Psychodynamic Therapy and Spirituality
While fewer and fewer Americans consider themselves religious in a traditional sense, the majority believe in a higher power (God, or the sacred, or…) and think of themselves as spiritual people. And in fact, some sociologists have observed we may be in the midst of a resurgence of interest in personal spirituality, including among adherents of traditional religions—a cultural movement psychoanalyst Gideon Lev calls “New Spirituality.”
Our initial thought might be that it would only engage negatively, since the psychoanalytic community, following Freud, has historically viewed religion as a form of wish fulfillment that therapy might help someone leave behind, rather than cultivate.
But tempora mutantur—times are changed, and depth therapies have changed with them.
In the last few decades more and more clients want their spiritual concerns respected and incorporated into their therapy, and more analysts and therapists are attending to this desire and taking seriously the possibilities for convergence between psychotherapy and personal spirituality. This is a promising development, for depth therapy has much to offer the spiritual seeker. Consider, for instance, that a cornerstone of psychoanalytic therapy is the pursuit of genuine self-knowledge, painful as it may be (as Freud, in understated fashion, wrote to a friend: “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise”). But in many spiritual traditions self-knowledge is considered a pathway to knowledge of the divine. In the Christian mystical tradition, for example, Catherine of Siena relays a dialogue with God in which she’s told:
“Here is the way, if you would come to perfect knowledge and enjoyment of me, eternal Life: Never leave the knowledge of yourself.” And the Sufi philosopher and mystic Ibn Arabi writes: “As knowledge of self has no end so there is no end to knowledge of God…hence the knower says in every state, ‘Increase me in my knowledge,’ and God increases him in knowledge of self that he may increase in knowledge of his Lord.” Therapies that allow for deepening self-knowledge, then, serve the aims of those spiritual-religious practitioners seeking knowledge of transcendent reality. Or again, psychodynamic therapy helps us attain insight into reality and develop authentic relationships—central concerns for most, if not all, spiritual and religious communities.
But there is a further point.
Not only can psychodynamic therapy aid or come along side someone’s spiritual-religious experiences and practices; for some it can also itself be a spiritual practice, insofar as people undergo the same kinds of experiences in therapy that they do in other practices or religions. As Lev writes: “psychoanalysis is a practice that deals with the most profound questions of life, creates shifts in the way reality is perceived, and even enables unconditional love to arise in the hearts of its practitioners. It can thus be deemed a mode of spiritual practice.” Those who commit themselves to therapies of depth often come to experience a greater sense of agency, a firmer sense of identity, a more integrated sense of self, the ability to discern and understand their own feelings, and deeper satisfaction in their loving, working, and living. Now, many people are attracted to institutional religions hoping for just these sorts of experiences, and in some cases that religion suffices for their needs. That is all to the good. For others, however, depth therapy is a crucial aid, and for still others, psychotherapy open to spiritual experience—what Lev calls “spiritually sensitive psychoanalysis”—can itself constitute the form and substance of one’s pursuit of self-transcendence.
Of course, the continuity between traditional spirituality and psychoanalytic therapies is not seamless. Unlike a traditional religious guide or authority, the therapist may not be an adherent of the same spiritual-religious tradition as their client if they adhere to one at all. Or again, each major world religion has its own beliefs, history, and symbolism that are essential to the understanding of self and reality which that religion intends to inculcate in its followers. And while one might talk of the symbolism of the analytic couch or 50-minute hour or the rituals involved in establishing and maintaining the therapeutic frame, psychoanalytic therapy generally eschews any particular symbolic system and withholds judgments about life’s deep questions, allowing the patient to make their own determinations. Readers will surely have more differences that come to mind.
Even so, discerning these continuities and discontinuities, and judging their relative importance to one’s spiritual search, is a task that falls ultimately to the seeker. As the spiritual landscape continues to change and individuals increasingly attend to an inner call to go down and up—deeper within themselves and higher toward transcendent mystery—we can and ought to recognize the genuine convergences of depth psychotherapy with religious practice.
We will be better therapists, patients, and practitioners for it.
SOURCES
Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving Way to Spirituality. Blackwell, 2005.
Robert. K. C. Forman, Grassroots Spirituality: What it is, Why it is Here, Where it is Going. Exeter, 2004.
Gideon Lev, “The Question of Aims: Psychoanalysis and the Changing Formulations of the Life Worth Living,” Psychoanalytic Psychology 33.2
Gideon Lev, “Getting to the Heart of Life: Psychoanalysis as a Spiritual Practice,” Contemporary Psychoanalysis 53.2
Catherine of Sienna, The Dialogue.
Al-Futuhat Al-Makkiyyah III 121.25.
Nancy McWilliams, Psychoanalytic Case Formation. Guilford Press, 2012.
Trevor Anderson, second-year, part-time distance MA student
Trevor can be contacted at: tanderson@icsw.edu