The Fate and Future of Psychoanalysis in Spiritual Care

Dear Colleagues,

Until only a few decades ago, psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theory largely shaped the landscape of spiritual and pastoral care due to their shared disciplinary interests in the pathos-centered study of interpersonal experiences—particularly the forms of suffering that face those in clinical and helping professions. However, more recently, spiritual caregivers have grown increasingly concerned over perceived issues around theoretical rigidity, individualism, and intractable atheism in the classical psychoanalysis that held sway during the postwar era through the 1980s. As a consequence, significant parts of spiritual and pastoral care in the 1990s and beyond largely jettisoned psychoanalytic theory in favor of other paradigms (e.g., narrative, family systems, postcolonial, intercultural) then perceived to be more amenable to social and political concerns for justice and liberation. A factor further accelerating this trend has been the rapid transformation of many institutional contexts for spiritual care and healthcare chaplaincy toward short-term, triage, and outcomes-focused caregiving models that are seen as incompatible with psychoanalytic depth work. While many scholarly fields undergo paradigmatic shifts and theoretical evolutions as they mature, it is rare that a theoretical orientation so central to a discipline would nearly vanish in less than a generation. Now, just a quarter way through the 21st century, the fate and future of psychoanalysis for spiritual care appears either uncertain or imperiled.

However, as this split between psychoanalysis and spiritual care began to emerge, psychoanalysis has itself undergone several meaningful social and intercultural evolutions, about which many spiritual caregivers and pastoral theologians trained in recent decades may not be aware. Not only has psychoanalysis undergone an equally energetic relational turn in its clinical training models in recent decades, which has included a vigorous reckoning with issues of racism, sexism, gender diversity, queer inclusion, and social justice at the highest ranks of the American Psychoanalytic Association, but it has also begun to challenge some of its longest standing antipathies toward religion through a new openness to spirituality and faith, in part through growing recognition of its original Western biases. As a result, psychoanalysis today resembles its pre-relational self approximately as much as spiritual care today resembles its former self. Both fields have grown in their pursuits of better ways to work toward healing as it is broadly understood.

These parallel evolutions of spiritual care and psychoanalysis lead to a peculiar and generative opportunity for their futures together. Even for a spiritual caregiver skeptical of psychoanalysis, their overlapping histories and subsequent revolutions raise the question of whether spiritual care’s departure from psychoanalysis was a premature or anachronistic assessment of psychoanalysis’s commitments at precisely the moment when both fields were exploring similar questions regarding context. More promising still, these parallel paths open the potential for new dialog between disciplinary partners, who remain as committed as ever to accompanying others in their lived experiences of suffering, injustice, and liberation.

With this opportunity in view, this Special Issue of Religions aims to advance the study of spiritual care and psychoanalysis by inviting focused scholarly reflections on “The Fate and Future of Psychoanalysis in Spiritual Care”. More specifically, we invite original research articles and theoretical contributions that do not just interrogate the knowledge that ongoing utility psychoanalytic theory may still be able to contribute to spiritual care, but also examine how the fate of spiritual care may depend upon gathering shared wisdom from recent psychoanalytic research. While we are open to any mode of creatively engaging this task, we are particularly interested in research that focuses on the following topics and questions:

1. The continued relevance and utility of psychoanalytic theory and practice for spiritual care.
2. Shared insights and opportunities for dialog between relational psychoanalysis and contemporary paradigms in spiritual care, including both potential benefits and critical concerns.
3. Analyses of what is necessary (e.g., conversation partners, theories, approaches) to make psychoanalysis a helpful theoretical foundation for spiritual care, given the “turn toward context” in both disciplines.
4. Reassessments of the broken relationship between spiritual care and psychoanalysis, including losses and liabilities incurred from the division.
5. The challenges around deploying psychoanalytic theory and techniques within healthcare and spiritual care contexts that have prioritized short-term, behavioral, and outcomes-focused metrics for revenue and productivity.
6. Clinical case material, illustrations, or vignettes demonstrating the incorporation of recent psychoanalytic theory and material into spiritual care.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200–300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editors, or to the Section Managing Editor of Religions, Vinicio Altmann (vinicio.altmann@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of this Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Pamela Cooper-White
Dr. Peter Capretto
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• psychoanalysis
• spiritual care
• pastoral care
• psychotherapy
• psychodynamic theory
• psychology of religion
• chaplaincy
• psychotherapy
• relational theory
• social scientific study of religion