Self Psychology’s Contribution to the Spiritual Dimension of Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT

For a generation now, the future development of psychoanalysis has been awaiting a proper absorption of the spiritual dimension into the fabric of meta-theory and therapeutic practice. This paper proposes self psychology as a paradigm capable of making a unique contribution to the study of the spiritual dimension in human psyche, and in the encounter between a human and her/his Other. The feasibility of a spiritual psychoanalytic thinking originated in the conceptual passage from the Guilty man and the Tragic man to the Mystic man, and it springs from the shift from a psychoanalysis based on an orientation of separateness towards a psychoanalysis anchored in unified worldview. Four crucial contributions make self psychology a pioneering pathfinder in systematic theorization of the spiritual in psychoanalysis: A. the ’self’ as flow-concept between the experience of structured psyche and the being of unstructured spirit; B. the absolute and the individual’s ability to reside in it via the contextual web of selfobject matrix; C. the transformation of a human’s evolution from emergence into individual existence, to the human’s dissolving into transcendent being of supra-individual existence of participation in the world; and D. therapeutic change, that is not satisfied merely with change-making within existing materials but dares to aspire to the creation of as-yet non-existing spiritual states of mind which deserve to come into being. The essay concludes with an examination of the spiritual dimension ingrained in self-psychology and its application to the political field and the unsolved riddle of leadership.

KEYWORDS:

• Spiritual psychoanalysis
• Mystic man
• oneness
• emergence-dissolving
• immersion-merger
• psychoanalytic superposition

Acknowledgment

An earlier version of this essay was originally published in Hebrew in the first issue of Maarag – The Israel Annual of Psychoanalysis in 2010. The essay has been significantly revised for this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ In the process of introducing an independent self psychology that uplift psychoanalysis to new transcendental horizons, Kohut proposed an inspiring meta-theoretical distinction between the Guilty Man and the Tragic Man. The history of the terms began in a “Letter to Dr. L.” written in May 1974, and then presented in the Research Seminar of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis in October 1974, November 1974 and January 1975. (Kohut, 1978, p. 737., 1996, p:138–139, 192–193). Nevertheless, it seems that in the seminal paper On Courage, published only in 1985 but written originally in the early 1970s, the terms are probably making their first appearance in Kohut’s oeuvre. Classical psychoanalysis, founded on the bases of drive and conflict, is portraying the psychology of the Guilty Man whose life are a constant struggle characterized by tension and depression. Self psychology, founded on the notion of a nuclear self striving to express and realize its basic patters of ambitions and ideals within the span of a lifetime, is portraying the psychology of the Tragic Man who can live courageously and can die with no regret. The psychology of the Tragic Man is crucial in including within the psychoanalytic psychology of the human race, “An essential aspect of human life, which was heretofore the exclusive domain of philosophy, theology, and art, [and] can now, through the application of the psychology of the self, become the target of empirical observation and scientific scrutiny” (Kohut, 1977, p. 936). These two dimensions of the guilty and the tragic are complementary, and the three major myths of psychoanalysis – Oedipus, Narcissus and Odysseus are, of course, both guilty and tragic men. Kohut was fully aware of the negative nature of the terms: “ … realism prompted me to adopt the negative terms Guilty man and Tragic Man because man`s failures in both realms do overshadow his successes.” (Kohut, 1977, p. 239). The immortal citation from Eugene O`Neill that Kohut gratefully adopted for his Tragic Man, deeply attests to the spiritual thread that Kohut wished to weave within psychoanalysis: “Man Is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue (Kohut, 1977, p. 287).

² 2007, Bookworn and The Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity: Tel Aviv. Translated, edited, and with an introduction by Tsili Zonens and Eldad Iddan

³ Der mystische Mensch, 2007, Resling, Tel Aviv. Translated by Yoav A. Sapir, Scientific edited by Avi Baumann.

⁴ In an open discourse at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, January 2006.

⁵ David Grossman (2007), “Writing in the Dark”, adapted from the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, delivered at PEN’s World Voices Festival on April 29, 2007. Translated from the Hebrew by Orr Scharf. Reprinted in The New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2007.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Raanan Kulka

Raanan Kulka, M.A., is training and supervising analyst for children, adolescents and adults, Israel Psychoanalytic Society and Israel Institute for Psychoanalysis (IPA). He is Chair of Human Spirit — Psychoanalytic-Buddhist Training Program, Lod, Israel, a joint international project of Israel Association for Self Psychology and the Study of Subjectivity – Lama Tzong Khapa Institute for the Study and Practice of Buddhism in the Tibetan Tradition, Pomaia, Italy. He is a teaching faculty member at the Program of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. Kulka is a member of the Council of The International Association of Psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Kulka’s list of publications consists of dozens of book chapters and papers published in major psychoanalytical journals in Israel and abroad. Additional amount of more than 100 papers have been presented as lectures in conferences in Israel and abroad. Raanan is taking care of his patients and enjoy studying together with his supervisees and colleagues in Shoresh, Israel. Raanan is studying and practicing Buddhism.