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The expansion that psychoanalytic theory has undergone in the past several decades allows people to apply it to literature and religion in ways which can no longer be described as “reductionistic.” An important part of this shift in orientation involves an assimilation by contemporary psychoanalysis of existentialist concerns with the self. For certain psychoanalytic writers (e.g., Bion, 1977; Kohut, 1971, 1977; Winnicott, 1971) the self is not only a structure but a subjective center of personality. Personality as a whole is viewed as an open, expanding “system.” Clinical drama at any moment hinges on the kind of person one is becoming or wishes to be. What is at stake from moment to moment is the very quality of selfhood.
The psychoanalyst's concern with “who am I?” brings the analyst into close relationship with religion and literature: It is no longer a matter of trying to explain one by the other. The creation of a story, a prayer, or a psychoanalytic communication are not mutually reducible to one another, nor are they mutually exclusive. They may influence one another in fertile ways. The psychoanalyst reaches out to other disciplines not to impose a body of knowledge, but to discover or deepen a personal sense of identity. The analyst must get help from varied sources to contribute as much as possible.
It is in the spirit of this quest that the present paper brings together aspects of the work of Flannery O'Connor, D. W. Winnicott, and Wilfred R. Bion. if psychoanalysts can link in a sensible way with an