Psychoanalytic practice and the religious patient: a current perspective

Via a national survey and in-depth interviews, the author investigated training psychoanalysts' views on religion and spirituality and the impact of such views on their treatment practices. The training analysts surveyed described being appreciative of a patient's religious or spiritual worldview when it allowed for flexibility in its theological tenets or when it played a psychologically supportive role. In most instances, empathy for a suffering human being together with the desire to enter a patient's subjective field of experience overrode analysts' personal and professional biases vis-à-vis religious involvement, when these were present.