The God Question in Psychoanalysis

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THE GOD QUESTION INPSYCHOANALYSIS

W. W. Meissner, SJ, MDPsychoanalytic Institute of New England East and Boston College

This essay addresses certain complexities of dealing with the God-concept in

psychoanalytic terms. Preanalytic philosophical and theological parallels to

understanding the existence and nature of God find their echoes in psychoana-lytic formulations of the God-concept. Centered on the idea of the God-

representation, questions arise concerning the function of this representation as

expressing the persons internal psychic reality as opposed to having some

reference to a really existing divinity. Tensions in current analytic approaches to

this problem are discussed, and suggestions are offered for advancing the

potential dialogue in terms of the God-representation as a form of transitional

conceptualization. Implications for the therapeutic handling of related issues are

also suggested.

Keywords: God-concept, God-representation, transference, interpretation, reli-

gion

Understanding and coming to terms with the concept of God has been a problem

throughout the history of human thought. The question is no less problematic for

psychoanalysis. Within the context of the ongoing dialogue between psychoanalysis and

religion (Beier, 2004; Freud, 1927/1961d; J. W. Jones, 1991, 1996; Kakar, 1991; Kung,

1990; Leavy, 1988; Malony & Spilka (1991); Meissner, 1984; Pruyser, 1968; Rizzuto,

1979; Scharfenberg, 1988; Spero, 1992; Spezzano & Gargiulo, 1997; Vergote, 1988;

Zilboorg, 1962), the God-concept has assumed a pivotal position. I propose to review

some of the thinking about God in psychoanalysis in the hope that further clarification of

these meanings might contribute to more meaningful discernment of the intentionality and

limitations of analytic conceptualizations and their relation and interaction with corre-

sponding concepts within the religious framework.

W. W. Meissner, SJ, MD, Psychoanalytic Institute of New England East, Needham, Massachusetts,and University Professor of Psychoanalysis, Boston College.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to W. W. Meissner, SJ, MD, St.Marys Hall, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467. E-mail:[email protected]

Psychoanalytic Psychology 2009 American Psychological Association2009, Vol. 26, No. 2, 210 233 0736-9735/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0736-9735.26.2.210

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The God of Religion Versus the God of Philosophy

To focus briefly on the intellectual traditions regarding the meaning of the God-concept,

there persist two main conceptual currents. From the perspective of religious belief and

theological reflection, we know about God from revelation through faith. Within the

Judeo-Christian tradition,1 that revelation is contained in large measure within canonical

scriptures as interpreted authentically within the relevant belief systems. Scriptural schol-

ars and theologians keep themselves occupied in continually deepening our understanding

of the scriptural texts, in explicating their meaning, and in progressively refining the

content of the revelation and clarifying the scriptural bases underlying beliefs in the nature

and existence of the revealing God.

In contrast, the history of philosophical reflection has generated a variety of perspec-

tives questioning and challenging the theological perspective, particularly insofar as the

philosophic mind approaches the problems of understanding the world and the meaning of

experience without any appeal to faith or the knowledge based on faith and revelation.

Thus, in religious terms, God is assumed and accepted as existing, creating, acting in theworld, and revealing religious truths. But in philosophical perspective, none of those

assumptions are made. Putting aside religious faith and revealed truth, the philosopher

asks, Relying only on the unaided and independent capacity of the human mind, what can

I know about the existence and nature of God? In contrast to theologians, philosophers

deal with what can be known and understood about reality using only the natural

capacities of the human mind for knowing and understanding.

This divergence in perspective has led to a gradual parting of the waystheologians

following one path and philosophers quite another. One result of this divergence has been

a comparable divergence in the concepts of God, embodied in the distinction between the

God of the philosophers and the God of the theologians. Throughout much of earlymedieval Christian thinking about these matters, the philosophers were also believing

Christians, so that much of their thinking about God was much influenced by scriptural

and theological perspectives. In modern times, however, the separation between philo-

sophical speculation and religious belief has widened, and the contrast between philo-

sophical formulations and religious concepts has intensified.2 I am suggesting that this

division and conflict has parallels in the contemporary dialogue between religion and

psychoanalysis. If history tells us about a divergence between the God of the philosophers

and the God of the theologians, I would suggest that we may encounter an analogous

dichotomy between the God of the psychoanalysts and the God of religious belief. In

the simplest terms, it is the contrast between God as known or knowable only by theinherent subjective capacity of the human mind as opposed to the concept of the Godhead

as known objectively through revelation and faith as really existing, creating, revealing,

and saving.

1 In this essay, I focus on the Judeo-Christian religious tradition both as a matter of convenienceand in view of the fact that it was that tradition that Freud dealt with and that provides the primaryreligious background for the current reflections on the God-problem within psychoanalysis.

2 The history of this problem in the medieval period is traced in considerable detail in Gilson(1955). Further elaborations of this issue in the modern period are discussed in Copleston (19461974).

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The God of the Psychoanalysts

It is striking the extent to which the ambiguous and conflictual contrasts and divisions

from the history of philosophical reflection turn up in psychoanalytic orientations to the

God question. There seems little doubt that Freud, for example, in the spirit of the

Enlightenment and the deistic agnosticism and even atheism he embraced, was alignedwith the philosophers for whom God was either unknowable or nonexistent. Many

analysts have followed his lead, but many also have not. The spectrum of opinions

parallels the points of view and arguments that have been generated in the long history of

philosophical and theological reflection on the problem. We can begin with Freud.

Freud on God

Freuds views on religion and on the concept of God are well-known and have historically

provided the mold within which subsequent analytic thinking about God has for the most

part been shaped.3 Basically, he viewed religious belief systems as comparable to an

obsessional neurotic organization (Freud, 1910/1959b, 1927/1961d) constituted of defen-sively motivated constructions erected by the human mind to compensate and sustain the

believer in the face of threats posed by the uncertainties of life, the perils of existence, and

the ultimate certainty of death. The image of God in this picture was fabricated out of

projections of the images of the parents, primarily the father,4 raised to an exalted, infinite,

and all-powerful figure who could guarantee the promise of salvation and transcend the

limits imposed by the travails of life and death.5 Freud had studied philosophy with

Brentano for several years and found himself embroiled in Brentanos proofs for the

existence of God. Caught between his own disbelief and his inability to counter Brenta-

nos proofs, Freud finally declared his unbelief and rejected Brentanos arguments. We

can guess that besides the German idealists, he might well have had Brentano in mind

when he (1927/1961d) wrote,

3 See my detailed reconstruction and critique of Freuds understanding of religion and God inMeissner (1984). For a detailed reconstruction of the developmental origins of Freuds religiousorientation and particularly his rejection of the idea of God as real and existing, see Rizzuto (1998).As Rizzuto put it, Freud insisted that God was nothing but the wishful emotional clinging to anexalted childhood father transformed into a supernatural being (p. xix).

4 The absence of references to the mother in this configuration has been noted (Meissner, 1984;Rizzuto, 1998), especially in relation to the reconstruction of Moses and Monotheism (Doria-Medina, 1991). In addition, the entire analysis of the Moses book and the extensive literaturefollowing Freuds construction in it is misconstrued as deriving from Egyptian sources. The origins

of monotheistic beliefs are thought to lie in Mesopotamian cults and concepts of the deity (Meissner,1984). See also the discussion of this issue in Cross (1962, 1973) and Jacobsen (1963).

5 References to Freuds view of God as the projective derivative of the relation to the father canbe readily multiplied. Instances occur in his derivation of the image of the father-God from theleader of the primal horde and his evolution into the totem object (Freud, 1919/1957c, 19121913/1957e, 1925/1959a, 1928/1961d, 1933/1964b), a theme that was resurrected and reapplied to hisanalysis of the origins of the mosaic religion (Doria-Medina, 1991; Freud, 1939/1964a; Meissner,1984), with the supposed murder of Moses after the model of the leader of the primal horde settingthe stage for the return of the second Moses, that is, Christ; in his discussion of the origin ofSchrebers views of God based on projections from the image of his own father and Dr. Flechsig(Freud, 1911/1958, 1923/1961f; see also Meissner, 1976); in his examination of Haizmannsdemonological neurosis (Freud, 1923/1961f), in which the devil, in addition to God, also qualifiesas a father substitute; and in his analysis of the Wolf Mans ideas about God (Freud, 1918/1957a;for discussion see also Meissner, 1979). These views are repeated variously in Freud (1910/1957b,1914/1957d, 1930/1961a, 1928/1961b, 1928/1961e, 1939/1964a, 1933/1964b).

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Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of

dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanour. Philosophers stretch the meaning of words until

they retain scarcely anything of their original sense. They give the name of God to some

vague abstraction which they have created for themselves; having done so they can pose

before all the world as deists, as believers in God, and they can even boast that they have

recognized a higher, purer concept of God, notwithstanding that their God is now nothingmore than an insubstantial shadow and no longer the mighty personality of religious doctrines.

(p. 32)

Despite his earlier uncertainty and struggles with Brentanos proofs, Freud finally

turned his back even on the God of the philosophers.

The image of the believer in this portrait is one of childlike dependence and imma-

turity.6 Freud cast the relation of the believer to his or her God in the regressive model of

the childparent relationship, with all the resonances of helplessness, passivity, depen-

dence, impotence, and immaturity on the side of the believer and all the resources of

power, infinity, majesty, and transcendence on the side of the God-image (Freud, 1924/

1961c, 1933/1964b). This theme was played out most definitively and dramatically in hisThe Future of an Illusion (Freud, 1927/1961d). None of this carried with it any recognition

or acknowledgment of a really existing or loving God. Freud was, in this sense, a man of

the Enlightenment, for whom the concept of God was cast in a deistic modea God who

may or may not exist, but who in any case cannot be known by human knowledge or

reason; thus, negative knowledge of God prevails to the exclusion of any other knowledge

of God. So any concept of God must inevitably be the creation of the human imagination,

a product of wish fulfillment and need.

For Freud, religious beliefs, including the belief in God, were illusionsThese

[religious ideas], as he put it, which are given out as teachings, are not precipitates of

experience or end-results of thinking: they are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest,

strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind (1927/1961d, p. 30). Weak, helpless, anddependent humanity was forced to look for the omnipotent protection of the Godhead

from the assaults and limits of finite reality; thus,

as we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need

for protectionfor protection through lovewhich was provided by the father; and the

recognition that this helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the

existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one. Thus the benevolent rule of a divine

Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of a moral world-order

ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in

human civilization; and the prolongation of earthly existence in a future life provides the local

and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place. (Freud, 1927/1961d, p. 30)

Illusions, then, are produced by wishes, whether they be in error or not. But Freud

pushed the envelope even further, seeing religious beliefs as bridging over into the area

of delusion:

What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes. In this respect

they come near to psychiatric delusions. But they differ from them, too, apart from the more

6 This account may have greater application to obsessional forms of religious ritual orsuperstitious belief, but does not play well in regard to more mature and authentic forms of religiousthinking.



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complicated structure of delusions. In the case of delusions, we emphasize as essential their

being in contradiction with reality. Illusions need not necessarily be falsethat is to say,

unrealizable or in contradiction to reality. . . . Thus we call a belief an illusion when a

wish-fulfillment is a prominent factor in its motivation, and in doing so we disregard its

relation to reality, just as the illusion itself sets no store by verification. (Freud, 1927/1961d,

p. 31)

Because Freud did not recognize the existence of God, we are warranted in concluding

that belief in God was, as far as he was concerned, a delusion. As he would stipulate later

on, Its [religions] technique consists in depressing the value of life and distorting the

picture of the real world in a delusional mannerwhich presupposes an intimidation of

the intelligence (Freud, 1927/1961a, p. 84).7 Religious belief was thus a form of mass

delusion; as he put it,

A special importance attaches to the case in which this attempt to procure a certainty of

happiness and a protection against suffering through a delusional remoulding of reality is

made by a considerable number of people in common. The religions of mankind must be

classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion

ever recognizes it as such. (Freud, 1927/1961a, p. 81)

In the final analysis, Freuds synthesis of a psychoanalytic understanding of the

God-concept opened a wide chasm separating his construction from the belief in God held

by men of religious conviction, for whom God was real, existing, and meaningful. The

response from the theological side was put clearly enough by the eminent theologian Hans

Kung (1986):

The influence of psychodynamic unconscious factors and particularly of the parentchild

relationship on religion and the image of God can indeed be analyzed psychologically,

butcontrary to Freuds assumptionthis does not allow any conclusions about the exis-tence of God. Because the wish for a God (projection) certainly is not an argument for the

existence of God, but neither is it an argument against it; the desire for God can find

correspondence in a real God. (p. 28)

God After Freud

The progression of psychoanalytic thinking about God in the years following Freuds

death would do little more than reecho Freudian views for a good many years.8 The major

division lies between those who hold strongly to the Freudian persuasion and reject any

7 Clearly, the psychiatric clinician encounters religious delusions, particularly in psychoticpatients. See Grotsteins (2000) discussion of such phenomena. But one should not confuse suchpsychotic imaginings with normal and authentic forms of religious belief. See my discussion of theimplications of the relation of illusions and delusions in Freuds thought in Meissner (1992a, 1996).The classic analysis of the delusion of identification with God was provided by Ernest Jones (1974)in his analysis of the God complex. He noted that identification with God specifically as Creatorwas not very prominent or typical in this delusional system, but that excessive narcissism played acentral motivational role in its genesis. His discussion is clinically rich, and the descriptions stillseem clinically valid.

8 One can appreciate the extent of this rehearsal of Freudian themes by consulting, as anexample, the extensive review of a series of books on the subject of the relation betweenpsychoanalysis and religion by Ross (1958), in which the spirit of Freud seems alive and well,particularly with reference to the insistence on the dominance of a scientific perspective over areligious one and the preference for an agnostic resolution.

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notion of God as real and existing and those who find room for the reality of the Godhead,

some within the framework of psychoanalytic conceptualization and some beyond it.

However, it should be clearly noted that for the most part the latter do not conclude to the

reality of God on the basis of any analytic reasoning, but tend to assent to the existence

of God on the basis of some form of religious belief system accepted in personal terms as

a matter of faith. This in effect speaks to another variation on the theme of the distinctionbetween the God of philosophers and the God of theologiansthis time, however, the

theme is cast in terms of the distinction between a God as known psychoanalytically and

God as known theologically through the medium of revelation and faith.

The testimony of an analytic believer in the reality of a divinity beyond the scope of

analytic reflection was voiced by Stanley Leavy (1988), who wrote,

There is never a convincing answer to the skeptic, except perhaps to remind him or her that

the act of questioning, or refusing to submit to received opinion, may, when it is not

undertaken out of mere prudence or contrariness, itself be exemplary of the image of God in

man. . . . We make the world, and our own nature, the object of our knowledge. To attempt

to understand our world, to look for meaning in it, to add to the creation, and above all,perhaps, to make it the object of loving concernthese actions correspond with the picture of

God that has been revealed to us. All we can do is to invite the skeptic to join us in the actions

that we believe we perform in Gods likeness, omitting or maybe just postponing the

specifically religious actworship of God. (p. xi)

This stands as the credo of a religiously committed psychoanalysttestimony to the

fact that one can espouse the principles of analysis and the beliefs of a religious creed

without a sense of conflict or contradiction.

But for the most part, Freuds agnosticism prevails in analytic circles. Freud (1901/

1960) at one point called attention to the familiar saying, in his words, God created man

in His own image and the same idea in reverse: Man created God in his (p. 19).Winnicott (1965) expanded this to say,

The saying that man made God in his own image is usually treated as an amusing example of

the perverse, but the truth in this saying could be made more evident by a restatement such

as: man continues to create and re-create God as a place to put that which is good in himself,

and which he might spoil if he kept in himself along with all the hate and destructiveness

which is also to be found there. (p. 94)

We can hear in these phrases the echoes of Feuerbach (1957), for whom God was

fashioned in the image of man. Man, in this sense, essentially creates God by projecting

his own idealized self-image into a supremely grandiose object, and there preserves whatis best in himselfas Freud might concur.

Without doubt, an agnostic view of knowing God pervades in analytic thinking. The

ambiguity of many, if not most, analysts was well expressed by Casement (1999):

It was already dawning on me, as others (such as Feuerbach) had said before, that it is by no

means certain whether we are made in the image of God, as Christians proclaim, or whether

it is out of our need to believe that we may have created God in our own image. In my opinion,

this dilemma cannot be resolved either by adhering to some position of religious certainty or

by adopting that other kind of certainty which some atheists proclaim. (p. 20)

From another perspective, Lacan apparently made it clear that he saw religion andpsychoanalysis as diametrically opposedif religion triumphs, psychoanalysis would



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have failed, and if analysis triumphs, religion becomes emptied of any transcendent

significance (Richardson, 1986). What Lacan has to say about God falls in the interstices

between the symbolic and the real. The symbolic order for the most part can signify the

full range of reality, regardless of its linguistic and cultural variants. Following Zizeks

(2001) analysis of Lacans views, Kirshner (2004) reported,

At the same time, every symbolic system possesses a signifier that, like Freuds navel of the

dream, touches upon the unknown and demands a supernatural authorization. The point here

for Zizek is that the figure of God, for example, that underpins the entire logic of the

Judeo-Christian-Moslem symbolic belongs to the unsymbolized real. God represents a place

in the symbolic where the chain of arbitrary signifiers is quilted down to an ineffable substrate

of reality (that is, God really exists). (p. 74)

This support in the real can serve, not necessarily to authorize ones personal

existence, but as its limiting foundation. This way of putting it seems to bypass (as

irrelevant?) any concept of a revealed God in favor of a God buried in some vague and

numinous way in the unreachability and relative unknowability of the Real. I would guessthis plays out another variant on the theme of the Unknown God of negative theology who,

if He exists at all, lies behind and beyond the scope of human knowing.

Other analysts, following the model of Kohutian self psychology, have transcribed the

image of God into selfobject terms. Knoblauch (1997), for example, presented the case of

a dying woman

as an illustration of how a selfobject tie, configured in idealizing and mirroring dimensions,

functioned to facilitate a selfobject experience of a protective deity . . . and providing

continuity to the experience of safety and security provided by the presence of God. (p. 55)9

The appeal to a selfobject model is meant to replace the more traditional Freudianmodel, but the question remains open whether they are not in the end simply variants on

the same theme. Whether cast in terms of the great protective Father or the security-

enhancing selfobject, the God-representation remains essentially derivative from human

needs and motives. Within the scope of analytic cognition, the shaping of the God-

representation may be accounted for, but this leaves out of consideration the reality and

meaning of God Himself.10 As long as analysts concern themselves with no more than the

intrapsychic representation of God, the descriptions are merely a matter of theoretical

preference. But in terms of the dialogue of psychoanalysis and religion, such analyses can

only lead into a cul-de-sac. Theologians would certainly have difficulty with the analytic

propensity for translating religious concepts reductively into psychodynamic or subjective

or relational terms. The Judeo-Christian tetragrammaton will not yield to such a subjec-

9 This trend to interpret the concept of God in subjectivist terms is evident throughout theintersubjectivist and relational processing of these issues (e.g., Spezzano & Gargiulo, 1997).Reduction of the concept of God to such subjectivist terms, it seems to me, forecloses on thequestion of the reality of God and thus precludes any meaningful dialogue between psychoanalysisand religion.

10 It may be appropriate for the sake of clarity in the present discussion to distinguish betweenthe God-concept and the God-representation. The God-concept is the more general term, embracingall conceptualizations of the meaning of the divinity in general terms; the God-representation refersmore specifically to the intrapsychic object representation formed in the mind of the individualreflecting the image or concept of God, in fantasy or belief, as an aspect of the internal psychicreality of the individual, whether believer or not.

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tivist modification. The analytic formulas in this perspective might well be regarded as

forms of reductive psychologizing. In any case, there is little recognition of the distance

and disparity of context separating religious and theological terms from the psychoana-

lytic. In this interdisciplinary jungle, we analysts require greater sensitivity and awareness

of the limitations of our discipline and its concepts, and greater respect for the divergence

of meanings that continually challenge us and give us reason to rethink some of our mostbasic premises.

Another theme that has found its way into analytic thinking about God is the alignment

of God with the unconscious.11 The prospective parallels between characteristics of God

as traditionally conceived and Freuds five characteristics of the unconscious were

addressed by Bomford (1990). He approached these associations in the framework of the

symmetrical bilogic of Matte-Blanco (1975), which he envisioned as providing a per-

spective on the psychic viability of seemingly contradictory beliefs. Thus, the seemingly

inherent contradiction between the concept of God as eternally infinite and changeless and

the view of God as immanent, loving, and acting within the world can be resolved in terms

of the symmetrical tolerance of opposites in the logic of the unconscious. Similarly, in themystery of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God, but there are not three

Gods, only one. Although the contradiction remains opaque to conscious asymmetrical

logic, it can find some degree of resolution in terms of the symmetrical logic of the

unconscious. In relation to the qualities of the unconscious designated by Freud, the

timelessness of the unconscious is paralleled by the eternity of the deity, the spacelessness

of the unconscious corresponds to the infinity or ubiquity of God, the lack of contradiction

relates to the divine ineffability, principles of displacement or condensation connect with

the indivisibility or partlessness of the divine, and the equivalence of inner and outer

reality in the unconscious corresponds to the existence of God as Pure Act or Omnipo-

tence. The argument assumes that the parallels reflect the derivation of the beliefs in the

characteristics of God from the unconscious, presumably as an effect of projectivedevices.

This line of inquiry was further pursued by Grotstein (2000), who, following Bom-

fords (1990), analysis, wrote,

I believe that the unconscious is as close as any mortal is likely to get to the experience of

God. Bomford anticipated me in this belief. In his writings he suggests that the Christian belief

in God corresponds in many ways to Matte-Blancos concept of symmetrical logic. He

differentiates between the totally symmetrical God of pure Being and the asymmetrical God

as the Creator. If God created mankind, then He is separated and isolated from man and

creates images of Himself that are asymmetrically human. . . . The Hebrews and the Christians

both opted for the concept of one God but ran into difficulties with the idea of a God who

11 An early attempt to link the concept of God with the unconscious was provided by theDominican Victor White (1953) in his book God and the Unconscious. White argued on the basisof a Jungian perspective that the unconscious, constituted of both personal and collective elements,contained archetypal symbols, specifically the Great Mother and the archetypal Father, that corre-sponded to and reflected the theological understanding of the Godhead. Thus, the image of God wasgenerated intrapsychically not only as a symbol for the personal father of ordinary experience as inFreud, but also as symbolically representing the collective archetype of the Father in Jungs terms.The roots of this conception of the origins of the God concept in either case, however, remainprojective, especially in the Jungian framework in regard to Jungs persuasion that these conceptswere psychic contents without any implication of nonpsychic reference or existence. They werepsychic contents, considered as phenomenological objects exclusive of existence.



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is totally abstract and yet interacts with mankind. In other words, Christians and Jews alike

were confounded by the Infinite (God as pure essence) and the less than infinite God who deals

with finite mankind. Moreover, if God is infinite, He exists outside mankind and is therefore

isolated finitely from man. (p. 80)

One could certainly question the theological assumptions in this statement, which echognostic assumptions, but the issue here is the relation to the logic of the unconscious. In

Matte-Blancos (1975) analysis of the logic of the unconscious, it is characterized by

symmetrical logic in which opposites coexist without contradiction, as Freud had indi-

cated in his analysis of primary process thinking. This means that concepts in the

unconscious coexist with their opposites as well as negations. Thus, by implication, only

in this symmetrical logic of the unconscious can the concepts of God as infinite and finite

coexist without contradiction. In the asymmetrical logic of ordinary human reason, in this

view, the concept of God as infinite and pure existence would be contradicted by the

concept of God as related to or involved in His creation. Within the scope of human

conscious and secondary process reasoning, the concept of God as infinite and abstract

existence would be at odds with the concept of God as creating, and even worse asbecoming incarnate in the form of the human person of Jesus Christ. The contradictions

to Judeo-Christian belief systems are evident.12

Even further, Grotstein (2000) suggested that humans may have thought up the

concept of God to come to terms with their unconscious mentation. Thus,

the raw experience of the unconscious would be absolutely everything (infinite sets) and

absolutely nothing (the black hole). . . . Unable to look within because of its awfulness and

awesomeness, man translocated his unconscious outward and skyward and called it God,

representing both absolutely everything and absolutely nothingand their container. (p. 81)

By his own admission, this way of thinking has a gnostic quality that allowedGrotstein to postulate a concept of God abiding within our creative unconscious as though

in another level of subjectivity:

as the Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious in contrast to its counterpart, the Phenomenal

Subject which is experienced directly. The former lies in a deeper stratum of bilogic and is

therefore immersed largely in symmetry, whereas the latter lies on a higher level and is

endowed with more asymmetry. (p. 81)

This amounts to another version of remaking God in the image of man.

There are reverberations here of the age-old controversy between the God of the

philosophersthe abstract, infinite God of pure essence or existenceand the God of thetheologiansGod as revealed in scripture and as encountered in the Incarnation. Theo-

logians have learned to live with these contradictions because both are valid aspects of

the theological understanding of God one aspect relying on the capacity of human

reason to know something about God without the help of faith or revelation, and the other

the product of theological reflection on the data of revelation as viewed through the eyes

of faith. The bottom line in these terms is that ultimately the actuality of the existence of

12 The view that God becomes finite when He acts immanently in dealing with finite manwould be rejected by most theologians. It ignores the distinction between Creator and created,between transcendence and immanence, and between primary and secondary causality, and it passesover the concept of analogous predication. In orthodox Christian belief, there is no sense in whichGod can be viewed as finite.

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God must be accepted on the grounds of faith and that His nature is at bottom a mystery

that exceeds our mere human capacity to know or understand. Furthermore, what Grot-

steins (2000) formulation addresses is something about how we know God, whether in

terms of our conscious reflection or, more profoundly, in terms of the unconscious

processing of our concepts of the meaning and nature of the infinite. It should be noted that

these concepts are fraught with difficulty, particularly insofar as multiple connotations ofthe concept of infinity are involved. It is not at all clear that concepts of mathematical

infinity in their complex variations have anything to do with the concept of infinity as

conceived in reference to the Godhead.

These forms of primary process imagining can erupt in various forms of psychotic

thinking, as in delusions of identification with God or being subjected to divine influence

in bizarre or perverted and often sexualized ways, as was the case for Schreber (Freud,

1911/1958; see also Meissner, 1976, and Eigen, 1986). Grotstein (2000) viewed these as

expressions deriving from the Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious, which is the source

of a form of projective identification into an externalized God-figure. As he explained,

Since God is ineffable and inscrutable (never an object of contemplation), then the only way

He can be known is through the projective attribution of some essence within us that is

proximate, that is, through the ineffability of our unconscious (or, more specifically, of the

Ineffable Subject of the Unconscious). Herein lies a problem that has beset religious thinkers

since the beginning of the God concept. Is God located in heaven extraterritorial to

earthor does He permeate our existence both inside and out? (p. 139)

I would not pose this problem as one of location, but rather in terms of the problem

of transcendence and immanencedoes God exist above and beyond human involvement

and reckoning or does he have presence and effect within the finite world of His creatures?

Grotstein seems to disregard and prescind from any knowledge of God either through

reason or faith in favor of an approach to God though the unconsciousfor him God can

only be known by way of projection or projective identification. In this sense, his approach

is congruent with and consistent with Freud, whose concept of the deity was totally

projective and beyond that totally agnostic.

The Freudian analysis of belief in God as regressive has been rejected or at least

qualified by a number of authors (Fauteux, 1997; Meissner, 1984; Pruyser, 1968; Rizzuto,

1979, 1998; and Spero, 1992, among others). As I pointed out previously in relation to

mystical states (Meissner, 2005), if we call the phenomenon of mystical merger and union

regressive, we cannot mean so in the usual sense of psychological regression as we

know it in clinical terms. Insofar as such mystical states preserve the mental integrity,

individuality, and identity of the person, they present a very different phenomenon thanpathological regression. As Fauteux (1997) put it,

Purgation of self and return to primitive psychological processes is regressive, but, rather than

pathological, the loss of self can be the adaptive dismantling of the false self we have

become, while the return to archaic processes can be the regenerative recovery of the true

self repressed beneath that false self. (p. 15)

The same theme was declared long ago by Erikson (1962):

But must we call it regression if man thus seeks again the earliest encounters of his trustful

past in his efforts to reach a hoped-for and eternal future? Or do religions partake of mans

ability, even as he regresses, to recover creatively? At their creative best, religions retrace our

earliest inner experiences, giving tangible form to vague evils and reaching back to the earliest



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individual sources of trust; at the same time, they keep alive the common symbols of integrity

distilled by the generations. If this is partial regression, it is a regression which, in retracing

firmly established pathways, returns to the present amplified and clarified. (p. 264)

More recently, criticism of the Freudian analysis from the perspective of feminist

rejection of classic phallic dominance has complained that the image of the mother seemsto play no part in the analytic thinking about the image of God. As Rizzuto (1998)

charged,

He [Freud] did not present clinical material about religion or about belief in God in his female

cases, nor did he theorize about the formation of the God representation in little girls or

address the role of the mother in the formation of the God representation. The father seemed

to occupy most of the childs psychic space. (p. 164)13

Her own research into the development of the God-representation, however, indicates

otherwise. As she pointed out,

Research on the formation of the God representation demonstrates the great significance of thematernal object for the small childs conception of God. Positive attachment resulting from

adequate maternal satisfaction of the small childs narcissistic and relational needs facilitates

the later formation of an ego-syntonic God representation based on the emotional character-

istics of the mother-child affective exchanges (Rizzuto, 1979, pp. 177211). (p. 235)

This complaint applies to most of the psychoanalytic approaches to God following the

Freudian leaddiscussions of the maternal aspect of God are few and far between.

Religious Concepts as Transitional

One of the later developments in psychoanalytic thinking about the God-concept and

religious beliefs was facilitated by Winnicotts (1971b) analysis of transitional phenom-

ena. Winnicotts contribution was an important watershed in the analytic conceptualiza-

tion of religion, shifting the ground away from the Freudian emphasis on illusion as

opposed to or differentiated from the real to an emphasis on illusion as nourishing psychic

life and development and as opening the way to encompassing realms of human experi-

ence beyond material reality. Winnicott started with the idea of the transitional object

in the developmental experience of infantsthe doll, toy, or blanket that becomes the

childs first not-me possession. In Winnicotts view, the transitional object represents

the infants first attempt to begin to separate from the mother and relate to the world

outside of the mother. It is a replacement for the mother and indicates the childs emergingcapacity to separate from the mother and to make substitutions for her as the child grows

into an individual in his or her own right.

The analysis of the transitional object leads to a consideration of transitional phenom-

ena in general. These can be categorized as having neither totally subjective nor totally

objective status. Rather, they share in elements of both realms, so that the childs original

transitional object, for example, has in addition to its objective reality a transitional quality

that depends on what the child contributes from his or her subjective inner world. Essential

13 Rizzuto (1998) also documented some of the influences from Freuds early life that mighthave contributed from the side of his own religious conflicts to the emphasis on the Father God tothe exclusion of the mother.

220 MEISSNER


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to the transitional phenomena is the idea that the question, whether it exists or not, is not

germane. The transitional phenomenon is both created and foundit is both created by the

childs imagination and simultaneously found in reality. The interaction of the subjective

and the objective creates a psychologically intermediate area of illusion within which the

child can play out the drama of separation and attachment. But the need for a capacity for

illusion, however modified or diminished by the growth of objectivity and realisticadaptation, is never completely eliminated. In fact, in a healthy resolution of crises of

development, there emerges a residual capacity for illusion that is among the most

significant dimensions of mature human existence. Within this area of illusion, Winnicott

locates mans capacity for culture, creativity, and particularly for religion and religious

experience.

Although many aspects of religious experience might lend themselves readily to an

analysis in terms of these transitional and illusory aspects, I focus this discussion on the

God-representation, which forms a central component of the individuals faith experience.

Rizzuto (1979) documented extensively the developmental, defensive, dynamic, and

adaptive aspects of the God-representations in a series of patients. She concluded that inpsychoanalytic terms God is a special kind of object representation created by the child in

the intermediate psychic space in which transitional objects achieve their powerful and

illusory existence. Like other transitional phenomena, the experience of God or the

God-representation is neither a hallucination nor totally beyond the reach of subjectivity,

but rather is located, in Winnicotts (1971b) terms, in the transitional space which is

outside, inside, at the border (p. 2).

The concept of transitional phenomena and their role in structuring the area of illusion

opens the way to a more profound exploration of the psychology of religious experience.14

On the one hand, it allows us to explore the dimensions of that experience without being

driven into a reductive posture that truncates, minimizes, or abolishes the specifically

theological or divine influence connected with it; at the same time, it allows fuller scope

to the exploration of psychological factors in that experience. Moreover, the transitional

object schema focuses the issues around specific developmental components, particularly

those derived from the childs pattern of relationships with significant objects. It creates

the potential not only for an analysis of the pathological and infantile determinants of

some forms of developmentally impoverished religious experience, but also for an

enriching investigation of mature, integrated, and developmentally advanced modalities of

faith and religious commitment.

In the context of the persistent gap between the psychoanalytic and religious concepts

of God, the analysis of psychoanalytically conceived understanding of religious concepts

as forms of transitional conceptualization has, in my view, the potential not so much forresolving the differences, but rather can allow for a more meaningful and mutually

accepting dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion. Transitional phenomena, as

psychoanalysis has established, are composed, as psychological constructions, from

elements of subjective experience. In this sense the image of a divine being, a Godhead

that every person shapes for him- or herself within this area of illusion, consists in the first

instance basically of subjective elements derived from developmental experience with

parental objects. But from the religious perspective and within the context of a faith-based

14 In addition to my own efforts to expand this line of thinking (Meissner, 1978b, 1984, 1990,1992b, Kakar (1991) and Rizzuto (1979, 1998) have made significant contributions to psychoana-lytic thinking about God in transitional terms.



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religious framework, the concept of God is also open to objective elements that may

derive from a variety of sources but are generally regulated and sustained by a communal

belief system within a given credal society that professes belief in revelation and the real

existence of God. Within an organized religious system, the church authoritatively teaches

and proposes a specific set of concepts that provides the dogmatic context for the idea of

God within the given belief system. That image, formed and held internally as a significantpsychological possession, is combined with elements derived projectively from the inner

world of the experiencing believer. Thus, it is personalized and carries idiosyncratic

elements corresponding to those inherent in the believers sense of self. Consequently, in

psychological terms, each person creates his or her own image of God, even though that

individualized image is shaped in contact with a shared set of communal beliefs that

delineate a concept of God to which the group of believers adheres.

The psychoanalytic approach, strictly speaking, however, eschews these extrinsic and

objective determinants, because, in methodological terms, they lie beyond the scope of

natural human cognition and are derived from nonpsychoanalytic sources. Ordinarily,

exploration of the patients religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices is restricted to thesubjective and intrapsychic aspects of their meaning and motivation and without adver-

tence to their validity or external verification. Exploration of the God-representation, on

these terms, would address the genetic, dynamic, defensive, adaptive, and personal

meaning aspects of it as an intrapsychic construction with its own inherent intelligibility,

meaning, and psychic reality. Ordinarily, the formation of any object representation is

related to and derivative from an object relation, but the object in such cases is experi-

enced as real and existingthe representation of the father, for example, does not exclude

the existence of the real father but actually depends on the relation to that real object to

sustain its validity, as a function of the reality principle and the relation to reality.

But the real object in the case of the God-representation is not so available because it

lies beyond the reach of natural (i.e., not supernatural or faith-based) human knowing. Thepsychoanalytic derivation from internalized elements, primarily from relations with the

primary objects, that serve as the basis for projective components contributing to the

transitional illusion of the God-representation in this sense is only a partial accounting of

the believers God-representation. The God-representation so conceived must be regarded

as an abstraction, one that has meaning regardless of whether the person believes in a

really existing God or not. Such a God-representation is an intrapsychic and subjective

construction that reflects the developmental and dynamic elements of the persons inner

world regardless of religious commitment; at the same time, when it comes to an

accounting of the God-representation of religious believers, it cannot be sustained merely

by an account of the motivational forces supporting it from the subjective side. Rather, itrequires stabilization and integration in terms of the larger, objective frame of reference.

These subjective derivatives and projections, as part of the complex of transitional illusory

constructions, are embedded in and reinforced by larger cognitive schemata, which take

the form of credal systems, dogmatic formulations, doctrinal assertions, and a wide range

of cognitive organizations and integrations that carry doctrinal or dogmatic impact and are

sustained within the interpersonal matrix of a community of like-minded believers.15

I would conclude that there remains ample room for continuing dialogue between

psychoanalysis and religion, and I would hope that the framing of core concepts like the

15 This differentiation and related issues are pivotal in the different perspectives on the meaningand analytic handling of the God-representation clinically. See the following.

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God-representation as forms of transitional conceptualization can facilitate finding more

meaningful and complementary understanding in terms that might be more acceptable to

both sides of the debate. Although De Mello Franco (1998), along with others, has scored

the traditional psychoanalytic approach for its tendency to view religion in reductive and

pathological terms

The inference is that analysts start from a preconceived, a priori notion that religious behavior

necessarily implies a primitive, neurotic concern to be decided and eliminated by interpreta-

tion, and that the nonreligious condition should not interest the psychoanalyst because it

already represents liberation from infantile illusions (p. 114)

it is also true that there are any number of psychoanalysts engaged in the ongoing

dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion who work validly within the psychoanalytic

frame of reference and also believe in and espouse the concept of God as really existing,

loving, creating, and revealing.

The God-Representation Within the Analytic Process

Nonetheless, we cannot fail to recognize that the whole complex network of projections,

transitional formations, and sustaining cognitive and credal systems can serve important

psychological purposes of sustaining the integrity and cohesion of the believers sense of

self; ultimately, the power of belief is inextricably linked with the forces that sustain a

consistent and coherent sense of personal identity (Meissner 1978a). But it is also clear

that the religious sphere is not the only realm of human experience within which these

forces are at work; however, within it they operate with particular poignancy, significance,

and intensity.The approach in terms of transitional conceptualization does not effectively bridge the

conceptual gap between viewpoints, but only provides a framework for facilitating a

potential dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. Within the transitional perspective,

others have approached the gap more directly and sought to formulate a closer integration

of psychoanalytic and religious concepts. Although most religiously oriented analysts

have settled pragmatically for the division between the God of psychoanalysis and the

God of religious belief, others have tried to bridge or at least narrow the gap. Spero (1992),

for example, has attempted to recast the analysis of the God-representation, as found in the

mind of religious believers, to extend beyond a merely intrapsychic representation to

include the concept of an existing and real extramental God. He argued that God is reallyexisting outside the human mind and that efforts to conceive of Him only in terms of

psychic representation are false, not only epistemologically but also psychologically, as

the meaning and intentionality of the God-representation in the mind of the believer

includes the assertion and conviction of a really existing God.

The typical psychoanalytic approach to this problem, restricting the meaning of the

God-concept to the confines of religious experience (i.e., in terms of subjective experience

to the exclusion of the question of real existence), does not in Speros (1992) terms do

justice to the essence of the believers actual belief. Accordingly, he distinguished

between two forms of God-representation. One form is akin to other psychic representa-

tions that are restrictively intrapsychic and have no more than subjective validity, that is

to say, any psychic representation of an object is reflective only of the persons internalpsychic reality and says nothing about the reality of that content. A God-representation of



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this sort would involve no reference to an externally existing God. The second form of

God-representation Spero proposed is of a different order. As he observed,

Chief among the areas where psychology has yet to put forth a useful contribution to religion

is the conceptualization of the image of God in a manner that is compatible with the outlook

of religion. By image of God I mean more than a static cognitive or ideational structure.Rather, one would be dealing with the nature of the important, emotionally idealized images

or object representations that occupy human attention and interest and the process of

internalization by which such images are taken in, projected outward, and related to. And

inasmuch as religion views God as an objective (that is, real) aspect of reality, it anticipates

from psychology some method for schematizing veridical object representations of God, a

representation not confused with other types of representations that are modeled upon

interpersonal relationships. (Spero, 1992, p. xv)

On these terms, Spero (1992) did not accept the Kantian division between the

phenomenal and the noumenal, according to which the thing-in-itself remains unknow-

able. Rather, he embraced an epistemology in which the intentionality of the representa-

tion extends to the real object, so that equivalently we do not know merely the represen-

tation, as in the Kantian (and usually psychoanalytic) framework, but we know the object

by means of the representation. Consequently, he concluded that we can form a God-

representation that enables the believer to know God objectively and not merely subjec-

tively. Furthermore, he contended that the pale version of the God-representation that falls

short of addressing the objective reality of God is a far cry from true religious belief. There

has to be more there beyond the cognitive formation and consciousness of so-called

religious experience.

Spero (1992) continued, citing Hans Kung (1990), who noted,

The question raised [by humanists Fromm and Adler] is about the function of belief in God,not about the reality of God. . . . What is important [for them] is not so much the affirmation

or denial of God, of whom we know nothing, but the affirmation or rejection of certain human

values (p. 115, emphasis added). (p. 14)

To this, Spero added,

God representations themselves, according to this school, are attributed to psychic manufac-

ture rather than to any actual form of interchange between a human and a veridically existing

divinity. The fact that religionists believe in God, and have somehow built up psychic

representations of this God, would not dent the psychologistic conviction that, in the final

analysis, the religionists do not possess what they believe they possess (save the belief itself!).

(p. 15)

Rizzuto (1996), in turn, reacted to Speros (1992) model for representing the image of

God. She noted first that Speros model assumes the factual and objective existence of

God, a proposition that might be theologically acceptable but that lies beyond the scope

of analytic or phenomenological reflection. Psychoanalysis of itself has no grounds for

asserting either the existence or the nonexistence of God. Second, Spero postulated the

immediate formation of an objective representation of God simply as a result of Gods

existence, an assumption that can neither be proven nor disproven empirically. And

finally, Speros God-representation

is not developmentally connected or integrated with the rest of the formation of the human

mind. In Speros words, the objective God-representation only overlaps with drives,

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intrapsychic structures, and human object images. A psychically integrated experience based

on such distinct and separate God representation does not seem possible. (p. 418)

Although Spero did take into account the intrapsychic and developmental aspects of

the God-representation, the question remains whether the rest of his analysis and its basis

can be accepted as validly psychoanalytic.In agreement with Rizzuto (1996), I would draw a clear line of distinction between the

properly psychoanalytic and the religious or theological realms, a distinction that Spero

(1992) seemed to blur. One could argue that his epistemology has some validity when it

comes to knowledge of experienceable realitiesa post-Kantian critical realism would

accept the concept of an object representation as capable of real and objective reference

as long as the object falls within the range of experience. The veridicality and validity of

the representation, however, is established by separate ego functions of perception and

reality testing. But we can still ask in deference to Spero, what does the objective

God-representation represent? There is no immediate objective experienceable object to

which it might refer and intend. But it must and does mean something! For the religious

mind, God exists beyond and above the range of human experience. Thus, we would have

to conclude that Speros objective God-representation is not derived from ordinary

human experience but is based in some part on a body of revelation known and accepted

through faith and communal belief.16 There is, therefore, validity in his claim that the

believers God-representation refers to an objective and really existing deity, but this

object is known and recognized only through religious faith.

To the extent that Spero (1992) sought to bridge the gap between the psychoanalytic

and religious perspectives by including data from a faith-based religious tradition as part

of the foundational material included in the God-representation, Rizzutos (1996) criticism

would seem to hit the mark. In this sense, any inclusion of religious belief in this manner

in a psychoanalytic formulation is unacceptable according to the canons of psychoanalyticmethod. In his effort to bridge the gap between analysis and religion, Spero may have

gone too far. Psychoanalysis is concerned only with the internal psychic reality of the

God-concept and not its external reality, and with the psychology of this belief and not its

reality status. Spero, it seems, has tried to wed the God of the theologians with the God

of the psychoanalysts. Accordingly, he has effectively taken a step beyond transitional

conceptualizationthe God-representation, as a transitional conceptualization, leaves

open the questions of reality and existence, but does not stipulate it. Spero, in contrast,

places the aspect of reality and existence within the God-representation itself, so that it

includes not merely a subjective intrapsychic construction as an aspect of the individuals

internal psychic reality, but equivalently takes on the connotations of an expression of

belief in an existing and real divine objectas an objective God-representation.

Speros (1992) argument thus challenges the Freudian and generally psychoanalytic

view of religious concepts as illusory. In the light of the view of religious experience as

related to transitional phenomena, we can return to the basic Freudian question of whether

religion and the concept of God are no more than wishful illusions, or whether they can

16 This may be what Spero (1992) had in mind in his insistence on the objective quality of theGod-representation, not necessarily the reality of God as He exists as a real object in Himself, butas He is known through the objective presentation and conviction of other believers and the beliefsystem of the religious group. Obviously, the really existing God stands behind and can be inferredin the belief system, but He remains unknown and beyond the reach of human cognitive powers, andthat not only in psychoanalytic terms.



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stand for some reality beyond the psychic. Both Spero and Rizzuto (1996) and my own

approach to transitional conceptualization respond to the Freudian view negatively, namely by

asserting that the concept of God in religious terms is not merely an illusion in any sense that

would exclude the possible reference to reality, but that it represents the reality of religious

belief. But we would part company over the question of the meaning and reference of the

God-representation as such. Spero interpreted the God-representation in the mind of thebeliever as equivalently asserting the divine reality, whereas Rizzutos and my own response

is that to the extent that the God-representation is no more than a form of internal psychic

reality, it neither asserts nor denies or eliminates the reality of the divine object as conceived

through faith and religious belief. The question of the reality and existence of the divine object

is simply beyond the scope of psychoanalytic conceptualization.

If it can be said, then, as Ricoeur (1970) claimed, that psychoanalysis is inherently

iconoclastic, as is evident in Freuds (1927/1961d) perspective, it also seems true in this

post-Freudian era that psychoanalysis no longer feels compelled to destroy humankinds

illusions on the ground that they express their inmost desires and wishes. Rather,

psychoanalysis has moved to the position of staking a claim for illusion as the repositoryof human creativity and the realm in which peoples potentiality may find its greatest

expression (Winnicott, 1971a). The differentiating point separating the RizzutoMeissner

approach from that of Spero (1992) is that for the former the God-representation is the

product of intrapsychic developmental, defensive, and dynamic components, so that the

resulting representation has nothing to say directly about the existence or reality of God

as the object of the individuals belief system; however, for Spero the God-representation

is partially constructed in terms of the image of the divine object of credal belief and

includes an objective reference to that object. In other words, the believer has not only

formed a representation of the divinity intrapsychically, but also asserts its existence as a

reality extrapsychically. The critical point, however, is that the image of God in terms of

religious belief is known and accepted as such only through faith and acceptance of thecredal system. These lie beyond the scope and capacity of psychoanalytic method.

The problem remains, however, whether and how far these distinctions can be pushed

in any hard-and-fast sense. Rizzuto (1996), reflecting on the data on the experience of God

reported by the participants in her research, took the case further to explain the inherent

value of the God-representation in psychic life. She wrote,

This God, created and found, is a most vital transitional object due to the childs belief that

the divine being is always there to love and help, to punish and reward. God is also available

for rejection and hatred. The being always there is the most frequently mentioned charac-

teristic of God described by the research subjects (Rizzuto, 1979). Psychically, the God

representation may be put at the service of maintaining psychic equilibrium, to keep a

minimum of relatedness and love in moments of abandonment, to sustain self-respect and

hope when the blows of life make it nearly intolerable. It is also available for love and hatred,

exaltation and humiliation, as well as for any other feeling that may find difficult integration

in human relationships. Furthermore, the divinity becomes a companion for better and for

worse. God may offer consolation in lonely moments while remaining an unavoidable witness

to secretive actions, sexual explorations, and aggressive wishes. Whatever the situation and

age of the person, from childhood to the moment of death, the transitional God representation

is there, consciously or unconsciously, available to be called to psychic duty, whether to be

accepted, believed, and loved, or rejected and despised. (p. 416)

It remains questionable whether and to what extent the God-representation conceivedin these terms can have any proportional meaning simply as an intrapsychic illusory

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representation. For many, these effects might only make sense if the God-representation

is believed in as representing a truly existing and real God. In this sense, Spero (1992) may

have a point.

In strictly psychoanalytic terms, each individuals God-representation carries the marks of

that individuals personality because it is created out of the inner psychic resources of each

individual and reflects his or her personal life experience, developmental vicissitudes, andindividual dynamics and defensive needs. It is fashioned out of projective elements, congruent

with Freuds projective hypothesis. But the relation of this God-representation to a really

existing God is a further issue. Rizzuto (1996) went so far as to say,

Once created, the God representation affects the sense of self because it establishes a felt

dynamic relationship between the believer and his God. Once the psychic representation is

believed to be that of an actual existing God, it acquires the full relational reality. Thus,

consciously, preconsciously, or unconsciously, the Gods [sic] representation will, in its

reflection of how we have created it and found God through its mediation, affect how we

conceive of ourselves. (pp. 416417)

Putting the matter in these terms may come at least halfway to agreement with Speros

(1992) analysis. Insofar as Rizzutos approach resonates with Freuds hypothesis, the

question is whether it goes beyond Freud in any sense. The fact that Rizzuto situated her

argument within the framework of transitional phenomenashe defined God in these

terms: God, psychologically speaking, is an illusory transitional object (1979, p.

177)states the essence of the psychoanalytic abstraction, but at the same time it does not

offer any suggestion of renouncing the religious belief. In terms of the perspective of

transitional conceptualization, the psychic status of the God-representation as illusory

transitional phenomenon can and must be brought into dialogue with the concept of God

as real and existing as represented in religious terms. We can thus entertain the possibility

that framing the question in these terms may also advance the discussion of the intrapsy-chic meaning of the God-representation to a different and perhaps more productive level.

Thus, Speros (1992) resolution, attributing objective reference to the God-

representation, closes the gap between the God of psychoanalysis and the God of religious

belief, but it also amalgamates theological belief with analytic understanding in a way that

might be methodologically suspect. In contrast, the view of the God-representation as

transitional (Rizzuto, 1979) and analytic thinking about God and religious topics as forms

of transitional conceptualization (Meissner, 1990, 1992b) maintain the distinction and

respect for methodological differences, but open the analytic perspective in the direction

of further dialogue and potential accommodation and mutual understanding with religious

beliefs and theological doctrines.In these terms, the continuing dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion remains

a challenge for both psychoanalytic theory and theological reflection. In theoretical terms,

accepting the validity and verifiability of both the psychoanalytic and the religious

perspectives, I would suggest that the potential dialogue between them would have to

encompass further explorations of the connotations and implications of concepts of

transcendence and immanence, of the modalities of predicationnegative, transcendental,

and analogousand extensive inquiry into the consequences for both religious belief and

analytic understanding of the formation of the God-representation intrapsychically in

relation to and in mutual interaction with the data of revelation and the related theological

elaboration. The implications, both for deepening understanding of psychological mean-

ing and for the personal and psychologically meaningful reverberations of doctrinal anddevotional religious practice and living, are significant.



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Clinical Implications

There remain important pragmatic consequences of whether and how the analysts

orientation to these questions might influence his or her dealing with them in analysis and

how the practicing psychoanalyst resolves these questions with the patient. In the clinical

setting of the psychoanalytic process, we can schematize the putative goals regardingreligious beliefs in terms of the various perspectives on the concept of God we have been

discussing. In one option, that of the classic Freudian perspective, the goal might be put

in terms of analyzing the neurotic determinants of the God-representation so that the

patient is able to eliminate it along with the infantile motives that lie behind itthis would

presumably have been Freuds preference. However, the attempt to deprive the patient of

his or her religious belief in favor of the Godless atheistic stance implicit in this approach

would be tantamount, in my view, to the grossest form of countertransference enactment.

Analytic neutrality would require that the analyst remain indifferent to however the patient

might resolve his or her religious beliefs and should only be concerned with the neurotic

components they may contain and express.A second option in the classic scheme would be to find ways to help the patient modify

his or her God-representation and disengage it from whatever neurotic distortions might

be built into it, thus opening the way to remodeling it in more mature and reasonable

terms, prescinding it from any objective reference. Again, the emphasis in this approach

would fall exclusively on the God of psychoanalysis, but the process would settle for its

more adaptive modification rather than its elimination. This more often than not takes the

form of modifications of the excessively severe and judgmental superego on which the

God-representation is modeled. This approach would be more consistently analytic in that

it clearly would prescind from the patients religious beliefs as either irrelevant or as

something about which the patient might be concerned as an important life goal and

adaptation, but not a matter about which the analyst and the analysis would haveimmediate concern as an analytic goal.

Speros (1992) approach, in which the God-representation is interpreted as including an

explicitly objective reference to a really existing God, assumes a much broader perspective that

extends the reach of analytic concerns; analyst and analysand would be concerned not only

with the God-representation as intrapsychically constructed, but in addition would take into

consideration the implications of the objective reference in relation to the aspects of the divine

image as proposed in the individuals religious beliefs and the religious tradition in which the

individual participates. This approach, I would think, would focus on the God of psychoanal-

ysis but would also explicitly explore it in relation to the God of religious belief, so that the

modification of the God-representation would take into consideration both intrapsychic dy-namic and defensive influences and doctrinal stipulations regarding the existence and nature of

God as declared from the side of the religious belief system.17

In contrast, I would submit that the approach to the God-representation in terms of

transitional conceptualization offers a more subtle and indirect approach to its understand-

17 It may not necessarily be the case, but this orientation to the patients relation to andinvolvement in a particular belief system may leave Speros (1992) approach open to the charge ofconversion or proselytizing. As others have objected and I would agree, psychoanalysis can makeno pretensions to competence in the interpretation of religious beliefs and theological reflection,which simply lie beyond its scope. Any such attempts on the part of the analyst to influence thecourse and direction of the patients religious beliefs, whether to encourage or foster religious beliefor to discourage or dissuade from it, would constitute a form of countertransference enactment.

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ing and implications. The task in this schema does not differ in the first instance from the

classic orientation; that is, the objective of the analytic process is to explore and

understand the developmental, dynamic, defensive, and compromise processes that have

contributed to the formation of the God-representation. The God-representation in these

terms can be regarded as a form of transference that is open to psychoanalytic exploration

and interpretation as much as any other transference expression. To the extent that thepatients neurotic God-representation can be successfully explored and interpreted and

resolved, this may open the way to reformulation and renewed understanding, enabling the

patient to find new and more creative ways of reconciling his or her revised God-

representation with his or her religious beliefs. This remodeling and reconstruction of the

God-representation, however, would lie beyond the scope of analytic concern and would

be left to the initiative and desire of patients to reorient their thinking and attitudes about

God and the meaning of God in their lives on their own termswhether that resolution

be sought in more traditional religious terms of one or another of the established churches

or in terms of some other idiosyncratic or other nontraditional belief system. In this view,

as in the classical approach, it is not the business of psychoanalysis to be concerned withwhat religious belief system the patient chooses to embrace or whether the patient chooses

to embrace any at all. The analytic process is only interested and concerned with whatever

neurotic distortions or excesses may have found their way into the patients religious

beliefs, including his or her attitudes toward and beliefs about God as reflected in his or

her God-representation.18 Beyond that, the way can lie open for the patient to engage in

his or her own personal dialogue between his or her own personal God-representation and

the God-concept espoused and preached in his or her religious tradition.19 However, in

contrast to the classic approach, although the analyst is indifferent to the form of the

18 John Gedo (1978) stated this principle without equivocation: Although it is undeniable thatthe vast majority of people undertake the treatment with the hope that such [therapeutic] benefits willbe among the outcomes, this eventuality is by no means certain; the actual process can only promiseincreased self knowledge. From the vantage point of the analyst, the same issue can be stated evenmore emphatically: Only the wish to discover the truth about the analysands inner life is congruentwith the performance of the task; any need to change the other person is in principle illegitimate andin practice counterproductive. When the basic issues have been uncovered, the analysand certainlyhas the right to decide not to use his new knowledge in the service of change. (pp. 7677).

I would merely add the emphasis that this principle applies fully and unequivocally to thepatients religious beliefs and attitudes.

19 A further and much more complicated issue can arise when neurotic distortions andpathological tendencies are built into any given religious tradition and belief system. It can often

enough be the case that the patient will use such pathogenic elements in the service of his or her ownneurosis. The analyst has few options in such cases. The bottom line is that it is up to the analysandto determine, evaluate, and come to terms with such issues. The analysts concern lies more on theside of helping the analysand to gain sufficient maturity, autonomy, and capacity for independentjudgment to allow the analysand to make his or her own assessment of such issues and to determinehis or her own course of action and response. A simple example was provided by one of my patientswho was consumed with guilt about his chronic masturbation, which he was convinced his church,in the person of the nuns and priests of his boyhood, had declared to be seriously sinful and worthyof eternal condemnation. The matter can be much more complex when seemingly neurotic andpathological elements are attributed to God in a religious tradition, say for example in the form ofsadistic superego derivatives. The analytic task, as I would see it, is not to refute or modify thepatients interpretation of his churchs moral teaching or God-concept, but to enable him to gainsufficient maturity and autonomy to allow him to decided the matter for himself on the basis of aninformed understanding and reasonable judgment. See my further discussion of the relevance ofethical judgment in analysis in Meissner (2003).



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patients resolution of the problem of religious belief, the analyst does not take a stand for

or against the validity or utility of religious belief but leaves this open to the patients

initiative and decision as would be required by optimal analytic neutrality.

Conclusion

To sum up, I have tried to summarize the major currents in the ongoing discussion and

debate concerning the psychoanalytic perspectives on the question of the existence and

nature of God. The multiplicity of viewpoints remain divergent and oppositional and

formulate the problem in varying terms. I have stated my own preferences in this

discussion, but at this point no one point of view commands the field. I would urge

consideration of any approach that offers the possibility of facilitating the continuing

dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion. I have offered the view of psychoanalytic

conceptualization of religiously related concepts, especially the concept of God (as

expressed most effectively and affectively in the God-representation), as forms of tran-

sitional conceptualization with the implications of such a dialogue specifically in mind. Iwould hope that these considerations might advance that dialogue in some degree.

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The God Question in Psychoanalysis