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Points of View 61
psychoanalytic point of view and then examine a possible spiritual interpretation to see the similarities and differences in these approaches, and to begin to appreciate the vast dimension of possibilities and meanings added to a therapy by increasing its scope to include spiritual considerations.
PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
Both psychology and spirituality understand that facing and overcoming fears can lead to a deepening of one’s insight, expanding consciousness and enhancing the experience of love. Freud learned that people separate themselves from inner fears and conflicts, using defenses that hide the recalling of past traumatic events -- defenses such as repression and denial. But walling off suffering this way also lessens our ability for awareness and feeling in other areas as well.
To experience love fully, one must be fully open, like an innocent, spontaneous child. If feared situations no longer exist and the defenses for them are no longer necessary, the therapeutic aim is to bring awareness back to areas once feared. Then dawns a new openness, an expansion of consciousness and a new sense of wholeness, a deeper contact with life, a greater sense of freedom, more energy for living, and a greater capacity to experience and express love. This expansion of awareness must not be confused, however, with the full experience of oneness with all things, about which spiritual systems talk. The crucial difference is that the oneness of non-dualistic spiritual approaches aim at transcending all boundaries, to achieve a unity without any separation or limitation (see Appendices III and IV).
From the psychological point of view, the large school building in A.T.’s dream can be seen as representing her mind, and the scurrying of people and the high level of activity indicate her active intellect. She hides from her spirituality that she is keeping “up her sleeve.” She both wants and fears her spirituality – wanting the love that it represents and fearing that accepting spirituality would reduce her identity as an intellectual person. The dream can be seen as the fear that the intellect has in accepting spirituality – seeing spirituality (mistaken as superstition) as a threat to its dominance.