Sacred Conversations

When I was a kid, I used to pray to the good Lord that I might be blessed with the capacity to shoot lasers from my eyes. I bargained. I pleaded. I petitioned.[1] The product of a specific moral upbringing, I assured God I would use such an ability for good. Just think what proselytizing, what evangelizing, what service I could offer a pining world with such a blazing fruit of the spirit. Alas, the proton beams never came.

The significance of the story, if there is any, can be taken differently by the theologians and by the psychologists. Perhaps the theologians, studying a God’s objective existence and determinable characteristics, read of my woes and in response form questions about the divine. What God is this that, omniscient and omnipotent, spared this young boy such power? What wisdom, grace, or love flowed through the denial? Thus, this sacred conversation, shared between a young boy and his God, is to the theologian but expression of the many timeless and divine truths defining God and God’s relation to created humanity. These reflections the theologians offer.

But maybe it is different to the psychologists. The psychologists read my regaling the laser beam story, and they are less interested in what it reveals about God. The psychologists form questions in response about that described subject – me – to God’s object.[2] What kind of a kid (clearly an oldest child) thinks himself ready to assume such power? And, in the company of billions of other humans all a part of the created order, why does he think God would find him more deserving than they? Thus, this sacred conversation, shared between a young boy and his God, is to the psychologist but expression of the many psychic complexities that form an individual personality and its relations to a surrounding universe—a universe populated by characters both human and divine. These reflections the psychologists offer.

The theologians and the psychologists approach the same story with a different set of questions. But which reign supreme? Which serve what purposes? When is one more useful than the other? Here is a different question: What if both perspectives need one another to draw their fullest conclusions?

Ann Belford Ulanaov is Emerita Christiane Brooks Johnson Professor of Psychology and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She is a long practicing Jungian psychotherapist, and she holds a master’s degree in divinity. In 2001, she wrote a fantastic book entitled Finding Space: Winnicott, God, and Psychic Reality. In it she draws on the tenets of that object relational theory to articulate the complex interplay between a praying human subject and a listening God—a God dizzyingly defined both by the truths housed in sacred texts and religious traditions and by the subjective projections of earth-bound psychologies. And it is a book that could only be written by a person like Dr. Ulanov, operating as both a theologian and as a psychotherapist. The questions posed by both traditions prove relevant.

Like Ulanov, we at The Center for Integrative Counseling and Psychology are not just interested in one or the other of these perspectives. We aim to engage both. In professional formation, clinical service, community engagement, we bring those questions posed by the theologians and the psychologists into conversation with one another. And we sit with them, curious to see what clinical utility might arise. Prayer, when it spontaneously bubbles into some psychotherapeutic space—and it does from time to time, sets forth a stage enacting potent expressions between immanent patient and transcending other rich with material relevant to mental health. These sacred conversations can be approached by clinicians thoughtfully, ethically, and even personally all for the benefit of treatment.

So, this summer, The Center’s OLOGY programming offers a professional training series on the subject. Sacred Conversations: Clinical Trainings on Prayer and the Life of the Mind extends continuing education addressing clinical conceptualization, professional ethics, and personal reflection all related to expressions of prayer in and around the therapeutic space. We bring internationally recognized master clinicians, professional ethics educators, and local providers in conversation to consider the integrative vibrancy of these powerful moments, these sacred conversations. Join us for one, two, or all three trainings this summer! You can register here.

[1] Obviously, too, I read X-Men comics.

[2] The Argentine psychoanalyst, Dr. Ana-Maria Rizzuto, wrote a seminal book entitled The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study. She begins the work: “I am not writing about religion but only about object relations.”