“Higher Powers and Infernal Regions”: Models of Mind in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and Their Implications for Pastoral Theology

Abstract

Freud's “topographical” model of conscious and unconscious had a powerful early influence on pastoral psychology. The hegemony of this so-called “depth”-oriented repression model is being challenged on a number of fronts. The increasing recognition of the mutability of memory, and the politicization of repressed memory has called the idea of the repression barrier under scrutiny. Psychoanalytic thinkers and neurobiologists are separately rejecting the concept of repression in favor of dissociative processes and multiple mental states. Postmodernists question the notion of unitary self. This article explores the importance of these critiques for theological anthropology, and suggests their implications toward a new, more multiple and mutable imago Dei. The article concludes with implications of the new models of mind, emphasizing dissociation and multiplicity, toward a constructivist, intersubjective view of meaning-making in pastoral praxis.