Dialogue between the Clinical Practice of Lacanian Psychoanalysis and the Discipline of Spiritual Direction
Keywords:
Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Spiritual Direction, ChristianAbstract
This paper explores Lacan’s engagement with the Christian Practice of Spiritual Direction. I examine what he has said directly within his writings about the practice and move from there to explore how we should approach a dialogue between the two disciplines of Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Direction. This is a dialog which has never taken place as Lacan seems to be excluded from the majority of practical writings on the subject of Spiritual Direction and its relationship to Psychology. In exploring this absence of dialog,I discover that modern therapeutic methods and Spiritual Direction both share ‘experiential foundations’ and a dual repression of the Mystical element which shut it off from a Lacanian approach. Moreover, I will argue that it is only through recovering this repressed Mystical element that a dialog between Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Spiritual Direction becomes possible.
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