Splitting, the Self, and God

Abstract

ABSTRACT Until this decade the field of psychotherapy, perhaps following Freud, has been at least skeptical, if not debunking of religion. All the more amazing, then, is the recent inclusion of a V-code for religious or spiritual problems in the DSM IV. In order. that this development not be just another trend in which psychotherapy and religion are layered one over the other, serious efforts are being made to show the real integration of the two (Anderson & Worthen, 1997). This paper will make such an effort by addressing issues common to both fields and by showing how these issues grow out of a common human experience. On the psychotherapeutic side, the paper works out of the psychoanalytic tradition of Object Relations and Self Psychology, which has integral connections with a systems approach; and on the religious side, it works from a Biblical Christian theology, Christianity being predominant in this culture.