad and
in mystical traditions. Grier analyzes the complex manifestations
of adoration in what is actually a triadic mother-father-baby
situation to demonstrate the expression of bisexuality in the
realms of religion.
The second type of paper in this volume compares psycho-
analysis and religion from an external vantage point in order
to assess the “fit” between them. The writers in this group find
positive analogies between religion and psychoanalysis, often
with the intention of claiming that there can and should be more
room in psychoanalysis for the spiritual or religious realm.
618 Book Reviews

Michael Parsons’s “Ways of Transformation” takes up the

overlap between psychoanalysis and religious traditions, describ-
ing how both “are interested in a shift in understanding, from
external to internal” (119). Both religion and analysis likewise
aim to foster a deeper sense of aliveness through a process of
leading one out of oneself and back again. Ultimately, both
sponsor transformations in the deepest parts of the self while
simultaneously helping people overcome deep-seated resistances
to psychic or spiritual change.
In “Psychoanalysis and Spirituality,” Jeffrey Rubin writes
about the ways in which psychoanalysis and religion can be mutu-
ally enriching. As a common ground he identifies the similarity
between the analyst’s “evenly hovering attention” and meditative
techniques. He also points out that both psychoanalysis and
religion can sanctify mundane moments of life. Rubin would
like analysis to embrace a world-view of interrelatedness in the
spirit of Buber’s “I-Thou,” which fosters hope about the human
condition and a sense of the mystery of the universe.
Mark Epstein’s “The Structure of No Structure: Winnicott’s
Concept of Unintegration and the Buddhist Notion of No-Self”
shows how recent psychoanalytic writers come close to Buddhist
conceptions of the nonexistent self, and how Winnicott’s notions
of unintegration and the False Self overlap with the Buddhist
approach to overcoming narcissism. Also drawing on Eastern
traditions, Malcolm Cunningham in “Vedanta and Psychoanaly-
sis” parallels the Vedantic concept of the super-conscious Self,
which is a manifestation of the ultimate reality, and Bion’s
concept of “O” or the unknown thing-in-itself. He discusses
three qualities—faith, courage, and reverence—necessary to
spiritual growth no less than to a good analysis since both aim
to widen the sense of self.
Stephen Frosh’s “Psychoanalysis and Judaism” speculates
about the venerable designation of psychoanalysis as a “Jewish
science.” His main point is that both use hermeneutics as an
instrument of transformation while emphasizing the law as a
necessary limitation to interpretive freedom. It would be fruit-
ful to compare Frosh’s argument with that of Susan Kirschner
in The Religious and Romantic Origins of Psychoanalysis (1996),
which traces the origins of psychoanalysis mainly to mystical
Christianity, as well as with Mordecai Rotenberg’s Damnation and
 Book Reviews 619

Deviance (2003), which aligns the ethos of psychoanalysis with

the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. One might plausibly
conclude either that the analogies between these domains are
too overdetermined to be useful or else that psychoanalysis
indeed has roots in multiple religious traditions.
Interestingly, none of the authors in this book mentions the
“negative” attributes shared by religion and psychoanalysis, such
as their hierarchical and authoritarian organizational structures,
their frequent intolerance of dissenters, and their preoccupation
with rituals and ceremony, as well as the arguably excessive roles
they have been known to play in their disciples’ lives. This line
of argument abounds in more critical studies of psychoanalysis
(Kirsner 2000), but doesn’t find an echo in this book.
A common thread linking several essays is the question of
the origins of a belief in God, which is most often raised in order
to assert the legitimacy of such a belief and to promote a spiri-
tual or religious disposition within psychoanalysis. Black’s “The
Case for a Contemplative Position” proposes that religious belief
originates not in the phylogenetic past of the human species,
as Freud believed, but rather in vivid protoverbal experiences
that lead to unverbalizable emotional knowledge, such as how
wonderful it feels to love and be loved.
Neville Symington’s “Religion: The Guarantor of Civiliza-
tion” thought-provokingly addresses the origins of religion in
prehistory in order to argue that it is indispensable to civiliza-
tion because it enhances the human capability to symbolize and
to know one’s own existence. If psychology were based on the
capacity for representation rather than on a theory of instincts,
asserts Symington, we would have a shared foundation for both
religion and psychoanalysis. The analytic goal of reclaiming
split-off parts of the personality would then concur with the
spiritual aim of increasing love and compassion.
In “Preverbal Experience and the Sacred,” Kenneth Wright
maintains that religion originates above all not in the Oedipus
complex so thoroughly mapped by Freud but in the preoedipal
terrain explored by Winnicott, Bowlby, and their successors.
This shift in focus enables both religion and psychoanalysis to
offer enhanced possibilities for redemption in people’s lives.
Complementing Wright’s thesis, M. Fakhry Davids’ “Render unto
Caesar What Is Caesar’s—Is There a Realm of God in the Mind?”
620 Book Reviews

uses clinical examples to examine representations of God from

an object relations perspective. Davids shows that God can be
conceived as a refuge, a guide, or an ultimate other. Whereas
the first two paradigms are versions of well-known object rela-
tions, the third is unique and may represent the realm of God
in the mind.
The relations between psychoanalysis and religion are
addressed most frontally in the first and last chapters, which
provide a “framework dispute” for the rest of the book. In her
keynote, “Beyond Illusion: Psychoanalysis and the Question of
Religious Truth,” Rachel Blass charges that those who claim that
religion and psychoanalysis can make peace are ignoring the
insuperable stumbling block of the question of God’s existence.
For Blass, religion can be considered a healthy phenomenon
only if we define it not as faith in a supernatural being but
as a generalized spirituality: either as an illusion in potential
space, or as a concern for others, or as a mystical openness to
experience. However, the principal concern of religion is to
make assertions regarding reality and truth, as any traditional
believer would agree. “Conciliation becomes possible because
in this post-modern, non-realist sense of religion, there is no
longer room for the concern (which troubled Freud) that
religious belief is a distortion of reality” (24), writes Blass. She
goes on to assert that not only Freud but most believers would
properly reject this new psychoanalytic embrace of religion if
they realized its price tag. This reconciliation leaves no place
for organized religion or religious ritual, not to mention funda-
mentalism, even though that is the kind of faith many believers
have held in the past and still hold today.
In the final chapter, “A Simple Question?,” Anglican cler-
gyman Rodney Bomford, the lone contributor from the side
of religion, puts forward a claim that can be read as a partial
rejoinder to Blass. Bomford attempts to refute Freud’s convic-
tion that the idea of God is an absurdity by contending that
there are various forms of existence, and therefore different
levels of discourse about God. What causes the most difficulty
for atheists are empirical judgments about what is counted as
reality. Bomford states that “God does not easily fit into this
level at all, for all the excellent reasons that an atheist may
typically present” (255). He then proceeds to describe levels of
 Book Reviews 621

trans-empirical discourse, which are far more meaningful when

talking about God, and presents mystical and mythical models
of understanding that “are intended to dispel the notion that
Christianity stands or falls by the existence of an unseen being
standing outside or alongside the universe” (267). In other
words, the traditional God posited by Blass is not what we should
be discussing at all.
When looked at as a whole, the papers point to a link
between the theoretical inclination of the writer and his or
her attitude towards religion and a belief in God. Those with
a predominantly Freudo-Kleinian outlook tend to highlight
the problematic aspects of faith. Britton, for instance, holds
that belief in a God who is no more than a harsh and immoral
superego “produces a particular pattern of internal submission
to an alien spirit” (92). Those who write from an object rela-
tions stance exhibit an attitude of goodwill towards faith while
bracketing the question of its ultimate reality. They analyze the
psychological source of religious feelings and attribute them
to manifestations of the preverbal symbiosis with the mother
without directly dealing with the metaphysical implications of
this explanation. According to Davids, “the question of God’s
existence (in external reality) lies beyond the scope of psycho-
analysis” (52); and for Black, “We remain in the phenomenal
world and the world of noumena remains closed to us” (77).
Finally, those who espouse a relational perspective embrace the
mystical and spiritual components of faith, and they include
among its sources not only preverbal experience but also a
corresponding mystery in the universe. “If we got in touch
with the sacred unconscious we would see the world as more
holy” (149), affirms Rubin; and Symington concurs, “I think the
present surge of inquiry into the nature of consciousness will
ultimately lead us back to religion and away from an irreligious
scientism” (200).
Encountering such a diversity of thought about perceiv-
ing God, I could not help but wonder if the early analysts had
not aimed at dethroning the wrong king. As Karen Armstrong
writes in her History of God (1993), a subjective and internal deity
might survive psychoanalysis better than the anthropomorphic
being who prevails in Western folk religions but that very few
theologians have ever espoused. At any rate, it seems that the
622 Book Reviews

imbroglio of psychoanalysis and religion boils down to the time-

less question: what does one mean when one speaks of God?
This, in turn, leads to another question: should analysis
weigh in on matters of theology or is it best seen as a value-free
zone? Writing to Pfister on February 16, 1929, Freud managed
to uphold both sides of the equation: “Analysis produces no new
world-view. But it does not need one, for it rests on the gen-
eral scientific world-view with which the religious one remains
incompatible” (Freud and Pfister 1963, 139). However, this
may be one place where most of the writers in the book agree:
psychoanalysis today can scarcely be seen as lacking its own set
of values. Where the writers disagree is whether, and to what
extent, these values should encompass the religious sphere.
Rubin’s claim that the horizons psychoanalysis offers its
adherents could stand an improvement in terms of inspiration
rings true; but even if analysis is lacking in “spirit,” should
the solution be to import its soul from the world of spiritual
practices? One can imagine an analysand, upon receiving a
dose of spiritual insight from his analyst, realizing one day
that if he were to trade in the latter for an authentic teacher
of Buddhism, Yoga, or Kabbala, he might come closer to the
source of these insights without having to swallow the bitter pill
of analysis on the side. Perhaps a better solution would be to
study the world-view and values of psychoanalysis itself in order
to discover how it can serve as an inspiration for human living.
Blass’s suggestion that truth-seeking is one core value inherent
in the foundation of psychoanalysis might be a good point of
departure on such a journey.
Nurit Novis-Deutsch
Department of Psychology
Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus
Jerusalem 91905
Israel
nurit.novis@gmail.com

References
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and Islam. New York: Ballantine Books.
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 Book Reviews 623

———. 1930. Civilization and Its Discontents. S.E., 21:64–145.

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