Regression and Reparation in Religious Experience and Therapy

e. e. cummings said “We live in a world that does its best to make us into everything other than what we are”. The result of living in this alienated world, according to psychology, is that ‘what we are’ has been repressed beneath a narcissistic, superficial, or what Winnicott (1975) called a ‘false’ self. According to religion, ‘what we are’ has been buried beneath the sinful self, the self estranged from God or blinded by the trappings of Maya. To rid this self and to experience God or Nirvana is to recover the lost ‘what we are’: the ‘Christ within’ or Atman. Psychology, however, suggests ‘dying to self’ and experiencing God is a regressive renunciation of ego functioning and return to archaic unconscious processes. It further suggests a regressive diminishment of self and recovery of unconscious processes can be transformative, as when it takes place in therapy. This paper examines how religious experience is regressive but also how the analysis of the psychological reparation that takes place in therapeutic regression can be applied to the loss of self and restoration of unconscious processes that takes place in religious experience.

Psychological development normally proceeds from less complex states to more complex states. Its earliest and least complex structure is dominated by primary processes, such as wishfulfillment and instinctual immediacy, which gradually give way to the development of more complex psychological functions, such as tolerating frustration and thinking logically. The progressive development of these ego strengths is reversed when, due to any number of intrapsychic or environmental factors, the demands place upon them make a person feel anxious and he or she returns