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Daniel Shaw, CSW

A Psychoanalysis, Meet Religion: And This Time, Get it Right"

A Review of

Minding Spirituality

by Randall Lehman Sorenson

The Analytic Press: Hillsdale, NJ, 2004

200pp. $39.95

Psychoanalysis and religion got off to a famously bad start. Freud viewed religion as the foe of science and reality, and he saw humans as all too easily seduced, sedated and subjugated by religiosity. A century after Freud’s initial attacks, many of us may not be aware that a psychoanalytic war against religion is still going on in some quarters. Or perhaps we have tacitly accepted the Cold War that set in at about the time of Freud’s death in 1939. Even those of us who never adopted the once standard psychoanalytic posture of atheism, as a hallmark of intellectual and even moral superiority, may nevertheless be working behind a kind of Berlin Wall, carefully segregating, for ourselves and our patients, our spirituality from our psychoanalysis.

With the publication of Randall Lehman Sorenson’s book, Minding Spirituality, that wall comes tumbling down. In meticulous detail, backed up with first-rate scholarship, Sorenson makes it clear that it can now be officially declared: the war between psychoanalysis and religion, both the hot and the cold, is over. Sorenson entitles his ultimate chapter: "Psychoanalysis and religion: are they in the same business?" and follows with this:

And then, summarizing all that he has developed up to this point in the book, Sorenson goes on to explain why most of the above-quoted statements are, in fact, false. Drawing on his enviable grasp of theology, the sociology of religion, the philosophy of science, quantitative empirical analysis, and most importantly, his extensive work as a psychoanalytic clinician, teacher, supervisor and researcher, Sorenson shows how "[c]ontemporary psychoanalytic epistemologies support fewer reductionistic and dismissive interpretations of religious experience, and contemporary philosophies of science no longer sustain the dichotomy that Freud imagined between scientific skepticism and religious credulity" (p. 25). Psychoanalysis and religion are not in the same business, but Sorenson insists that each discipline, especially as represented by contemporary theorists, has much of value to say to the other - if we have the ears to hear.

Sorenson’s approach is wide ranging, rooted in rigorous scholarship and research, and characterized by a broad-mindedness that I suspect stems, in part, from his own spiritual tradition: liberal, socially active, psychologically and intellectually curious Protestantism. For the past thirty years, Sorenson has been part of a network of people from highly diverse spiritual and professional backgrounds -- educators, theologians, clergy, and mental health professionals -- who share his interest in the cross-fertilization of psychological and religious ideas. For the last 10 years, he has met at the annual APA conventions with psychologists of many religious persuasions, to wrestle as a group with the challenges and tensions of "standing between the spaces," to use Bromberg’s (1998) phrase, of a spiritual and a psychoanalytic identity.

It is not just Sorenson’s particular spirituality that supports his project, but also his commitment to relational psychoanalysis, which he sees as distinguished by its embrace of multiplicity: there were multiple contributors to the development of psychoanalysis, not just Freud; and there are various theoretical schools that can be linked in various ways, without the demand for a pledge of allegiance to one or another. Sorenson states that relational psychoanalysis "seeks to hold each tradition in tension with its competitors, honoring and safeguarding points of disagreement while being open to whatever is useful clinically" (p. 34). While Sorenson backs this statement up with an extensive analys of the psychoanalytic literature, I think what he is nonetheless describing here is his particular relational psychoanalysis. Sorenson brings us spirituality and psychoanalysis at their best: broad, generous, respectful, rigorous, and deeply curious. Has Sorenson derived these qualities from the influences on him of Christianity and relational psychoanalysis, or are these intrinsic qualities of his own that he brings to them?

My question is patterned on a larger question, perhaps the largest question of them all, one that Sorenson takes up, which is whether one sees God as revealed (or found), rather than made (or constructed). Many psychoanalysts working with religious patients might focus on how their patient "constructs" a personal God, an approach undertaken by Rizzuto (1979) in her illuminating study of this subject. Viewed from a developmental perspective, an individual’s concept of God is analyzed according to a correspondence theory that focuses on how their particular God is constructed according to their particular archaic object relations.

Another psychoanalytic approach to getting hold of what God "really" means to our patients is to focus on how God serves as a compensatory object, or a "phantasy selfobject" (Bacal, 1981). From this perspective, the patient’s God serves as a developmental A God of the gaps," filling in with loving guidance, solace, encouragement and protection where real objects failed.

There are also analysts who do not respond to or show curiosity about their patients’ spirituality, and who are often, consciously or not, subtly encouraging the dismissal of spirituality. When these patients are analytic candidates, that dismissal gets transmitted generationally. Along with dismissal, there may be pathologizing. While it is hard to imagine analysts today still proselytizing atheism, which is what the psychopathologizing of religion essentially does, Sorenson has the research to show that many analysts still promote a belief in atheism as a sign of health. Finally, if the analyst is a believer, the danger is that the particular meanings of any given patient’s God-relationship can be taken for granted, even minimized. One of Sorenson’s most interesting research findings is that matching patients and analysts with similar religious orientations did not result in higher levels of patient satisfaction, or patient transformation. What was most important was A a stance of respectfully curious, sustained empathic inquiry into the subjective meanings of the religious person’s world of experience" (p. 86).

Sorenson sugggests we eschew either/or thinking when it comes to our clinical work with spirituality. Elements of our patients’ God concepts could correspond to their internalized archaic objects; other elements might be filling in for selfobject deficits. More importantly, God may not only be both a corresponding and a compensatory object, but also something ineffable that serves functions we cannot necessarily corral into some anxiety-reducing semblance of well-analyzed order and control. In the poignant clinical work Sorenson presents, he suggests that when listening to a patient’s spirituality, whatever our own belief or disbelief might be, we think of God as an X-factor, and allow ourselves and our patients to open up to new possibilities of thought and feeling.

Freud thought of religion as a mere illusion, and for Freud, illusions were to be disdained and relinquished. Sorenson reminds us that Winnicott has powerfully influenced contemporary psychoanalytic thinking by turning Freud’s view of illusion precisely on its head. Winnicott wrote (1975):

Just as Winnicott’s baby develops best when not asked if her blankie is revealed or constructed, or, we might say, when her caregivers are good enough to let blankie’s origin be an X-factor, we need to hear about our patients’ spirituality with openness to the unknown, to mystery and to wonder - regardless of whether we ourselves believe or not. If all is indeed to go as well as is possible -- that is, if we want to learn all we can about our patients, and help them discover the depths of meaning in their faith or lack thereof, their sense of fate, cruel or kind, their hope, their loves, then we are certainly missing the boat if we cannot receive and be touched by their spirituality.

The range of themes Sorenson takes up with depth and clarity is impressive. That his book is at the same time eminently readable and enjoyable says much about the quality of his writing, and his spirit. Space prevents my referencing many other valuable insights and explorations that Sorenson takes up quite compellingly, so it is with some guilt that I turn instead to my one disappointment, a theme to which Sorenson makes reference that I would have liked to see him address more fully.

Was Freud really just off the mark when he spoke of the infantilizing, disempowering, subjugating aspects of religion? Sorenson swings the psychoanalytic pendulum on religion, and provides a necessary and welcome corrective to dusty, deadening old prejudices. But Freud, as usual, had a point worth heeding. Erich Fromm, who was noted for his serious interest in Zen Buddhism and mystical Chasidism, was one who took heed. Sensitive to Freud’s focus on authoritarian aspects of religious institutions, Fromm (who was incisively critical of Freud’s own authoritarian streak [Fromm, 1959]) nevertheless defended Freud’s affirmation, in The Future of an Illusion (Freud, 1927), of the values of brotherly love, truth, reason and freedom (Fromm, 1950). Fromm shared Freud’s fear of the erosion of these values by religious institutions claiming infallibility and demanding unquestioning and total submission. Freud believed that "religious man" was adopting morals and ethics for negative reasons: to avoid the wrath of an omnipotent deity and His totalitarian institutions, rather than out of a choice made freely. I miss in Sorenson’s book more of his thoughts on what I have called "the dark side of enlightenment" (Shaw, 2000), a theme elaborated in the psychoanalytic literature by Fromm in Escape From Freedom (1941) and later in Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950), and by Ghent (1990) in his landmark paper on submission and surrender.

Fromm (1950) saw vast differences in what he termed the authoritarian and the humanistic aspects of religions, and he saw both of these dynamics operating side by side in most religions. In contrast to the humanistic dimension of religions, which Fromm saw as encouraging man to achieve the fullest realization of his potential strength, the authoritarian aspects of religion emphasize man’s weakness and sinfulness, and command man to submit masochistically to the domination and control of a punitive, wrathful God. Fromm directly linked these authoritarian religious dynamics to the success of the dictator cults and the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Fromm’s defense of Freud’s views of religion makes sense when we consider that anti-Semitism, which had been virulent in Christian Europe for centuries, drove him and thousands of other Jews from their homes in mid-20th century. Fromm, like so many others, watched in unspeakable horror as his homeland and much of Europe succumbed to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. It was particularly chilling for Fromm to note the mass worship and adoration of Hitler, his elevation by his devoted followers to the status of savior and deity. We are currently facing a grim A déjà vu all over again" with Osama bin-Laden. And for many in the U.S., myself included, there are deeply disturbing resonances between bin-Laden’s claims of divine authorization and those of George W. Bush.

Ghent (1990) also speaks to the destructive potential in religion in his distinction between submission and surrender, describing how the creative wish to surrender to processes of transformation and growth can be collapsed and perverted into masochism. Surrender, like Fromm’s humanistic dimension of religion, is for Ghent

Submission, in Ghent’s sense, corresponds to Fromm’s authoritarian dimension in religion, and I refer the reader to Fromm’s elaboration of this theme in his work on the sadomasochistic dynamics of domination, control and submission and the "magic helper" concept (Fromm, 1941).

Sorenson is by no means unaware of the potential conjunction of religiosity and evil, and he notes a dearth of contemporary psychoanalytic writing on the subject. I recognize that Sorenson is first and foremost addressing entrenched minimization and/or dismissal of spirituality in psychoanalytic theory and treatment, and his correction is long overdue. His goal is not to deal in depth with the "dark side" material, but to bring religion out of the margins in psychoanalytic thinking -- a goal he skillfully achieves. I offer some of my own understanding of the A dark side" of religious experience, gleaned from working with individuals who experience abuse and exploitation in religious groups, and from my ongoing studies of cultic groups and their leaders (Shaw, 2003), not to refute Sorenson’s thesis, but, respectfully, to extend it.

Over the last ten years, I have spoken with many people who report life-transforming, ecstatic mystical experiences in connection with spiritual teachers, whom they later came to recognize as psychopathic, chronic sexual offenders and pedophiles. These people experience a stunning sense of betrayal, as they struggle to make sense of how a religious leader they idolized, in whose presence and by whose charismatic power they experienced the most profound spiritual awakenings, could also be a criminal perpetrator. Aside from gross abuses, sexual abuse being the most common, many spiritual groups exist today, whether fundamentalist or "new age," in which spiritual leaders gain total control over members’ lives, isolating them from other family members, directing every choice they make and threatening banishment and eternal damnation for any deviation. Many people who eventually leave such groups have stayed on, in spite of extreme exhaustion and the degradation of constant intimidation and shaming, in large part because of the indelible power of their mystical, spiritual experience within the group.

The point I wish to emphasize is that mental health professionals are obviously as vulnerable to seduction into perverse and corrupted forms of spirituality as anyone else. Psychoanalysis has always been good at looking under surfaces, and a respectful, open, empathic stance toward spirituality should not leave us unprepared in our explorations to discover a broad range of spirituality experiences, on both the dark and the light sides of the spectrum, for our patients and for ourselves.

In conclusion, the points I raise here should not overshadow my hope that Randall Lehman Sorenson’s Minding Spirituality will be widely read and highly influential. With many of the people who seek our help, we are intimately involved in their search for a reason to live, for hope and faith, for the capacity to love and be loved. We are dealing with nothing less than the essential aspirations of the human spirit. To minimize, resist, or overlook this dimension of our work can only be a sad loss, for our patients and ourselves. Minding Spirituality will prove to be a valuable resource for analysts seeking to deepen their understanding of the many ways spirituality has been lost in psychoanalysis, and the meaningful and enriching possibilities that open when it can be found. I was educated and moved by this book, and I look forward to more from Sorenson, to the further unfolding and expression of this author’s wise and generous spirit.

References

Bacal, H. (1981). A Notes on some therapeutic challenges in the analysis of severely regressed patients." Psychoanalytic Inquiry. 1:29-56.

Bromberg, P. (1998). Standing in the Spaces. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Freud, S. (1927). The future of an illusion., S.E. (Standard Edition), 21:5-56.

Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar and Rinehart.

---(1950). Psychoanalysis and Religion. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

---(1959). Sigmund Freud’s Mission: An Analysis of His Personality and Influence. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers.

Ghent, E. (1990). A Masochism, Submission, Surrender: Masochism as a Perversion of Surrender." Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 26(1):108-135.

Harris, L. (1994). "O guru, guru, guru." The New Yorker, Nov. 14:92-109.

Rizzuto, A. (1979). The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Rodarmor, W. (1983, Winter). "The secret life of Swami Muktananda." CoEvolution Quarterly (reprinted by permission of CoEv Q in 2 issues of CAN/FOCUS News, April-May 1984:5- 6; and Summer 1984:5-6).

Winnicott (1965). Maturational Processes in the Facilitating Environment. International Universities Press, Inc., Madison, WI.

---(1975). Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books.

* Daniel Shaw, CSW, is in private practice in Manhattan and in Nyack, New York. He is a clinical supervisor at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP) in New York, and a member of the Education Committee of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy (IARPP). His paper, A On the therapeutic action of analytic love," was published in Contemporary Psychoanalysis in April, 2003.

http://www.danielshawlcsw.com