Towards a Spiritual Psychoanalytic Activism

ABSTRACT

Drawing heavily on a dream with Biblical themes, this paper describes my spiritual psychoanalytic journey whereby, my personal, spiritual, and psychoanalytic identities have self-organized into one inseparable whole. The celebration and recognition of our infinite interconnectedness will be seen to define a spiritual psychoanalytic practice that includes a willingness to act against any structures of oppression that impinge on any portion of our human and natural collective. The paper will conclude with some reflections on moral dilemmas inherent to a radical contextual approach informed by the ethics of a spiritual psychoanalytic activist sensibility. An afterword will introduce a brief epilogue written by one of my patients, an epilogue that constitutes an uncanny interconnection between our respective spiritual journeys.

KEYWORDS:

• Spirituality
• activism
• ethics
• infinite interconnectedness
• radical contextualism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The importance of recognition as a vital dimension to the psychotherapeutic encounter draws heavily from the work of Lynne Jacobs (Jacobs, 2008).

² The equivalence of attractor states to Atwood and Stolorow’s concept of invariant organizing principles (Atwood & Stolorow, 1984) is purposive. Complexity systems theory constitutes a more general and formal account of the dynamics of open living systems of which their intersubjective systems perspective is one example.

³ An important qualification to the above comments on religious particulars is that the Old Testament is of course a text revered by both Jews and Christians. My favorite biblical mantra was two words from the second verse of Genesis: “Ruach Elohim” translated as wind/breath/spirit of God.

⁴ Although my current form of Judaism is secular, out of respect for my fellow Jews who are believers in God, I will capitalize God’s pronouns in this text.

⁵ Of course, the patriarchal nature of the Old Testament implies it is the male gender with the more powerful voice. In my own family it was my mother who modeled a critical eye to holders of power and who was very compassionate to the underprivileged. I suspect that if my analyst chose to analyze my dream, my admiration of and my identification with my mother’s sensitivity to the injustices of power would have quickly emerged. After all the dream’s spotlight is on the matriarch Sarah.

⁶ See Sucharov, 2009 for a detailed account of my psychoanalytic biography.

⁷ I will be shortly writing a brief paper describing in detail the systemic racism against Canadian Indigenous persons dramatically and painfully exposed by both the Lytton Fire and recent flooding/rockslides in the same area (a direct sequel to the soil weakened by the summer fires) that has left an entire and neglected Indigenous community in the midst of continuous peril and trauma.

⁸ The Jews refers to a nation not a race, and includes persons of all colors. In Israel, dark-skinned Sephardic Jews are often treated as second class citizens, just one step above Israeli Arabs.

⁹ Melanie is herself an archival published scholar. It is therefore important to state that this epilogue was not written with the idea of publication. It is presented as a spontaneous response to my paper in one sitting and has not been revised.

¹⁰ I herein use the word “ridiculous” in its meant usage as defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “deserving or inviting derision or mockery; absurd” – so many of the systemic evils and oppressive elements of society are – once carefully examined – absurd and deserving of derision.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maxwell S. Sucharov

Maxwell S. Sucharov, M.D., is an emeritus member of the International Council of the International Association for Psychoanalytic Self Psychology and is on the Editorial Board of Psychoanalysis, Self and Context. He has a private psychotherapy practice in Vancouver, Canada, where he is a Clinical Faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia.

Melanie Delva

Melanie Delva, MAS, is a first-generation settler Canadian of Belgian descent with a B.A. in English and History and a master’s degree in Archival Science. Since 2005, she has worked to raise awareness of Canada’s historical and present-day genocidal and colonial policies, and to fight for justice for Indigenous peoples. A life-long Christian, Melanie now lives with her spouse and dog, Dexter, on unsurrendered Nlaka’pamux Territory.