The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy

Spiritual Practice, the Apophatic Way and Bion

Judith Pickering

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781317274476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Santé mentale en psychologie

2020 American Board & Academy of Psychoanalysis (ABAPsa) bookaward winner!

If, when a patient enters therapy, there is an underlying yearning to discover a deeper sense of meaning or purpose, how mighta therapist rise to such a challenge? As both Carl Jung and Wilfred Bion observed, the patient may be seeking something that has a spiritual as well as psychotherapeutic dimension. Presented in two parts, The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy is a profound inquiry into the contemplative, mystical and apophatic dimensions of psychoanalysis.

Whatare some of the qualities thatmay inspire processes of growth, healingandtransformation in a patient? Part One, The Listening Cure: Psychotherapy as Spiritual Practice, considers the confluence between psychotherapy, spirituality, mysticism, meditation and contemplation. The book explores qualities such as presence, awareness, attention, mindfulness, calm abiding, reverie, patience, compassion, insight and wisdom, as well as showing how they may be enhanced by meditative and spiritual practice.

Part Two, A Ray of Divine Darkness: Psychotherapy and the Apophatic Way, explores the relevance of apophatic mysticism to psychoanalysis, particularly showing its inspiration through the work of Wilfred Bion. Paradoxically using language to unsay itself, the apophatic points towards absolute reality as ineffable and unnameable. So too, Bion observed, psychoanalysis requires the ability to dwell in mystery awaiting intimations of ultimate truth, O, which cannot be known, only realised. Pickering reflects on the works of keyapophatic mystics including Dionysius, Meister Eckhart and St John of the Cross; Buddhist teachings on meditation; ??nyat? and Dzogchen; and Lévinas' ethics of alterity.

The Search for Meaning in Psychotherapy will be of great interest to both trainees and accomplished practitioners in psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychotherapy and counselling, as well as scholars of religious studies, those in religious orders, spiritual directors, priests and meditation teachers.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• Dedication
• Introduction
• PART ONE The listening cure: psychotherapy as spiritual practice
• PART TWO A ray of divine darkness: psychotherapy and the apophatic way
• Inconclusion
• Bibliography
• Index