Manifestations of the sacred and analytical considerations
By Nicolas Elias
English
Are there points where psychoanalysis and the sacred intersect? Can we conceptualize the experiences which amaze us? Now that Freud’s work has cleared a trail, the approach of D. Anzieu and D.W. Winnicott attests to the structural analogies possible between the sacred and individual creativity. As for Jung, he relies upon the concept of the image of God to describe the numinosity of the archetypes and its effects in the cure. A clinical example of one type of possible effect of this numinosity on the work confirms the phenomenological approach initiated very early on by R. Otto, on what he called the characteristics of the irrational elements of the sacred.