God, mother and me: An object relational perspective on religious material

Abstract

This essay addresses the problem of finding a theologically and psychologically adequate “listening perspective” from which to interpret religious imagery in counseling contexts. The essay proposes that the revision of psychoanalytic theory broadly termed “object relations theory”, with its attention to the distinctive inner representational world of each individual, may provide just such a resource. This perspective adopts Freud's basic insights on the genetic origins of the individual's God representation in the family romance, but avoids the reductionism of the Freudian position by positing a different understanding of fundamental human motivation, namely that it involves the creation and maintenance of a sense of being a self-in-relationship. The essay considers how the psychic representation of God may therefore be understood to function in this life of the self and illustrates this by reference to a clinical case from the work of D.W. Winnicott and a case from pastoral work.