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For a generation now, the future development of psychoanalysis has been awaiting a proper absorption of the spiritual dimension into the fabric of meta-theory and therapeutic practice. This paper proposes self psychology as a paradigm capable of making a unique contribution to the study of the spiritual dimension in human psyche, and in the encounter between a human and her/his Other.
The feasibility of a spiritual psychoanalytic thinking originated in the conceptual passage from the Guilty man and the Tragic man to the Mystic man, and it springs from the shift from a psychoanalysis based on an orientation of separateness towards a psychoanalysis anchored in unified worldview. Four crucial contributions make self psychology a pioneering pathfinder in systematic theorization of the spiritual in psychoanalysis: A. the ’self’ as flow-concept between the experience of structured psyche and the being of unstructured spirit; B. the absolute and the individual’s ability to reside in it via the contextual web of selfobject matrix; C. the transformation of a human’s evolution from emergence into individual existence, to the human’s dissolving into transcendent being of supra-individual existence of participation in the world; and D. therapeutic change, that is not satisfied merely with change-making within existing materials but dares to aspire to the creation of as-yet non-existing spiritual states of mind which deserve to come into being. The essay concludes with an examination of the spiritual dimension ingrained in self-psychology and its application to the political field and the unsolved riddle of leadership.