Reissued with a new preface by the author, this book argues that both religion and psychoanalysis are failing because they exist apart and do not incorporate each others values. Psychoanalysis, with Freud as its founder, has vehemently denied the value of religious belief. In this radical book, Neville Symington makes the case that both traditional religion and psychoanalysis are failing because they exist apart and do not incorporate each others' value. Religion needs psychoanalysis so that it can become relevant to peoples' emotional lives and their most intimate relationships. Psychoanalysis needs religion so that it can contain those core spiritual values which give life meaning. But for a fertile relationship both will need to relinquish excess baggage in the form of creeds, dogma and rituals which only serve to obscure the deeper values which both are attempting to express. The controversial conclusion of this fascinating study is that psychoanalysis is a spirituality-in-the-world, or a mature religion, and inseparable from acts of virtue. --- from the publisher "Symington's concern is not so much with any comparisons there may be between organized religion and organized psychoanalysis or with religion as a set of mystical beliefs, it is with a better understanding of a field of shared interest to both religious and psychoanalyst - the relationship between the moral dimension of the mind and the emotional or spiritual health of the individual(he) is unusual in not shying away from the heat and inevitable controversy that any attempt to speak to larger questions and larger audiences about how human beings live their lives outside the consulting room will produce. In inviting a dialogue between religion and psychoanalysis, Neville Symington is endeavoring to restore the spirit to psychoanalysis." -- Jon Stokes from his Foreword
About the Author:
Neville Symington is a member of the British and Australian Psychoanalytic Societies. His other books are Narcissism: A New Theory, The Making of a Psychotherapist (both published by Karnac Books), The Analytic Experience, and The Clinical Thinking of Wilfred Bion (written with Joan Symington). He has a private psychoanalytic practice in New South Wales, Australia
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