Minding Spirituality

201 Pages·2004·78.001 MB·English

by  Randall Lehmann Sorenson

Minding Spirituality
RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVES BOOK SERIES
Volume 24
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RELATIONAL PERSPECTIVES BOOK SERIES
LEWIS ARON AND ADRIENNE HARRIS
Series Editors
Volume 1 Volume 13
Rita Wiley McCleary Karen Maroda
CONversing with Ullcertainty: Practicing Seduction, Surrender, and Transformnfioll:
Psychotherapy ill a Hospital Settillg Elllotional EllgagclIIent ill the Antilytic Process
Volume 2 Volume 14
Charles Spezzano Stephen A. Mitchell and Lewis Aron, editors
Affect ill Psychoallalysis: A Clinical Syllthesis Relational Psyc/wanaly,is:
The EII/ergence of a Tradition
Volume 3
Neil Altman Volume IS
TIle Analyst ill the Illller City: Race, Ciass, Rochelle G. K. Kainer
alld Culture Through a Psychoallalytic LfIls The Collapse of the Self alld
Its Therapeutic Restoratioll
Volume 4
Lewis Aron Volume 16
A Meeting of Minds: Kenneth A. Frank
Mlltliality ill PsycilOallalllsis Psyclloallalylic Parlicipatiol1:
Action, Illteractioll, alld llltegrafioll
VolumeS
joyce A. Siochower Volume 17
Holdillg alld Psychoallalysis: Sue Grand
A Relatiollal Perspective Tlte Reproauctioll of Evil:
A Ciil/ical alia Cuitllral Paspcctil'e
Volume 6
Barbara Gerson, editor Volume 18
The Therapist as a Persall: Life Crises, Life Choices, Steven H. Cooper
Life Experiences, and Their Effects on Treatll/ent Objects of Hope: EXl'lorillg Possibility
and Limit ill Psychoa/lalysis
Volume 7
Charles Spezzano and Volume 19
Gerald j. Gargiulo, editors James S. Grotstein
Soul all the COllch: Spirituality, Religioll, alld Who 15 the Dreamer Who Dreams tire Dn'am?
Morality ill COlltell/porary Psyclloallalysis A Study of Psycltic Prescllccs
Volume 8 Volume 20
Donnel B. Stern Stephen A. Mitchell
Ullformlilated Experiettce: Froll/ Dissociation ReiatieJllality: Frolll Allae/llllellt to
to Imagillatioll in Psychoanalysis illtersubjcctivity
Volume 9 Volume 21
Stephen A. Mitchell Peter G. M. Carnochan
Influence and Alltonoll/Y in Psychoaltalysis Lookil1g for GroUlla: COLllltertrallsfercllcc
alld tlte Pro/JlCII/ of Vallie ill Psychoal1alysis
Volume 10
Neil J. Skolnick and David E. Scharff, editors Volume 22
Fairbaint, Then and Now Muriel Dimen
Sexuality, 11ltilllacy, all/I Power
Volume 11
Stuart A. Pizer Volume 23
Bllilding Bridges: Negotiation of Paradox in Susan W. Coates, jane L. Rosenthal,
Psychoanalysis and Daniel S. Schechter, editors
Septe11l1ler 11: Trauma and H1I1Ilall BOllds
Volume 12
Lewis Aron and Volume 24
Frances Sommer Anderson, editors Randall Lehmann Sorenson
Relatiollal Perspectives on the Body Milldillg Spirituality
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Minding Spirituality
Randall Lehmann Sorenson
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THE ANALYTIC PRESS
2004 Hillsdale, NJ London
Copyrighted Material
© 2004 by The Analytic Press, Inc., Publishers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means-without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by
The Analytic Press, Inc., Publishers
Editorial Offices:
101 West Street
Hillsdale, NJ 07642
wv/w.a nalyticpress.com
Text design and composition by EvS Communication Networx, Pt. Pleasant, NJ
Earlier versions of chapters 2, 4, and 6 appeared in Psychoanalytic Dialogues and Soul on
the Couch (edited by Charles Spezzano and Gerald Gargiulo, TAP, 1997).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sorenson, Randall Lehmann
Minding spirituality / Randall Lehmann Sorenson.
p. em. - (Relational perspectives book series ; v. 24)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8816.3-344-5
1. Psychoanalysis and religion. 2. Spirituality-Psychology. I. Title. [I. Series.
BFI75.4.R44S67 2004
200' 1' 9-dc22 2004063594
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 .3 2
Copyrighted Material
For Anita
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About the Autlwr
Randall Lehmann Sorenson, Ph.D. (1954-2005) was a Professor of
Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology in La Mirada, CA and
Training and Supervising Analyst at the Institute of Contemporary
Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles.
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Contents
Acknowledgments VIII
Introduction 1
Minding Spirituality 19
2 Ongoing Change in Psychoanalytic Theory: 40
Implications for Analysis of Religious Experience
3 How Being "Religious" Was Treated in Psychoanalytic 65
Journals from 1920 to 1994
With Christine Hebert Benson
4 The Patient's Experience of the Analyst's Spirituality 73
5 The Analyst's Experience of the Patient's Religion: 104
Clinical Considerations
6 Psychoanalytic Institutes as Religious Denominations: 121
Fundamentalism, Progeny, and Ongoing Reformation
7 Psychoanalysis and Religion: 143
Are They in the Same Business?
References 169
Index 185
Vll
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful for audience and panelist critiques during presentations
of this book's chapters at annual conventions of the American Psy
chological Association (APA) or the APA Division 39 (Psychoanaly
sis) spring meetings in New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, Wash
ington DC, Minneapolis, Santa Monica, and Santa Fe. Stimulating
discussions over the years with my colleagues James Jones, Jeffrey Rubin,
Steve Sandage, Michael Mangis, and Terri and Bob Watson have influ
enced my thinking, as have interactions with students and my fellow fac
ulty members at the Rosemead School of Psychology and the Institute of
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, where I have taught part time for 20 years
and lO years, respectively.
Over the past 25 years, the patients with whom I have worked have
led me to mind spirituality in ways this book details. I am indebted also
to the teachers and clinicians who have shaped me, especially Judith
Broder, Joe Elmore, Richard Gorsuch, Victoria Hamilton, Stephen
Mitchell, and Judith Vida. Carl and Paul Sorenson offered expert help
with SAS statistical programming, and a Los Angeles study group on
Relational psychoanalysis provided a context for invaluable feedback, es
pecially from long-time members Sue Mendenhall, Helen Ziskind, and
Elaine Bridge.
The Analytic Press has been all I could ask for as an author, includ
ing Stephen Mitchell's welcoming of this project, Paul Stepansky's sup
port for an interdisciplinary volume, and timely and discerning guidance
from Relational Perspectives Book Series editors Lewis Aron and Adrienne
Harris. I am grateful for editorial assistance from Nancy Liguori and expert
copy editing by Cynthia McLoughlin.
Anita Lehmann Sorenson's love, support, and challenge have sus
tained all of my work, and without her I could not have written this
book.
viii
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Introduction
T hroughout this book I use multiple methods to examine my topic.
At times I interpret religious or spiritual experience using psycho
analytic theory. At other times I interpret the behavior of psycho
analytic groups using the sociology of religion. And at still other times I
speak from personal experience or use quantitative empirical analyses. In
the midst of these varying methods, however, one aspect abides: I am a
clinical psychoanalyst. I believe this book is appropriate for a wide array
of mental health practitioners, including psychodynamic or psychoana
lytically oriented psychotherapists, students, pastoral counselors, and in
terested lay people, but this does not diminish that I write as a clinical
psychoanalyst to clinical psychoanalysts. I invite us to take an interest in
our patients' spirituality that is respectful but not diffident, curious but
not reductionistic, welcoming but not indoctrinating. Another way of
saying this, of course, is that all I want is what good psychoanalysis has
always been. The problem with putting it this way is that it understates
not only how what constitutes our ideal of "good analysis" is something
of a moving target-and rightly so for any discipline that continues to
evolve and change-but also how religion or spirituality has historically
received problematic treatment from analysts as have few other expres
sions of cultural diversity, including socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity,
gender, or sexual orientation. If my invitation is to what good psycho
analysis has always been, this doesn't mean it is what all psychoanalysts
have always done. This book is a modest proposal to accept this inevi
table discrepancy, to acknowledge the progressive changes in psychoana
lytic treatment of spirituality that have evolved across the past several
decades, and to outline possibilities for ongoing dialogue in the future.
In chapter 1, I introduce how psychoanalysis can mind spirituality
in the threefold sense of legitimately being bothered by it, attending to it,
1
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