¹ Freud, Sigmund, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. Strachey, James (New York: Norton, 1961), p. 69.Google Scholar

² Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, Dictionary of Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1981)Google Scholar, “Mystery.”

³ Doubling back” is from Homans, Peter, Theology After Freud: An Interpretive Inquiry (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), p. 231.Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid., pp. 117-95.

⁵ Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. Strachey, James (New York: Avon, 1965), p. 575.Google Scholar

⁶ For a discussion of the construction of mental forms or memories from percepts, see Freud, , Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 574–88Google Scholar, and Brown, Daniel, “The Stages of Meditation in Cross-Cultural Perspective” in Wilber, Ken, Engler, Jack, and Brown, Daniel P., Transformations of Consciousness (Boston: Shambala, 1986).Google Scholar

⁷ Buber, Martin, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1952), pp. 78–89, 133–37.Google Scholar

⁸ Ronald, W.Fairbairn, D., Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952).Google Scholar

⁹ Guntrip, H., “Religion in Relation to Personal Integration,” British Journal of Medical Psychology 42 (1969), 323–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Winnicott, D. W., Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971).Google Scholar

¹¹ Rizzuto, Ana-Maria, The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).Google Scholar

¹² Meissner, W. W., Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

¹³ Horton, Paul C., Solace: The Missing Dimension in Psychiatry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).Google Scholar

¹⁴ E.g., Underwood, Ralph, “The Presence and Absence of God in Object Relational and Theological Perspectives,” Journal of Psychology and Theology 14 (1986), 298–305;Google ScholarMcDargh, John, Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory and the Study of Religion: On Faith and the Imaging of God (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983);Google ScholarAronson, Harvey B., “Guru Yoga—A Buddhist Meditative Visualization: Observations Based Upon Psychoanalytic Object Relations Theory and Self Psychology,” presented at the 1985 American Academy of Religion, Anaheim, CA.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Kohut, Heinz, The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut; 1950-1978, ed. Ornstein, Paul H., 2 vols. (New York: International Universities Press, 1978) 1:214, 221–32;Google Scholar“Introspection, Empathy, and the Semi-Circle of Mental Health,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 63 (1982), 398–401;Google ScholarPubMedThe Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1977), pp. 100–01.Google ScholarPubMed

¹⁶ Diane Jonte-Pace, conversation at the 1985 American Academy of Religion, Anaheim, CA.

¹⁷ A reader of an earlier version of this article defended Rizzuto as talking about “the reconstructed or ‘clinical’ infant of psychoanalysis and the hypothesis that the self-generated feelings (autistic) of pleasure that the patient is presumed to be feeling in this instance are some clues to the pre-verbal experience of the infant which may become the foundation for subsequent God representation. (One might observe that for all his comments on adultomorphism, even Kohut must rely upon the ‘clinical infant’ rather than the observed infant.)” This defense provides a good opportunity for using psychoanalysis upon itself. First, Kohut did reconstruct the experience of the infant through the use of adultomorphic terms, but usually (not always) clearly indicated what he was doing. The problems with adultomorphism come not with its inevitable use, but with the lack of awareness of the fact that one is speaking analogically when one uses it. The statement in defense of Rizzuto is filled with such a problematic lack of awareness of the use of analogies. There is the assumed equation between “self-generated feelings,” “autistic” experience, and “schizophrenic” experience. “Autism” and “schizophrenia” are not synonymous and in neither of them is there a coherent “self” which can generate feelings. While popular in psychological circles, such unconscious analogies serve to obscure rather than to reveal the nature of schizophrenic or autistic experience as fundamentally different from “self-generated” experience. But even if one's understanding of schizophrenia or autistic experience were far more accurate, to use it as the analogue for infantile experience, especially without qualifying what one is doing, is highly problematic. Why choose as an analogue for infantile religious experience the most highly pathological adult experience? Beyond the fact that in both there is an absence of boundaries between self and other, the analogy is fundamentally misleading. In schizophrenia, the absence of boundaries is usually associated with extreme terror and bizarre fantasies. In the newborn, the absence of boundaries is a normal state of being and there are no fantasies about it. The problem is twofold: first (and this is the argument I am making in this section of the paper) the absence of awareness of the difference between the adultomorphic infant and the real infant means that the analogy serves to obscure the fundamentally mysterious character of infantile experience, rather than to reveal it. This point is significant in that true religious experience is also said to be fundamentally mysterious. Second (and this is the argument I make in the later section on maturation morality), this particular adultomorphic analogy is highly problematic in that it makes the equations between the most serious adult psychopathology, infancy, and religion. As to the question of whether I should build an argument on what appears to have been a slip in Rizzuto's thinking, I can only say that the whole edifice of psychoanalytic thought is built upon the premise that such slips are highly meaningful.

¹⁸ McDargh, pp. 218-19.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Gilkey, Langdon, Religion and the Scientific Future: Reflections on Myth, Science, and Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1970;Google Scholar reprint ed., Macon, GA: Mercer University/ROSE, 1981), pp. 51-100.

²¹ Kohut, , Search, 1:214–16, 221–32.Google Scholar

²² McDargh, p. 213.

²³ For an introduction to maturation morality, see Kohut, Heinz, “Summarizing Reflections” in Advances in Self Psychology, ed. Goldberg, Arnold (New York: International Universities Press, 1980), pp. 478–82;Google Scholar “Semi-Circle,” pp. 399-403.

²⁴ Guntrip, p. 323; Fairbairn, pp. 188-89.

²⁵ Rizzuto, pp. 177-79.

²⁶ Ibid., pp. 178-84.

²⁷ Winnicott, p. 13, quoted in Rizzuto, p. 79.

²⁸ Winnicott, pp. 3, 6, 13-14.

²⁹ Rizzuto, p. 209.

³⁰ Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion, trans, and ed. Strachey, James (New York: Norton, 1961), pp. 53–56.Google Scholar

³¹ On pp. 191-92, Rizzuto uses the following quotation by Selman Fraiberg in her discussion of the reasons why the god representation as a transitional object can be healthy: “Now, of course, if a child of any age abandons the real world and cannot form human ties, if a child is unable to establish meaningful relationships with persons and prefers his imaginary people, we have some cause for concern. But we must not confuse the neurotic uses of imagination with the healthy, and the child who employs his imagination and the people of his imagination to solve his problems is a child who is working for his own mental health. He can maintain his human ties and his good contact with reality while he maintains his imaginary world. Moreover, it can be demonstrated that the child's contact with the real world is strengthened by his periodic excursions into fantasy (The Magic Years [New York: Scribner's, 1959], p. 22;Google ScholarPubMed emphases mine).

³² Horton, p. 10.

³³ Ibid., p. 16.

³⁴ Ibid., pp. 10, 16.

³⁵ I realize the adultomorphic problems with such studies, which is why I put quotation marks around “memories.” However one accounts for such “memories,” they do indicate that, even in their fantasies, adults know that life in the womb is not life in Eden. For an example of such studies, see Grof, Stansilav, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research (New York: Viking, 1975).Google Scholar

³⁶ Horton, pp. 73-133.

³⁷ Rizzuto, pp. 177-211.

³⁸ Buddhist Scriptures, selected and trans, by Conze, Edward (Baltimore: Penguin, 1959), pp. 147–50.Google Scholar

³⁹ Kohut, , Search 1:427;Google Scholar 2:754-61; “Summarizing Reflections,” p. 480; “Semi-Circle,” pp. 399, 401.

⁴⁰ Fairbairn, pp. 188-89; Guntrip, p. 323; McDargh, pp. 204-13.

⁴¹ Winnicott, , “Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena,” p. 13;Google Scholar quoted by Rizzuto, p. 179; and Horton, p. 14; and discussed by Meissner, pp. 176-77.

⁴² Kohut, , Search 2:761–62.Google Scholar

⁴³ Winnicott, pp. 13-14, quoted in Rizzuto, pp. 177, 179.

⁴⁴ Horton, p. 19.

⁴⁵ Smith, Roy Steinhoff, “The Becoming of the Person in Martin Buber's Religious Philosophical Anthropology and Heinz Kohut's Psychology of the Self,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1985, p. 248.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Freud, , Future, p. 31.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Aronson summarizes the ontological implications of Winnicott and Rizzuto for religious thought. His discussion of the status of “illusion” for these thinkers on pages 7-24 directly influenced my discussion.

⁴⁸ Freud, , Future, p. 33.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Rizzuto, p. 3.

⁵⁰ Freud, , Future, p. 33.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Winnicott, p. 14.

⁵² Meissner, p. 178.

⁵³ Rizzuto, p. 227, n. 4, quoted and discussed in Aronson, pp. 16-24.

⁵⁴ See Rizzuto, esp. pp. 47, 49, 177-80.

⁵⁵ Ibid., pp. 177-80.

⁵⁶ Fairbairn, p. 178; Guntrip, pp. 330-33.

⁵⁷ Aronson discusses this problem and McDargh's and Meissner's understandings of it in pages 57-62. See also McDargh, pp. 52-53.

⁵⁸ McDargh, pp. 206-07.

⁵⁹ Meissner, pp. 241-44.

⁶⁰ Aronson, pp. 61-62.

⁶¹ McDargh, p. 113.

⁶² Rizzuto, p. 41.

⁶³ Freud, Future, p. 21.

⁶⁴ Rizzuto, p. 178.

⁶⁵ Ibid., pp. 3, 149, 177-79.

⁶⁶ Freud, , Civilization, pp. 64–92.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid., p. 69.

⁶⁸ For a very good discussion of such uses of psychoanalytic theory by religious thinkers, see Homans.

⁸⁹ Horton, p. 121.

⁷⁰ See for example Brown, Daniel, “The Stages of Meditation …” and Merton, Thomas, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), pp. 225–67.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Kernberg, Otto, Object Relations Theory and Clinical Psychoanalysis (New York: Jason Aronson, 1976), pp. 59–64;Google Scholar Daniel Brown, “The Stages of Meditation. …”

⁷² Buber, pp. 136-37.