Discussion of a symposium: The God representation in the psychoanalytic relationship: When is three a crowd?

A discussion is offered of some of the central trends and unique ideas that can be discerned among the 14 essays presented in a symposium dedicated to the role of religious imagery, particularly representations of God or divinity, within the psychoanalytic process. The symposium focused upon the beliefs and images of the analyst as well as the analysand, based on the view that an image or concept identified as "God" is probably an ineluctable element of the development of the human representational mind and its boundaries, regardless of whatever else this image may point to, theologically speaking. The authors were asked to use clinical material to address the hypothesis that the dynamic roots and potential of such representations would be expressed in the countertransference to the degree that such representations are involved within the conflicts and deeper forms of unrest that bring the individual to treatment. In this essay, the symposium coeditors discuss the degree to which the authors approached this kind of understanding, accepting, challenging, or simply veering away from acknowledging it.