The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy:
Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis
Edited by Willow Pearson and Helen Marlo
Psyche and Soul Series, Routledge, published 2021
Book Description
This book examines the interaction of spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages with psychotherapy in everyday practice. Written by a team of seasoned clinicians and illustrated through clinical vignettes, chapters explore topics pertaining to the mystical dimensions of psychological and spiritual life and how it may be integrated into clinical practice.
Topics discussed include dreams, dissociation, creativity, therapeutic relationship, free association, transcendence, poetry, paradox, doubleness, loss, death, grief, mystery, embodiment and soul. The authors, clinicians with decades of experience in psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and spiritual practice, draw from their deep engagement with spirituality and psychoanalysis, focusing on a particular theme and its application to clinical work that is supported by the generative conversation among these lineages. At once applied and theoretical, this book weaves insights from the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism, Ecumenicism, Integral Spirituality, Judaism, Kabbalah, Non-violence, Sufism and Vedanta. They are in conversation with psychoanalytic perspectives including Jungian, Post-Jungian, Winnicottian, Bionian, Post-Bionian and Relational.
A felt sense of the spiritual psyche in clinical practice emerges from this conversation among spiritual and psychoanalytic lineages, beckoning clinicians ever further on the path of spiritually rooted, psychodynamic practice.
Jeffrey Moulton Benevedes (2021) “God Dwells within Me as Me”, Jung Journal, 15:2, 126-134, DOI: 10.1080/19342039.2021.1901493
From the book review, Benevedes writes:
“What I consider to be one of the most important chapters of the book is the introduction to the spiritual psyche in psychotherapy, authored by Willow Pearson and Helen Marlo. This is an exquisite beginning that allows for an untangling of the fraught concepts of spirituality, mysticism, religious experience, the transcendent, and the source of being. The editors provide a clear map of the ineffable in a feat few could have undertaken. With flawless precision, Pearson and Marlo take on the dismantling and integration of these notions that act in orchestrated relationship. Noting the limitation of conveying the being and experiencing of mystical experiences that go beyond what could be offered in any text, the editors bravely offer a conversation in the language of spiritual traditions and psychoanalysis relevant in clinical practice.”
“In The Spiritual Psyche in Psychotherapy: Mysticism, Intersubjectivity, and Psychoanalysis Willow Pearson and Helen Marlo provide an unqualified discussion of the world of spirit for beginners or advanced seekers and practitioners. Although this eclectic read is ostensibly about the life and work of the spiritual psyche in psychotherapy, it provides a diversified discussion of the most current thinking about the numinous, both on the couch and in daily life.”
Table of Contents
Editors’ Introduction by Willow Pearson and Helen Marlo
1. Inhabiting the Spiritual Psyche by Willow Pearson and Helen Marlo
2. Letting the Light Get In by Katherine Olivetti
3. Thoughts on Mystery, Paradox and Doubleness by Robin Bagai
4. Depth Psychotherapy and Spiritual Inquiry: Jungian and Transpersonal Perspectives by Bryan Wittine
5. Soul Home: The Kabbalah Dance and Jungian Psychoanalysis by Robin Eve Greenberg
6. Reckoning with the Spiritual Truth of Aversive Emotions: Evolving Unconditional Positive Regard and Discovering the Good Enough Clinician by Willow Pearson
7. Surviving through Destruction: Reading Gandhi in Winnicott by Shifa Haq
8. Out of Dissociation into Creation through Relation: A Depth-Oriented and Jungian Perspective on Psychological and Spiritual Experience by Helen Marlo
9. Caesuras of Dreaming: Being and Becoming, Thinking and Imagining by Willow Pearson
10. Allowing the Creation by Mitchel Becker
Click here for conversation (discussing a chapter in the book), with artist, clinician and spiritual practitioner Richard Munn, on dreaming, creativity, meditation and therapy, August 3, 2020.
Click here for interview with Dr. Shabin Nazar of the World Forum for Education, with Dr. Willow Pearson and Dr. Helen Marlo, November 30, 2020
Click here for Book Talk, with Dr. Robin Bagai, at the California Institute of Integral Studies, February 24, 2021
Podcast interview with Dr. Roy Barsness of New Books in Psychoanalysis, with Dr. Willow Pearson and Dr. Helen Marlo, March 15, 2021.