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All real living is meeting. —Buber, 1958
The personal is the mode of existence proper to man. Nevertheless it has ceaselessly to be attained.—Mounier, 1952
Notwithstanding Freud's rejection of and critical stance toward religion, he was interested in how human beings made use of god representations in managing their emotional lives. Those who followed generally adopted Freud's defensive view of religion, though there were exceptions. Erikson (1958, 1969) examined the lives of Luther and Gandhi, positing the powerful positive influence of religion in their lifespan development. Winnicott (1953) understood the value of illusion in creative living. He included god representations under the heading of illusions that could contribute to being alive and real. Later, other important contributors to the psychology of religion, such as Rizzuto (1979) and Meissner (1984, 2009), provided critical perspectives on analytic theories regarding religion. Rizzuto (1979, 1998), in particular, examined the healthy and unhealthy uses and development of god representations in the lives of adults and children. In general, these accounts frame the use of god representations in terms of an individual's negotiation of developmental tasks and the challenge of differentiating between illusion and reality. Left in the shadows of analytic discussions vis-à-vis god representations is their relation to the achievement of community and the mutual recognition and treatment of other human beings as persons.
In this article, I argue that god representations ideally function in childhood and adulthood both as transitional subjects and as anchoring subjects. In development, transitional subjects (of