Touched by Grace during the Psychoanalytic Hour: the Transformation of a Religious Resistance

Abstract

Case material is presented illustrating a phase in religious transformation in which the quality of the religious moment—first expressed in transference hints and a dream, and finally augmented by an idiosyncratic enactment of the patient’s—became sufficiently intense that it crossed formal religious boundaries. The patient resisted direct reference to her religious beliefs, yet the deeper roots of her God representations took alternative forms of expression. The analyst’s appreciation of this, which was rendered articulable through a carefully refined countertransference experience, eventually enabled a sincere experience of joining, one that superseded apparent religious differences between analyst and patient.