Table Of ContentRelating to God
New Imago: Series in Theoretical, Clinical, and
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Hypocrisy Unmasked: Dissociation, Shame, and the Ethics of Inauthenticity, by
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Relating to God: Clinical Psychoanalysis, Spirituality, and Theism by Dan
Merkur
Relating to God
Clinical Psychoanalysis,
Spirituality, and Theism
Dan Merkur
JASON ARONSON
Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK
Published by Jason Aronson
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Merkur, Daniel.
Relating to God : clinical psychoanalysis, spirituality, and theism / Dan Merkur.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7657-1015-4 (cloth) -- ISBN 978-0-7657-1016-1 (electronic)
1. Psychoanalysis and religion. I. Title.
BF175.4.R44M47 b2013
150.19'5--dc23
2013033284
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
To my father
Froim Merkur
with love and gratitude
Contents
Preface ix
1. Freud on Animism and Religion 1
2. Freud’s Search for Spirituality 31
3. Clinical Psychoanalysis and Religion 81
4. Analyzing the Transference onto God 115
5. Interpreting Numinous Experiences 129
6. Mentalizing God 155
7. Unsaying God 181
8. Revelation and Prophecy 225
References 271
Index 299
Preface
The psychoanalytic study of religion was traditionally a subdivision of applied
psychoanalysis that had little or no importance for clinical work. It was not
taught at psychoanalytic training institutes, and writings in the specialized area
of research remained the work of a handful of interested individuals.
Contributors were insufficiently many for the emergence of a debate, let alone a
consensus. Most were self-taught both in comparative religion and in its
psychoanalytic study. There was no curriculum to follow; and no text existed
that covers the history of research, at least partly for reasons of psychoanalytic
politics. Until very recently, no psychoanalytic writings on any topic dared step
outside their authors’ own school of thought to survey not only the views of
Freud, but also the major theorists of the rival psychoanalytic schools that
followed him. Mastering the views of the schools remains a formidable task.
(My own range continues to suffer significant lacunae.)
Since the 1990s, however, an increasing number of analysts have advocated
speaking favorably or at least tolerantly with patients about their religions. In the
process, very little use has been made of a century’s work within applied
psychoanalysis. When, after a quarter century as a psychoanalytically oriented
historian of religion, I trained as a clinician, I organized a monthly study group
on religion and spirituality at the Toronto Society for Contemporary
Psychoanalysis beginning in 2004. I hoped to find clinical conversation in the
study group whose quality was consistent with the professional academic forums
of my acquaintance. Instead, I found myself engaged primarily in introducing
clinicians to the psychoanalytic study of religion. The creation of a text,
addressed to clinicians, that will acquaint readers with the history and
problematics of the field became desirable.
The interdisciplinary nature of this volume has obliged me to provide
histories of research in both constituent disciplines, and I have been unable to
avoid a measure of clumsiness in the literary presentation. Chapters 1 and 2
critically review Freud’s writings on religion, with the purpose of coming to
grips with his understanding of the problematic of religion. Chapter 1 reviews
Freud’s version of cultural evolutionism, in which an age of animism was
followed by an age of religion, prior to the rise of the present age of science.
Although anthropologists and historians of religion have abandoned cultural
evolution, the type of data that Freud was considering remains significant. To
illustrate, I examine dreaming and the Prophet Dance among the Beaver Indians
of British Columbia, Canada, drawing extensively on the ethnographic
fieldwork of a single author, Robin Ridington. I have summarized and excerpted
Ridington’s publications with his permission. He has also graciously made
