Pastoral Psychol (2016) 65:395–426 DOI 10.1007/s11089-016-0688-2

Readings of Winnicott II Chris R. Schlauch 1

Published online: 12 February 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016

Abstract This article, part of a larger project examining the significance of Donald W. Winnicott’s contributions to research, teaching, and clinical care across psychology, religion, and theology, unfolds in mind of the broad question, What are Winnicott’s writings about? It draws from a study carried out by this author that concludes that Winnicott’s writings can be understood in terms of two Breadings^ (Ricoeur 1970)—expressing (a) a developmentalexistential point of view and (b) a notion of being religious—of a network of six Btheoretical ideas^ (Stausberg 2009): early experience in infancy, transition, connecting and disconnecting, creative space, holding (and being held) and holding onto, and facilitating. The essay outlines the contours of the second reading of the third set of theoretical ideas—connecting and disconnecting expressing being religious—and spells out some implications. Keywords Winnicott . Going-on-being . True self . False self . Being religious This essay examines a series of concepts in Donald Woods Winnicott’s writings and outlines a novel way of interpreting them. It is self-evident that Winnicott created these concepts for the purpose of elucidating psychological topics such as development, relationships, psychopathology, and clinical care. It is also the case, however, that we can view Winnicott as working on subject matter that was not simply or singularly psychological, that there was, in a sense, more in and to his work than is readily apparent. The warrant for assuming so, and exploring further, is basic to psychoanalytic theory and practice itself. This essay invites the reader to consider how, in the spirit of psychoanalytic theory and practice, the meaning of a text, whether written or spoken, is not reducible to what is explicit, to what is readily and immediately available to author and reader, speaker and listener. Rather, one bears in mind a distinction between what is Bmanifest^ and present on the surface and what is Blatent^ and hidden in the depths. One engages speakers, authors, speech, and texts as having meanings that are consciously conveyed and received as well as others that are

* Chris R. Schlauch [email protected]

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School of Theology, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Box 259, Boston, MA 02215, USA

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exchanged unconsciously through implication and inference. One presupposes a Bsurplus of meaning,^ and classical theory proposes that that surplus resides within the speaker, author, speech, or text. There’s more to Winnicott’s theorizing, then, than is readily apparent. With the evolution of psychoanalytic theorizing, the site of this surplus becomes notably more complex. Among the more significant revisions in theory that have emerged is a challenge to the Bone-person^ model (of an autonomous subject independent of objects) and the formulation of a Btwo-person^ model (of a subject fundamentally connected with and related to other subjects) (see, for example, Aron 1990; Fosshage 1992; Ghent 1989; Mitchell 1988; Rickman 1957; Silverman 1996). The self is not singularly apart from others and the world; it is also, or instead, inherently a part of others and the world. Winnicott’s theorizing displays his playing with these concerns, and in some instances he appears to have retained the sensibilities of the one-person (or subject/object) model while in others (most notably, of course, in his formulation of transitional objects, an intermediate area, and potential space) he elucidates a complex version of a two-person model. In this model, the surplus of meaning may reside not only within the speaker, author, speech, or text but also between speaker and listener, author and reader, speech and listener, text and reader. This essay, in the spirit of Winnicott, introduces materials that suggest the value of both models, with especially appreciating the creative formulation of a version of the latter one. It is one thing to explain abstractly the nature and intent of a study and quite another to demonstrate by example, in a more experience-near way, some of what is going on. Consider a precedent in the literature. The eminent sociologist Rieff (1959/1961) crafted a brilliant reading of Freud’s writings, showing how Freud’s psychological project was, at the same time, Btrespassing on territory outside that assigned to medicine^ (p. 1). He continues, BIn psychoanalysis, Freud found a way of being the philosopher he desired to be^ (p. 1). To elucidate this claim, Rieff authored Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. In this study I am, in a similar but notably more modest (and less brilliant) way, inviting the reader to consider the plausibility of a different reading of Winnicott’s writings. I am neither making nor demonstrating a claim about what Winnicott may have desired to be (beyond pediatrician and psychoanalyst), but I am inviting the reader to keep in mind an image, drawn from the title of a 1988 posthumous collection of Winnicott’s essays, of Winnicott as a theorist of human nature and to consider the plausibility of a related image of Winnicott as a theorist about being religious. In a previous essay (Schlauch forthcoming), I set about illustrating these ideas by utilizing a heuristic introduced by Paul Ricoeur (1970) and developed by Peter Homans (1970) and, more recently, Thomas Ogden (2001, 2002, 2007). Ricoeur argues that the meanings of texts do not reside within the text independent of readers but rather emerge in the particular engagement each reader has with the text, bearing the imprint of that reader’s particular context, purposes, and questions. Examining the significance of Winnicott’s contributions to research, teaching, and clinical care across psychology, religion, and theology, I explain how my engagement with Winnicott’s writings gives rise to two readings expressing (a) a developmental-existential point of view and (b) a notion of being religious—of holding (and being held) and holding onto—within a broader network of six Btheoretical ideas^ (Stausberg 2009): early experience in infancy, transition, connecting and disconnecting, creative space, holding (and being held) and holding onto, and facilitating. Though the objective of this article is consistent with my previous one, I outline a different method for making this case. I set the stage by examining, briefly, the emergence of modern psychology as an heir to the fields of philosophy and theology. Tracing the reflections of a series of scholars in the field of psychology, I consider how

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psychological theories express extra-psychological assumptions and commitments and, further, how in some instances they actually function as contemporary versions of (features of) religious traditions, addressing such questions as these: What does it mean to be a person? Toward what notion of human fulfillment ought we aspire? What are the basic causes of human suffering? How ought we to relate to one another? What kinds of practices and forms of (healing) intervention ought we to promote? In other words, scholars reflecting on various psychological perspectives and approaches explain how these Bpsychologies^ are Bphilosophical^ and Breligious^ in nature. In this regard, they equip us to consider how psychological texts, such as Winnicott’s writings, may express ideas about religion and being religious.1 Remarkably, a corresponding insight has emerged in a field of study unfolding independently of modern psychology: religious studies. Researchers and scholars in this field explain that whatever we may call Breligion^ has been articulated in seemingly innumerable languages and practices, not only those that have been called Breligions^ (for example, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism) but also in other ostensibly secular traditions (for example, writings in the humanities and social sciences). Indeed, the subject matter of religion, including what we call religious phenomena, practices, beliefs, and, more broadly, perspectives, has been expressed in psychological theorizing. In this regard, these scholars alert us to the fact that what we call Breligion^ may be embedded and expressed in psychological texts and thus that Winnicott’s writings could in fact be Btalking about^ religion (Homans 1970; Ricoeur 1970). Against this background, then, I seek to demonstrate that Winnicott’s writings can be read as expressing a notion of being religious (see, for example, Cannon 1995; Foster 2000; Goosen 2007; Holmes 2014; Kwilecki 1999; Schreiter 2011; Streng et al. 1973; Suomala 2012). In a first step I examine, in conjunction with one another, a series of concepts Winnicott coined—including BI^ [in BI am^], being, living an experience together, going-on-being (forms of relationship), and true self and false self. In a second step, drawing upon definitions of Breligion^ by a Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich (1951, 1959), and a psychologist of religion, Raymond Paloutzian (1996), I propose that human beings are unavoidably religious, each of us forming, however tacit, a notion of ultimate concern as we unceasingly address

Ryan LaMothe (2014) recent article, BWinnicott and Helplessness: Developmental Theory, Religion, and Personal Life,^ offers a remarkably creative and unusually astute analysis of Winnicott’s Bview of religion.^ It is worth noting some general resemblances between that article and my own articles on readings of Winnicott’s writings and Bbeing religious.^ Both LaMothe and I approach the topic area in mind of developmental and existential sensibilities, consider the formative place of early experience, note the profound influence of the ego/ self as fundamentally connected with (m)other and reality (though at the same time distinct), and consider the notion of paradox as crucial to the entire project. At the same time, there are notable differences between LaMothe’s effort and my own. He is interested in constructing BWinnicott’s view of religion^ (p. 885), especially Bthe relation between religion and existential helplessness^ (p. 886), not only as Bdescriptions of reality^ but also and more significantly as Bexpressions of his own understanding of life^ (p. 890). One could say, in different words, that LaMothe is coordinating a way of reading Winnicott’s professional writings—on psychic life but also on the topic of religion—with a brief survey of events in Winnicott’s own life, especially his Bconfrontation with his own physical decline and impending death^ (p. 890). In contrast, drawing from research and scholarship in Bthe study of religion^ (and theology) I propose a working definition of Bbeing religious^ and reflect on how I may offer a Breading^ of Winnicott’s writings that in some ways is in the vicinity of this working definition. I do not examine Winnicott’s commentary on the topic of religion, his own personal religious life, or make inferences about the connections between his biography and his theorizing. I do, however, consider this kind of intellectual study to be especially valuable (see, for example, two other outstanding contributions in this genre: Homans 1979 and Toulmin 1992). 1

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issues of our own life and death as our true self-false self negotiates processes of connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting with others.2 The argument, in brief, is as follows. A person’s (sense of) being, subjectivity, agency—BI^— emerges and develops within relationships, in the unfolding activity of Bliving experiences together.^ BI’s^ encounters with events and engagements with persons occur in a present shaped by BI’s^ particular past in its anticipation of and preparation for its future. BI^ acts, unceasingly, to enhance the probability of going-on-being, that is, to do whatever is possible to ensure its own (adaptation and) survival and, to foreclose, as much as possible, jeopardizing its going-on-being, that is, risking death. The going-on-being of BI^ that is sustained within relationships is by definition contingent on the soundness of those relationships—more particularly, on the nature of BI’s^ Bconnections^ with others. In this regard, the project of going-on-being (and inhibiting not going-on-being) can be understood in terms of the dynamics of connection, disconnection, and reconnection: good enough fitting involves sustaining reasonably sound connections, limiting poor connections, minimizing disconnections, and exercising viable capacities for reconnections. These processes are further illumined by the concepts of true self and false self. Though these concepts lend themselves to be interpreted, mistakenly, as if referring to two more or less distinct subjectivities (that is, BI^ is at one moment either true self or false self), it is more accurate to say that BI^ lives on a continuum of true and false; on one pole is the spontaneous, creative activity of true self, and on the other is some sense of not going-on-being, and in between lie degrees of being alive, real, and authentic. (False self represents, if you will, living in poor connections, too often addressing potential if not actual disconnections, going-on-being more in letter than in spirit.) Each BI’s^ judgments, then, about life and death and what determines BI’s^ unique life and death will inevitably be expressed not only in words, ideas, and beliefs but also in action (that is, habits of mind and behavior) and most fundamentally in BI’s^ very being (that is, personality or character). The second basic step in the argument involves explaining how these Bpsychological^ ideas have to do with, or can be read as expressing, a notion of being religious. An appropriate starting point is to survey literature in the study of religion and realize that there is a seemingly infinite variety of definitions (see for example, Adams 1989; Adriaanse 1999; Alston 1967; Arnal 2000; Braun 2000; Capps 1995; Fontana 2003; Hinnells 2005; Idinopulos 1998; Idinopulos and Wilson 1998; McCutcheon 1999; Paden 1992, 1994, 1998; Platvoet 1999; Platvoet and Molendijk 1999; Saler 1993; Sharpe 1983; Smith 1998; Smith 1962/1991; Snoek 1999; Strenski 1998; Taylor 1998; Thrower 1999; Tweed 2006; Wiebe 2005; Wiggins 1998; Wilson 1998) that display a remarkably wide range of approaches in different fields of inquiry (i.e., the humanities and the social sciences), in different methods (e.g., theoretic, qualitative, quantitative), and in terms of what religion is (Bsubstantive^) and of what it does (Bfunctional^). Scholars often display little if any hospitality to positions that differ from their own, dismissing if not ignoring alternative views. Occasions of constructive conversation are regrettably rare, and the possibility of achieving consensus is admittedly futile. Responses to this situation vary. Reject the concept of religion outright as useless. Dismiss the concept and explain that it says little if anything truly meaningful about the lived Many people regard being religious as participation or membership in a Breligious^ community and tradition, and for them, clearly, only some people are religious and their being so is a matter of choice (it is neither universal nor unavoidable). Some people equate being religious with believing in unicorns, that is, with thinking and acting irrationally, and thus they appropriately take offense not simply at being labeled as religious by someone else but also at being regarded in such a pejorative manner (for a relevant discussion of the former, see Gustafson 1975). I invite readers to suspend, temporarily, accepting competing definitions and to be open to the analysis as plausible. Only then can the argument be considered at all persuasive.

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experience of most people and functions, more accurately, as a construct formulated and used by Western scholars in the academy. Ignore the ambiguity in the literature and arrogantly assert that one’s own definition captures the essence of the phenomenon. Craft an operational definition that is consonant with one’s scholarly approach—for example, if Breligion^ is to be measured, spell out the factors or variables of which it is constituted. Finally, acknowledge the varieties and stipulate one, outlining the utility of one’s approach. This final response extends the legacy of William James (1902/1982), who, in his classic text, The Varieties of Religious Experience, declared, Bfor the purpose of these lectures. . .^ (p. 28). One of the ways of identifying a definition viable for one’s particular purposes is to follow a methodological precedent established by both James as well as Freud. James (1902/1982) in The Varieties and Freud (1907/1959) in BObsessive Acts and Religious Practices^ set about their respective psychological investigations into religion by examining resemblances between psychic phenomena and religious phenomena.3 Simply by referring to certain phenomena as psychological and other phenomena as religious, they implied that the different terms refer to different kinds of things. However, by regarding these different kinds of things as bearing notable resemblances, novel evocative questions necessarily arise. Could psychological and religious phenomena in some instances be members of the same class of events? Could psychological and religious Barticulations^ or Bsymbolizations^ in some instances represent different versions of something held in common?4 Demonstrating by example that both automatisms and religious experiences came from if not through a Bwider self^—a Bsubliminal self^—James concluded that the origins of religious experiences, natural or otherwise, could not be definitively expressed nor explained. (This agnostic conclusion left space for his Bover-belief^ that religious experiences could, in fact, be of divine origin.) Freud reflected upon similarities and differences between (neurotic) obsessive actions and (religious) ritual practices and, in contrast to James, argued that the resemblances betrayed an underlying analogy, an analogy that could be reinterpreted finally as an identity: Obsessive acts and religious practices were, for all intents and purposes, of the same nature and origin. 4 Discussions reveal the ambiguity of this subject matter. It appears that in some cases psychological and religious terms refer more or less to the same phenomenon (they have a common or identical referent) but in other cases refer to different phenomena. It is difficult, in many cases, to distinguish whether one may be seeing the same thing differently or seeing different things. (See the discussion by Russell Hanson (1969), building upon Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1953/1958) comments on aspect seeing.) The contemporary pragmatic philosopher Richard Rorty’s reflections on language and reality are directly pertinent to this discussion. Reality is sufficiently complex and dimensioned that it has engendered various kinds of inquiry involving a wide range of vocabularies. In BThe Contingency of a Liberal Community^ (1989a), Rorty suggests that Bevery specific theoretic view comes to be seen as one more vocabulary, one more description, one more way of speaking^ (p. 57). We are then left to consider how those descriptions, by way of their respective vocabularies, may be related to one another. At times, vocabularies may be more or less mutually exclusive (for example, climatology and linguistics); proximal but only marginally in competition or conflict (for example, neuroscience and linguistics); cognate and potentially in periodic competition or conflict (for example, neuroscience and psychotherapy); or regularly intersecting (for example, religious studies and theological studies). Several of Rorty’s observations are especially pertinent to the subject matter of this study. When inquiries, vocabularies, and descriptions are more than marginally related, it may be helpful to regard their relationship in terms of redescription: BWe must follow Mary Hesse in thinking of scientific revolutions as ‘metaphoric redescriptions’ of nature rather than insights into the intrinsic nature of nature^ (p. 16). For Rorty (1991), Bredescription^ is a matter of Brecontextualization^: BAs one moves along the spectrum from habit to inquiry— from instinctive revisions of intentions through routine calculation toward revolutionary science or politics—the number of beliefs added to or substracted from the web [of beliefs] increases. At a certain point in this process it becomes useful to speak of ‘recontextualization’^ (p. 94). By the same token, despite the claims that some theorists make—that their descriptions Bmirror nature^ or that one redescription and recontextualization is entirely sufficient and subject to no further redescription—there is no final vocabulary. Rorty argues this claim in an essay entitled BThe Contingency of Language^ (1989b): BThe fact that Newton’s vocabulary lets us predict the world more easily than Aristotle’s does not mean that the world speaks Newtonian. The world does not speak [emphasis added]. Only we do^ (p. 6). 3

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Some resemblances between Winnicott’s ideas, introduced briefly above and elaborated extensively below, and contributions in the study of religion may be noted. Consider two definitions of religion. The 20th-century Protestant philosophical theologian Paul Tillich writes that Breligion, in the largest and most basic sense of the word, is ultimate concern^ (1959, p. 7). In a previous work he explained that Bour ultimate concern is that which determines our being and non-being^ (1951, p. 14). Aware that one’s own existence is precarious and limited in time and space, human beings identify a range of concerns, not only those that address immediate needs and wants but also those that have to do, finally, with one’s living and dying. Each of us necessarily makes judgments about Bthat which determines our [own] being and non-being.^ Or, to say it differently, simply by virtue of being human we encounter the fact of our not being and develop ideas and practices that express beliefs about what determines (our own) life and death. We are in this sense unavoidably religious. Twentieth-century American psychologist Raymond Paloutzian (1996) reflects on the concept of religion and concludes that its etymology provides a critical clue. He observes that the English words Bligament^ and Breligion^ share a common Latin origin and concludes that religion has to do with Bthe process of rebinding or reconnecting^ (p. 7). He elaborates, BUnfortunately, it is not clear from the word itself whether people are to be reconnected to God, Nature, a state of mind, a cosmic force, each other as individuals, or their communities^ (p. 7). Reconnecting—a process or project that presupposes having disconnected from what one had been connected to—is in this view at the heart of religion/being religious. Tillich’s and Paloutzian’s respective contributions, taken together, invite us to consider the possibility that addressing matters of life and death and connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting are intimately related and, further, that the judgments we make about what determines our living and dying—judgments made in what we think, what we do, and who we are—are expressly religious. As such, these ideas, found in Winnicott’s Bpsychological^ writings, will be considered as having to do with a notion of being religious.

Assumptions that are challenged by the study The approach and argument of this study are not simply unusual; beyond being unusual, they run counter to traditional intradisciplinary research and scholarship and thus challenge some long-held, often tacit assumptions. Twenty-first-century researchers and scholars in the academy are accustomed to working within specialized communities of interpretation and traditions of inquiry that have been differentiated from one another. Developing approaches, practices, and languages unique to a respective field, academics proceed independently of those in other fields, and intentionally so, because to do otherwise would be courting unnecessary and inappropriate distraction. Operating in this way appears to imply that each (epistemologically distinct) domain of inquiry is more or less linked with its own (ontologically distinct) domain of reality. So, for example, psychologists investigate psychological phenomena while religionists and theologians investigate religious phenomena.5 5

Perhaps not unexpectedly, clinicians find themselves in a situation that resembles that of the academy: being educated, trained, and later practicing within more or less independent guilds, each with its own theories and practices corresponding to its own domain of reality. So, the contemporary psychiatrist intervenes with medications targeting genetic and organic dysfunction; the psychologist follows a manual of treatment in an evidencebased approach to address specific symptoms (for example, forms of anxiety); the social worker is particularly mindful of and responsive to larger familial, community, and social factors; and the pastoral counselor, chaplain, or spiritual director attends more directly to religious and spiritual needs and problems.

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Such epistemological and ontological distinctions are fundamentally mistaken and deeply misleading, as can be readily seen. The subject matter of Bpsychology^—broadly speaking, consciousness and conduct, or mental processes and behavior—has been of interest to thinkers across time and culture. This subject matter had been for many centuries the purview of philosophers and theologians. Modern psychology as a separate area of inquiry emerged in the late 19th century, interpreting consciousness and conduct through expressly scientific methods and procedures (see, for example, Hearnshaw 1987; Manicas 1987; O’Boyle 2006). The assumed boundaries between psychology on the one hand and philosophy and theology on the other belie the actual overlap among the fields. Indeed, every psychological perspective expresses metaphysical commitments and assumptions having to do with the nature and structure of reality (that is, ontology) and with how and what we can know about that reality (that is, epistemology) (Eacker 1983). These commitments and assumptions function prescriptively (ideologically) as well as descriptively (Hoshmand and Polkinghorne 1992) as Ba system of standards or values^ that determine the Bmeans and ends^ of our activities (Brandt 1982, p. 50). They characterize our Bmodes of engagement^ (Morgan 1983, p. 13) and Bmodels of explanation^ (Heron 1981, p. 20). In specifying what is real and unreal, true and untrue, good or bad, virtuous or evil, right or wrong, healthy or pathological, these commitments and assumptions inform the conduct and object (Wulff 1991/1992) of our theory, research, and practice (Howard 1986). Regardless of one’s Bpsychological^ approaches, practices, and languages, psychologists are, at the same time, tacitly continuing to operate as psychologists had for centuries prior to the 19th century. Psychologists are, if only implicitly, at times Btrespassing on territory^ (Rieff) and cultivating the same fields as philosophers and theologians. Even more specifically, we may consider that, according to some scholars, psychological theorizing could re-present religion. Don Browning (1987), for example, argues that psychological theories provide Bconcepts and technologies for the ordering of the interior life^ (p. 2). BThe modern psychologies have filled the space left by the alleged decline (or at least transformation) of institutional religion because they have indeed functioned as alternative faiths. . . . psychology competes with religion not as psychology but more properly as something which itself begins to take on the logical form of religion^ (1987, p. 117). Browning approaches a psychological perspective (and, more particularly, certain theories of personality) as a Bpositive culture,^ Ba system of symbols and norms which guides a society or group by providing general images of the nature of the world, the purpose of life, and at least some of the basic principles by which life should be lived^ (1987, p. 5). Psychology as a Bpositive culture^ seems, for all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from religion (functionally understood). James Dittes (1997), late professor of psychology and psychology of religion at Yale, offers his own impression, speaking in admittedly broad-brush terms: Psychology and religion compete for the human soul. They compete for its loyalty. They compete for access. They compete for the privilege and authority of identifying the diseases of the soul and of prescribing its care and cure. They offer the soul competing vocabularies with which to understand itself. They compete to teach the soul how to perceive its creation and its destiny and how to understand and relate to the universe in which it finds itself. (p. 55) For Dittes, Bpsychology^ and Breligion^ Bcompete,^ and in that regard they are comparable. In his comments they function as worldviews, theories and practices, perspectives and approaches. However, given that Bpsychology^ and Breligion^ point to multiple referents, it is

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not accidental that Belzen (1997) would assert—again in general terms—that Bthe connections between religion and psychology are extraordinarily numerous^ (p. 18). Whereas brief consideration of the history of the field of psychology reveals that Bpsychology^ refers to a subject matter that conceptually overlaps with philosophy and theology and in some cases may be interpreted as re-presenting Breligion,^ brief reflection on the field of religious studies reveals the converse claim, that Breligion^ and Bbeing religious^ have been expressed in and through a myriad of ideas and discourses and religion has been characterized by way of remarkably diverse concepts, methods, perspectives and theories (including those that are Bpsychological^). BReligion^ is a comparative term, complex because it encompasses diverse referents, such as sensations, feelings, thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, phenomena, events, groups, institutions, and ideologies. These referents are expressed in a range of languages and practices. These respective languages and practices express the assumptions and judgments of members of diverse communities and traditions within diverse cultural contexts. In this regard, every use of the word Breligion^ presupposes a particular selection, linkage, and comparison of referents, translation of terms, and inference of the meanings and uses of practices that express different interpretations of what is real and unreal, good and bad, right and wrong, true and untrue. Articulating religion moves across fields and disciplines. The boundaries between Breligion^ and a wide range of fields are permeable. In this regard, the boundaries between Bpsychology^ and Breligion^ are hardly static, strict, consistent, or impermeable. Consider versions of Bpermeable boundaries.^ James and Freud identified and investigated resemblances between psychological and religious phenomena and thus between the respective concepts through which such phenomena are expressed. More recent theorists have discussed broader resemblances between psychological and religious perspectives (see Belzen 1997; Browning 1987, 1997; Dittes 1997; Vitz 1977). As a context for this study of Winnicott, we could become even more specific and observe how scholars who bring psychoanalysis and religion into conversation with one another do so for varying purposes, in each instance using the respective terms in one or another way. Those who carry out Bpsychoanalysis of religion^ regard a person’s intrapsychic processes (including those considered by the person to be Breligious^) as a subject matter to be understood and regard psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic (see, for example, Bingaman 2003; Black 2006; Finn and Gartner 1992; Friedlander 1997; Jones 1991a, 1991b, 1996, 1997, 2002; Leavy 1988; McDargh 1983, 1986, 1997; Meissner 1984, 1987, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2000a, 2000b; Rizzuto 1974, 1979, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2005; Shafranske 1992; Smith and Handelman 1990; Spezzano and Gargiulo 1997).6 In contrast, other thinkers reverse the interpretive process in Breligion of psychoanalysis^; psychoanalysis—a community and tradition that originates in the contributions of a charismatic leader, is recorded in authoritative (Bsacred^) texts and is constituted of a specialized universe of discourse (a language game) and corresponding practices (a form of life) that are 6

The project of psychoanalytically understanding religion, following Freud’s example, has often devolved into psychoanalytically Bexplaining away^ religion. Freud engendered inhospitality to religion at best, hostility and derision at worst, having used his theorizing to dismiss religion as an illusion, a neurosis, something to be understood solely on naturalistic—that is, psychological—terms (see, for example, Freud 1907/1959, 1913/1953, 1927/1961a, 1930/1961b, 1939/1964). As a result, conversations between psychoanalysis and religion have not been especially welcome in some circles in religious studies (nor are they particularly sought in analytic circles). Some scholars have, regrettably, peremptorily dismissed anything having to do with psychoanalytic theorizing.

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transmitted through specialized education and training—is a subject matter to be understood, and religion is a hermeneutic (see, for example, Kakar 2008; Miller 2010).7 Because viable conversation depends upon specific Bpoints of contact^ between the conversation partners, scholars carrying out both enterprises usually follow the precedent established by Freud, identifying analogous phenomena such as obsessional neurosis and religious ceremonials (Freud 1907/1959), God-representation and transitional object (Rizzuto 1979), or Godrepresentation and transformational object (Shafranske 1992). Resemblances between psychoanalysis and religion as words, perspectives, and theories of care—that is, as conceptual entities, so to speak—presuppose and imply what could be called deeper affinities between the experienced sense and feel of what is articulated in psychoanalysis and religion.8 (These deeper affinities between psychoanalysis and religion are known, experientially, by some scholars but have remained, for the most part, unarticulated in the literature (see, for example, Friedlander 1997; see also Frie 2012). I now turn to explore some deeper affinities between Winnicott’s concepts and notions of Bbeing religious^ in order to consider a way of reading those concepts.9 7 W. W. Meissner notes that Bmost analysts would balk at this [reading]^ (personal communication, September 21, 2004). 8 Resemblance has to do with similarity in external appearance—what an observer or spectator notes, visually, as Bbeing like^ (Oxford English Dictionary, hereafter OED). Affinity has to do with a relationship or kinship, having a common purpose or intent—what may be inferred, and felt, as Bbordering upon^ (OED). Of course, affinity does not mean Bidentity^ or Bequivalence.^ Space does not permit consideration of the various differences between psychoanalysis and religion. 9 Members of different religious communities and traditions hold competing versions of who and whose we are as well as of what ought to be held dear. It is hardly surprising, then, that differences in such primary judgments and commitments give rise to conflict and at times to violence. Remarkably, a parallel situation has arisen in the academy: researchers and scholars in the study of religion and theology are mired in turf battles and border wars, stuck in seemingly unceasing competition and conflict about the right way to understand, interpret, and explain Breligion^ and Breligious phenomena.^ In the midst of the varieties of ways of making sense of the subject matter, no definition or characterization will be satisfying to more than a few in one or another interpretive community. As such, the scholar ought not seek to construct a view that would be final or to achieve consensus; those objectives are misguided and futile. Rather, I believe that her or his task is to proffer an unavoidably particular working definition and make a case for its viability. In this regard, all approaches, including the one I have outlined, inevitably display limitations. For example, some readers may be confounded or even offended by my claim that to be human is to be unavoidably religious, precisely because in doing so I am asserting that every reader is Breligious.^ I fondly recall and personally support the position expressed by a well-known passage in James (1902/1982) Varieties where he writes, BProbably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. ‘I am no such thing,’ it would say; ‘I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone’^ (p. 9). On a personal level, I believe that every individual has the authority and responsibility for and privilege of characterizing her or himself. BI decide what Breligious^ means and I decide whether, according to my own definition, I am religious.^ In this spirit, I am not intending to legislate a final meaning and use of Breligious^; rather, I am—for purposes of this research—proposing a plausible and (hopefully) reasonable way of understanding the term. I should note, also, a second limitation. I have outlined an approach to being religious as having to do with forging a sense of oneself-in-the-world and what one believes in—what determines one’s being and not being—in conjunction with or response to an unseen order, a something more. This characterization will be unappealing if not entirely unconvincing to those readers for whom religion is fundamentally a social, communal, and institutional phenomenon. For them, my psychological approach focusing expressly on developmental existential dimensions of a person’s awareness, experiences, ideas, beliefs, and practices is too individualistic. I have taken pains to explain how, in Winnicott’s theorizing, every self emerges and forms within relationships and thus within communities and traditions. That I invite examination of these matters from the point of view of the interior life of an individual is hardly the same as explaining being religious as nothing but or as primarily an individual phenomenon. I am, in other words, not (tacitly or explicitly) substantively delimiting the essence but rather outlining a methodological route for exploring the multidimensional subject matter of being religious.

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Going-on-being (living), not going-on-being (dying), true self, false self, and connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting This section surveys concepts coined by Winnicott. More often than not the ideas are presented in his own words so that he can Bspeak for himself.^ Though Winnicott usually introduced and discussed these concepts independently of one another, considering them as a network equips us to reflect upon the forest and not simply the trees. The section following this one outlines a reading of these ideas as having to do with being religious.

Continuity, going-on-being Winnicott writes, BThe basis for all theories about human personality is continuity of the line of life . . . continuity which carries with it the idea that nothing that has been part of an individual’s experience is or can ever be lost to that individual, even if in various complex ways it should and does become unavailable to consciousness^ (as cited in Davis and Wallbridge 1981, p. 33). Winnicott created a series of terms through which to characterize, accurately and precisely, the being that is going-on-being while (potentially) in (constant) transition. His musings and ponderings emerged in the effort to make sense of wide-ranging impressions he registered in his years of work as both pediatrician and psychoanalyst. In an article entitled BFrom Dependence Towards Independence in the Development of the Individual,^ Winnicott (1963/1965f) observes, BAll the processes of a live infant constitute a going-on-being, a kind of blue-print for existentialism. The mother who is able to give herself over, for a limited spell, to this her natural task, is able to protect her infant’s going-on-being^ (p. 86). To what is he referring?10 One could approach the notion of Bgoing-on-being^ in terms of awareness, i.e., Bknowing that I exist, from moment to moment, such that embedded in moments past and present it is ‘I’ who continues.^ Posing things in this manner allows us to consider how we know this, or even how and when are we aware of this. During most moments, each of us is Bcaught up^ in a present activity, selectively registering, rapidly organizing, and actively responding to a wide range of stimuli. BI^ is registering, organizing, and responding but for the most part is not directly and immediately conscious of BI.^ There are other moments, in contrast, where BI^ appears to become conscious of (this) BI.^ The demands of current stimuli may have abated, and BI^ ponders past events or anticipates future possibilities. In drawing connections among moments, BI^ may in some instances become more aware of the BI^ who was present in those moments and is present in registering them as connected. Even further, BI^ may at still other moments intentionally shift focus and reflect on this continuous BI^—as Bme,^ an object to myself. I believe, however, that going-on-being may not be a datum that we can directly and immediately register but rather is something that lies at the horizon of each and all of these 10

It may be helpful to consider terms that bear some resemblances to or affinities with going-on-being, in William James (1950) discussion of Bstream of consciousness^ Bor of subjective life^ (p. 239). More specifically, James writes that Bthis central part of the Self is felt. . . . It is something with which we also have direct sensible acquaintance, and which is as fully present at any moment of consciousness in which it is present, as in a whole lifetime of such moments (pp. 298–299). He elaborates, BThe only question for us is as to what the consciousness may mean when it calls the present self the same with one of the past selves which it has in mind. We spoke a moment since of warmth and intimacy. This leads us to the answer sought. For, whatever the thought we are criticizing may think about its present self, the self comes to its acquaintance, or is actually felt, with warmth and intimacy^ (pp. 332–333). We may be aware of Bgoing-on-being^ as felt, with warmth and intimacy.

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experiences, some subtle information woven into the fabric of what unfolds in the stream or flow of awareness.11

Not going-on-being We know this subtle information involved in going-on-being when it is there; we also know that and when it has been disrupted. What is not Bgoing-on-being^? How does one know— better, how would one experience—not Bgoing-on-being^? If in going-on-being one registers a subtle awareness of continuity (with oneself in past moments), then not going-on-being would similarly involve some awareness of a disruption or gap in continuity, of not having been (alive). What could this possibly mean? Consider three examples. During everyday experience some people may have an abiding sense of continuity. When moving through a transition from waking to sleeping, that sense of going-on-being is altered. From the experience of repeated cycles of sleeping and waking, people form and take for granted the idea that once they are awake, an everyday sense of going-on-being will resume. This more or less sustained sense of continuity that may be known during most days, tempered and interrupted by sleeping, is jeopardized in a far more dramatic way when encountering a crisis. For example, a patient reports that while watching a documentary on rape she suddenly had to leave the room to go to the bathroom, where she vomited, violently. She speaks of having been entirely surprised by her intense physical response, to the point where she asked the question of herself, BWhy am I throwing up watching a program on rape? I wasn’t raped. Was I?^ Asking that question at the time, and again in the clinical hour, precipitates a dramatic change in affect to what could be called Bterror^ and, almost as abruptly, to being vacant. I sense that she is not Bthere^ and wait for word from her. Moments later she wonders what happened, where she went, feeling as if she lost a block of time and lost herself. In dissociating, the self that was present to immediate experience is now absent. Continuity is disrupted. If a crisis is sufficiently acute—that is, if the self is experiencing trauma—that disruption in going-on-being can be sustained. As another example, I am functioning as research assistant in a doctoral program, proctoring qualifying examinations. Minutes after distributing an exam, a student comes to my office. She sits down, quietly, as if I had been waiting for her (I had not), and says absolutely nothing. I do not interrupt her. I know something is terribly amiss but refrain from doing anything that would be experienced as Binterrogating^ her. I sit next to her quietly. Minutes pass. For me it is a most unusual block of time, as I have the feeling that I am sitting with a body, not a person. She is completely silent, not moving. More minutes pass, and affected by her not being herself I am aware of my not being me. I become increasingly nervous, realizing I do not understand what is happening and do not know what I should do. I tell her, in a soft voice, that I will be back in a moment. I feel some fear about leaving her alone but also some relief not being present to someone who is not present. After more time passes she seems to Bcome back.^ She does not know what happened. In each of these examples, whether in falling asleep, crises, or trauma, many if not most of us have had the lived

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As you, the reader, are reading these words, you are for the most part focusing on making sense of what is said. You have some awareness of yourself reading, or of you as BI^ present in this activity—the BI^ who had previously been engaged in something else and later will turn to another task—yet until you read these words you were likely not especially conscious of yourself, or self-conscious. Nonetheless, embedded in your reading, and in all activities, is some sensate awareness of the continuity of your experiencing, your own going-on-being.

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experience both of going-on-being on the one hand and of not going-on-being on the other— as mutually exclusive states.12 For the notion of going-on-being to be meaningful, one must presume a contrast with its opposite, not going-on-being. The awareness of continuity presupposes the possibility of disruptions of continuity. Thomas Ogden (2001) elaborates: BWhat Winnicott starts to lay out here for the first time is the idea that the central organizing thread of psychological development, from its inception, is the experience of being alive and the consequences of disruptions to that continuity of being [emphasis added]^ (p. 315). Adam Phillips, drawing on Winnicott, further explains: And he [Winnicott] would come to think of psychopathology as originating from the breaks in continuity [emphasis added], the distractions in a person's early development: gaps caused by the intrusions and deprivations and natural catastrophes of childhood, most of which he saw as resulting from failures of parental provision. There were things the child had experienced but could not make satisfying sense of, and so find a place for in himself. For the infant who waits too long for his mother, for example, Bthe only real thing is the gap; that is to say, the death or the absence, or the amnesia^ (Winnicott 1971b, p. 26). (Phillips 1989, p. 612) Achieving a fuller appreciation of not going-on-being and its unceasing impact on the BI^ requires examining a series of ideas that are discussed in different texts. I have arranged these ideas in terms of claims Winnicott makes: (1) Trauma is universal. (2) A person’s current experiencing expresses her or his past. Winnicott elaborates on this commonplace idea in a novel way. Fear of something (that could occur in the future) may be fear of re-experiencing something (that occurred in the past). By examining certain kinds of fears, one has a window into the past. (3) Not all patients (people) experience a fear of breakdown; breakdown is not universal. (4) The question of universal breakdown is akin to the question of universal Bmadness.^ (5) The capacity to understand, reasonably well, (the fear of) breakdown is more or less universal. Fears that are universal share a common denominator with fear of breakdown. (6) (Fear of) breakdown is related to (fear of) death. The experience of Bphenomenal death^ may or may not be universal. Winnicott thus links trauma, breakdown, madness, and phenomenal death, exploring what is universal and what is universally intelligible. BI^ experiences threats to and disruption of going-on-being when suffering trauma. In order to understand what this means, we must examine, briefly but in some detail, comments on the

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Adam Phillips (1989) writes: Winnicott characteristically joins up the extreme, fear of breakdown, with the ‘more common’ fear of death. In his autobiographical account he wanted to be present at his own death. He feared the death he might not experience, the death that might happen without his being alive to it. But the patient who compulsively looks for death is reaching in this way to a memory of a previous death. The death he describes in ‘Fear of Breakdown’ as having already happened is the psychic death of the infant, what he calls the ‘primitive agony,’ of an excessive early deprivation that the infant can neither comprehend nor escape from. (pp. 20–21)

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topic. Winnicott (1965/1989b) offers relevant observations in an essay entitled BThe Concept of Trauma in Relation to the Development of the Individual within the Family^: A study of trauma therefore involves the investigator in a study of the natural history of the environment relative to a developing individual. The environment is adaptive and then de-adaptive; the change from adaptation to de-adaptation is related intimately to each individual’s maturation and so the gradual development in the individual of the complex mental mechanisms that makes possible, eventually, a move from dependence towards independence. Thus there is a normal aspect of trauma. The mother is always Btraumatizing^ within a framework of adaptation [emphasis added]. In this way the infant passes from absolute to relative dependence. But the result is not as of trauma, because of the mother’s ability to sense the baby’s capacity, moment by moment, to employ new mental mechanisms. . . . Trauma in the more popular sense of the term implies a breaking of faith. The infant or child has built up a capacity to Bbelieve in,^ and environmental provision first fits into this and then fails. (p. 146) Every BI^ has experienced trauma. One could say, in different words, that every BI^ has experienced (at least) threats to its going-on-being. Every BI^ knows Bin his or her bones^ what continuity feels like but also how precarious that continuity is. Winnicott explores the experience of disruptions to continuity when he writes of breakdown (or disintegration). More particularly, he (1974/1989d) elaborates ideas about fear and breakdown in his essay BFear of Breakdown.^ Fear of breakdown is a feature of significance in some of our patients, but not in others. From this observation, if it be a correct one, the conclusion can be drawn that fear of breakdown is related to the individual’s past experience, and to environmental vagaries. At the same time there must be expected a common denominator of the same fear, indicating the existence of universal phenomena; these indeed make it possible for everyone to know empathetically what it feels like when one of our patients shows this fear in a big way [emphasis added]. (pp. 87–88) Not everyone fears breakdown. However, since it is possible Bfor everyone to know what it feels like,^ everyone must know, experientially, some Bcommon denominator of the same fear.^ Winnicott continues: I can now state my main contention, and it turns out to be very simple. I contend that clinical fear of breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced. It is a fear of the original agony which caused the defence organization which the patient displays as an illness syndrome. (p. 90) We fear a re-experience of something we have previously experienced. He continues: The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the possibility that the breakdown has already happened, near the beginning of the individual’s life. The patient needs to Bremember^ this but it is not possible to remember something that has not happened yet because the patient was not there for it to happen to. The only way to Bremember^ in this case is for the patient to experience this past thing for the first time in the present, that is to say, in the transference. This past and future thing becomes a matter of the here and now, and becomes experienced by the patient for the first time. (p. 92)

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Winnicott’s statements seem contradictory—one fears something that has already happened happening again, meaning that one has already experienced breakdown; yet Bin the transference^ one experiences it for the first time. We are left to unpack this seeming contradiction. In early experience one has not yet formed an ego, or BI,^ or me as other than not-me. In Winnicott’s theorizing, there is no one (no ego) there to whom breakdown has occurred. But the breakdown that has occurred has left its mark, in memory, on the primitive infant-environment mother matrix (or dyad), and when the ego does subsequently form, the memory of that breakdown is embedded in the ego as an experience one intends to avoid. So when the patient experiences fear, it is a fear of reexperiencing breakdown. But to understand and work through that fear, to remember so as to leave it in the past and not regard it as something for which, in the present, one prepares, the patient must experience something it did experience before an ego formed. However, since an ego did not exist in the first experience, one could also say that the patient was experiencing something for the first time. Thus, the experience was, paradoxically, that of experiencing again and experiencing for the first time. The question of (universal) breakdown is akin to the question of (universal) madness. In BThe Psychology of Madness: A Contribution from Psycho-Analysis,^ Winnicott (1965/1989a) asks, BIs every infant mad?^ This is a question which cannot be answered in a few words, but the first reply must certainly be in the negative. The theory does not involve the idea of a madness phase in infantile development. Nevertheless the door must be left open for the formulation of a theory in which some experience of madness, whatever that may mean, is universal [emphasis added], and this means that it is impossible to think of a child who was so well cared for in earliest infancy that there was no occasion for overstrain of the personality as it is integrated at a given moment. It must be conceded, however, that there are very roughly speaking two kinds of human being, those who do not carry around with them a significant experience of mental breakdown in earliest infancy and those who do carry around with them such an experience and who must therefore flee from it, flirt with it, fear it, and to some extent be always preoccupied with the threat of it. (p. 122) It would seem, then, that the experience of trauma in the way it has been characterized here is universal, but the experience of breakdown, of severe trauma (as overstrain and disintegration), is not. Winnicott (1974/1989d) discusses the more particular fear of death. Little alteration is needed to transfer the general thesis of fear of breakdown to a specific fear of death. . . . When fear of death is a significant symptom the promise of an after-life fails to give relief, and the reason is that the patient has a compulsion to look for death. Again, it is the death that happened but was not experienced that is sought. (pp. 92–93) Breakdown is, in other words, akin to death, a kind of psychic death. He continues: Most of my ideas are inspired by patients, to whom I acknowledge debt. It is to one of these that I owe the phrase Bphenomenal death.^ What happened in the past was death as a phenomenon, but not as the sort of fact that we observe. . . . Death, looked at in this way as something that happened to the patient but which the patient was not mature enough to experience, has the meaning of annihilation. It is like this, that a pattern developed in which the continuity of being was interrupted by the patient’s infantile reactions to impingement [emphasis added],

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these being environmental factors that were allowed to impinge by failure of the facilitating environment. (p. 93). Everyone has experienced impingement. In some instances a fear of breakdown, and in some instances a fear of death, become prominent in the treatment, and in these instances Winnicott infers that these fears express experiences already known. It is not a leap in logic to assert that to be human is to be anxious about the precariousness of (one’s) life, and in that regard to be human is to encounter non-being and in that sense to fear death. It may be the case that this general or universal fear has to do with the general or universal experience of some measure of breakdown or some measure of trauma registered when impingement interrupted the continuity of being, or the going-on-being of the ego (or self). In this regard, one may infer from Winnicott’s writings that to be human is to have experienced impingement, to have registered interruptions in goingon-being, and that one’s fear is a fear of re-experiencing what we have already experienced. We have known an interruption in our going-on-being, a Bphenomenal death.^13

Construing BI^ that is going-on-being: BI^ in and as a matrix Most Westerners unselfconsciously assume that when one speaks of a self, one is referring to some discrete entity separate from others. This assumption expresses what is called Bthe integumentive theory^ (see Goldberg 1990, p. 116): the self is Bin^ the body, coterminous with or restricted within the boundaries of the body. We would, within this context, speak of a self having or being in relationships—but ultimately existing separate from others and independent of relationships. Though Winnicott retains this traditional (one might say Cartesian) way of thinking, preserving the distinction between self and other or subject and object, he introduces a second way of thinking to be held in tension with it, asserting the fundamental interconnectedness of self and other. In an article entitled BAnxiety Associated with Insecurity^ (1952/1975a), he writes, Let us start with the two-body relationship (Rickman 1957), and from this go earlier to the object relationship that is still of the nature of a two-body relationship . . . We sometimes loosely assume that before the two-body relationship there is a one-body relationship, but this is wrong, and obviously wrong if we look closely. The capacity for a one-body relationship follows that of a two-body relationship . . . For my own part I have had a long struggle with this problem. It started when I found myself saying . . . BThere is no such thing as a baby.^ . . . if you show me a baby you certainly show me also someone caring for the baby, or at least a pram with someone’s eyes and ears glued to it. One sees a Bnursing couple.^14 (p. 99) He continues, In a quieter way today I would say that before object relationships the state of affairs is this: that the unit is not the individual, the unit is the environment-individual set-up Caldwell and Joyce (2011) offer this assessment: BWinnicott subscribes to the view that some aspects of madness are known to us all [emphasis added], but it is the one that may arise in an ongoing treatment that is the focus of this paper. A fear of breakdown in analysis is the fear felt by some patients, not by all. Winnicott states simply that this fear of clinical breakdown is the fear of a breakdown that has already been experienced, a fear of an original agony which produced the defence organization the patient displays as an illness syndrome^ (p. 197). 14 Similarly, Winnicott states, BI once risked the remark, ‘There is no such thing as a baby’—meaning that if you set out to describe the baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone. A baby cannot exist alone, but is essentially part of a relationship^ (Winnicott 1964, p. 88, as cited in Hughes 1989, p. 133). 13

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[emphasis added]. The centre of gravity of the being does not start off in the individual. It is in the total set-up. (p. 99) Having approached the self of the infant/child as apart from and, paradoxically, a part of the mother, it is but a small interpretive step to consider the self of the mother as integral to (analysis of) the self of the child. Winnicott (1960/1965h) opens an essay entitled BThe Relationship of a Mother to Her Baby at the Beginning^ with precisely this dual focus: In an examination of the relationship that exists between a mother and an infant it is necessary to separate out that which belongs to the mother and that which is starting to develop in the infant. Two distinct kinds of identification are involved, the mother’s identification with her infant, and the infant’s state of identification with the mother. The mother brings to the situation a developed capacity, whereas the infant is in this state because this is the way things begin. (p. 15)

The self in and as a matrix unfolds in various forms As has been noted, Winnicott developed a variety of concepts through which to characterize transition, development, and maturation of self as separate from yet connected to other(s). He neglected, however, to present a systematic synthesis indicating whether and how all the conceptual pieces fit within a common puzzle. At times he provided maps that indicated the broad directions of his thinking. Thus, for example, he discussed the movement from Babsolute dependence^ through Brelative dependence^ toward Bindependence^ (1963/1965f, pp. 83–92). (Interestingly, this kind of language is suggestive of a one-person psychology, as if Bindependence^ meant not everywhere and always being in relationship(s).) Winnicott formulated a series of ideas independently of one another, but cumulatively they contribute to forming a picture of development: the self with environmental provision, from the object subjectively conceived to the object objectively perceived, from object-relating to object use. Each of these concepts could be read as expressing the commitments of a one-person psychology, what has been called a subject/object model. The theoretical contributions emerging in discussions of an Bintermediate^ or Bthird area^ and Bpotential space^—where self finds and creates a Btransitional object^— presupposes a quite different model: there is no subject/object, me/not-me, or inside/ outside but rather what is Bin between.^ Winnicott’s theorizing accounts for some of the range of changes that occur during maturation and development, changes that are physical, cognitive, intellectual, and psychological, changes that take place in BI^ as well as in the ways in which the world, objects, and other persons can be experienced and construed, and thus in the nature and forms of relating between an evolving BI^ with an evolving Bother.^ Though one could use a term or concept to refer to and represent this evolving BI,^ Winnicott is transparent about the limitations of the meanings and uses of Bself.^ In BOn the Basis for Self in Body^ (1971/1989e) he states, There is much uncertainty even in my own mind about my own meaning. I found I had written the following: For me the self, which is not the ego, is the person who is me, who is only me, who has a totality based on the operation of the

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maturational process. At the same time the self has parts, and in fact is constituted of these parts. These parts agglutinate from a direction interior-exterior in the course of the operation of the maturational process, aided as it must be (maximally at the beginning) by the human environment which holds and handles and in a live way facilitates. (1971/1989e, p. 271) Granting the limitations of any characterization of Bself^ that could meaningfully refer to a wide range of developmental referents, we are left to use the term and consider, briefly, some of those unfolding meanings.

The self-with-Benvironmental provision.^ In the first months of life, the infant is absolutely dependent upon the mother (the caretaker) to provide Bthe good enough provision,^ B‘the average expectable environment’^ (1963/1965g, p. 96). Both terms—environment and provision—accurately characterize the non-personal fitting and Bholding^ that must take place in order for the infant to experience going-on-being and mature naturally. Perhaps this is yet another paradox—in the phenomena to be considered and thus in the theorizing about those phenomena. BI^ is not present from birth as a consistent, coherent center of agency and thus there is not a Bperson^ or Bsubject^ that experiences and acts and with which environmentmother engages (it is non-personal in this sense). Yet, the Bparts^ that will Bagglutinate^ are not parts-in-general, elements that are common to every person but rather they are unique in themselves, and thus the BI^ that will form is by definition unique. In that regard, using the metaphor Bimpersonal^ mistakenly runs the risk of diminishing appreciation of the fact that this particular mother is, from the very beginning, relating in a most particular way to a most unique evolving BI^—in a most personal of ways with what will become a unique BI.^ The self with the Bobject subjectively conceived^ in transition to the self with the Bobject objectively perceived^ (Winnicott 1960/1965c, 1962/1965d, 1963/1965e) In its early development the infant is unaware of a distinction between Bme^ and Bnot-me.^ An object that is not-me is not experienced, then, as a separate object but rather as fitting within the world of (and constructed by) BI.^ Winnicott coins the concept of the Bobject subjectively conceived^ to capture that what is, in fact, an object (to an outside observer) is registered and engaged in a Bsubjective^ manner or mode. Through repeated experiences of Bimpingements^ as physiological, emotional, and cognitive capacities mature, the infant recognizes a boundary or border between me and not-me. This unfolding transition provides the occasion for the gradual development of the capacity to experience the object as an object, that is, as increasingly not an object Bfor me^ in my own terms and categories but rather as an object Bin itself,^ expressing its own unique nature (independent of Bme^). The self engaged in Bobject relating^ in transition to the self engaged in Bobject use^ (Winnicott 1968/1989f) Winnicott wrote: Object-relating is an experience of the subject that can be described in terms of the subject as an isolate. When I speak of the use of an object, however, I take objectrelating for granted, and add new features that involve the nature and the behaviour of the object. For instance, the object, if it is to be used, must necessarily be real in the sense of being part of shared reality, not a bundle of projections. It is this, I think, that makes for the world of difference that there is between relating and usage (1968/1989f,

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pp. 220–221). . . . relating can be described in terms of the individual subject, and that usage cannot be described except in terms of acceptance of the object’s independent existence, its property of having been there all the time. (1968/1989f, p. 221) Winnicott thus explained that in order for an object to be Bused,^ BI^ must have undergone a developmental movement that makes a Bworld of difference^—or, one could just as well say, from one Bworld^ to another—in which that object Bmust necessarily be real in the sense of being part of shared reality.^ BI^ must register, then, a Bshared reality,^ a reality occupied by other objects to be used and by other BI’s^ who use them, and this reality or Bworld^ is fundamentally different from the world of the infant BI’s^ psychic reality into which everything fit and had its existence on BI’s^ own terms.

T h e s e l f w i t h t h e Bt r a n s i t i o n a l o b j e c t ^ i n Bi n t e r m e d i a t e s p a c e . ^ (1953/1971b) Winnicott identified the transition—or rather, the series of transitions— from infantile omnipotence with an environment-mother, subjectively conceived, to awareness of me as distinct from not-me, as crucial. Several observations served as evidence of this shift. The fact that certain infants cherished particular objects signaled an important dynamic at work; prized possessions enabled the infants to negotiate change (i.e., transitions). These objects Bof and for transition^ (transitional objects) bore some family resemblance to other phenomena, so-called transitional phenomena. Both objects and phenomena had power and significance because they had to do with transition— more importantly, with a particular transition. This Bprimary transition,^ if you will, took place in a space or area, an area between inside and outside, between me and not-me, between fantasy (the object inside) and reality (the object outside). Better said, this transition took place in the conjunction of me and not-me. (The way one negotiates this primary transition forms the foundation for how one will continue to negotiate transitions, for how one deals with the potential space between inside and outside, me and notme, fantasy and reality—for how one negotiates and reconstructs the coordination of me with not-me.)

True self/false self With the introduction of the terms true self and false self, Winnicott equips us to understand that going-on-being and not going-on-being can be related in a quite different way—as if in matters of degree. Simply put, at every moment in time we live through some Bcombination^ of true self and false self. We live, in other words, in some measure of being alive (going-on-being) and not being alive (not going-onbeing). In an essay entitled BThe Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship^ (1960/1965a), Winnicott writes about Ba central or true self. The central self could be said to be the inherited potential which is experiencing a continuity of being, and acquiring in its own way and at its own speed a personal psychic reality and a personal body-scheme^ (p. 46). He continues: It seems to be usual that mothers who are not distorted by ill-health or by presentday environmental stress do tend on the whole to know accurately enough what

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their infants need, and further, they like to provide what is needed. This is the essence of maternal care. With ‘the care that it receives from its mother’ each infant is able to have a personal existence, and so begins to build up what might be called a continuity of being. On the basis of this continuity of being the inherited potential gradually develops into an individual infant. If maternal care is not good enough then the infant does not really come into existence, since there is no continuity of being; instead the personality becomes built on the basis of reactions to environmental impingement. (p. 54) By characterizing the central self as the so-called Btrue self,^ Winnicott (1959–64/1965b implies a counterpart—a self or a feature of self or a way of being self that is peripheral and Bfalse,^ In BClassification: Is There a Psycho-analytic Contribution to Psychiatric Classification?^ he writes: The concept of the false self (as I call it) is not a difficult one. The false self is built up on a basis of compliance. It can have a defensive function, which is the protection of the true self. A principle governing human life could be formulated in the following words: only the true self can feel real, but the true self must never be affected by external reality, must never comply. When the false self becomes exploited and treated as real there is a growing sense in the individual of futility and despair. (p. 133) Winnicott (1960/1965c), in BEgo Distortion in Terms of True and False Self^, contrasted the true and the false self. He observed, At the earliest stage the True Self is the theoretical position from which come the spontaneous gesture and the personal idea. The spontaneous gesture is the True Self in action. Only the True Self can be creative and only the True Self can feel real. Whereas a True Self feels real, the existence of a False Self results in a feeling unreal or a sense of futility. (p. 148) He (1955–1956/1975b) elaborated, in BClinical Varieties of Tranference^: In the cases on which my work is based there has been what I call a true self hidden, protected by a false self. This false self is no doubt an aspect of the true self. It hides and protects it, and it reacts to the adaptation failures and develops a pattern corresponding to the pattern of environmental failure. In this way the true self is not involved in the reacting, and so preserves a continuity of being. However, this hidden true self suffers an impoverishment that derives from lack of experience. (pp. 296–297) In this way, the recognition of a central or Btrue^ self involves the sense of Brealness^—a kind of authenticity. Winnicott writes in a letter to Victor Smirnoff, BYou can perhaps get my meaning if you think of a Van Gogh experiencing, that is to say, feeling real, when painting one of his pictures, but feeling unreal in his relationships with external reality and in his private withdrawn inner life [quoted in Rodman 1987, p. 124]^ (Goldman 1993, p. xv). Through this distinction between true and false, or one might say real and unreal, or even, in colloquial terms authentic and ersatz, Winnicott is explaining some of the ways in which the self that goes on being cannot but bear the impact and imprint of not goingon-being. When we register not going-on-being, we naturally and inevitably carry out a

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concerted, sustained effort to survive and adapt, doing everything possible to inhibit the likelihood of experiencing, again, not going-on-being. We redesign ourselves, if you will, in a manner that serves our protection, or our self-protection. We naturally hide trauma from ourselves and from others (we keep it from consciousness, we forget it—we Brepress^ it). We live as if we have not suffered such trauma. We become edited versions of ourselves. Winnicott does not elaborate on his use of the terms Btrue^ and Bfalse,^ though he observes that true self Bappears in various guises in descriptive psychiatry and notably in certain religious and philosophical systems^ (1960/1965c, p. 140). It is worth considering, however, some of the various meanings of Btrue.^ According to the Oxford English Dictionary, these include: BIn more general sense: Honest, honourable, upright, virtuous, trustworthy (arch.); free from deceit, sincere, truthful^; BAgreeing with a standard, pattern, or rule; exact, accurate, precise; correct, right^; BReal, genuine; rightly answering to the description; properly so called; not counterfeit, spurious, or imaginary; also, conforming or approaching to the ideal character of such.^ In these regards, Btrue^—in a manner related to but distinct from Breal^—highlights agreeing with or matching a standard of what is accurate or right—and in that sense, to be true self is to adhere to who one (truly) is. Furthermore, Btrue^ brings to the fore the notions of honesty and truthfulness, as contrasted with what is deceitful and counterfeit. These ideas reflect some basic judgments we make about ourselves and one another; a person may be more or less Btrue^ or accurate to who she or he is and in that sense not feigned or put-on. The concepts of the true self and false self are, however, problematic in at least two distinct senses. First, in much the same way that we tend to speak about Bself^ as Bthe self,^ implying an entity like the ghost in the machine, true self and false self also have tended to imply distinct subjectivities or agencies (senses of agency) that operate in the mind. That is, the metaphors have been used, too often, with a rather literal feel to them, as if Bwithin^ a person lie two distinguishable centers of initiative and perception—^the true self^ (the real self) and Bthe false self^ (the fake self)—and as if our joint tasks were to build the former while at the same time to dismantle the latter. The second problem arises from the first: This tendency toward reification invites our thinking about trueness and false-ness in either/or terms, as if a person were (at times) one or the other. However, these are surely metaphors, and, as such, they point to qualities or dimensions of subjectivity and not to entities that compete for authorship of experience. Again, true self and false self will show themselves in matters of degree. In BClassification: Is There a Psycho-analytic Contribution to Psychiatric Classification?^ Winnicott (1965b) writes: A principle governing human life could be formulated in the following words: only the true self can feel real, but the true self must never be affected by external reality, must never comply. When the false self becomes exploited and treated as real there is a growing sense in the individual of futility and despair. Naturally in individual life there are all degrees of this state of affairs [emphasis added] so that commonly the true self is protected but has some life and the false self is the social attitude. (p. 133) From these remarks we may conclude that Winnicott’s reflections on true and false self illumine how we live on a continuum of true and false, of being real and not being

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real, of being and not being.15 We know the most profound experiences at the opposite ends of the spectrum—the spontaneous creativity of the true self on one end and the experience of not going-on-being on the other. In addition, however, we move through versions or degrees of being alive/being dead. Indeed, this is precisely what the notions of true self and false self express. When we live comparatively more in and from true self, we are alive; when we live comparatively more in and from false self, we are less alive (more dead, if you will). By using the concepts of true self and false self, Winnicott is developing a way of talking about person that is not singular or simple. We are constituted of versions, of ways of being in the world. We are at every moment in time negotiating being real and thus always in part true and in part not, or in part here and in part not.

A reading of going-on-being (living), not going-on-being (dying), true self, false self, and connecting-disconnecting-reconnecting having to do with being religious Having rehearsed a network of concepts, mostly in Winnicott’s own words, this section outlines a reading of these ideas as having to do with being religious. Being religious can be seen as involving experiencing the world and one’s path or way within the world (and thus one’s identity and affiliation within that path or way) as defined, directly and explicitly, in relation to what one holds dear, such that what one holds dear (and one’s identity and affiliation) arise from an unseen order. For the purpose of this study (see James 1902/1982, p. 28), being religious has to do with forging a sense of oneself-in-the-

Winnicott (1960/1965c), in an essay entitled BEgo Distortion in Terms of True and False Self,^ suggests this notion of a continuum when he writes: Immediately it becomes possible to classify False Self organizations:

15

(1) (2) (3)

(4) (5)

At one extreme: the False Self sets up as real and it is this that observers tend to think is the real person. . . . At this extreme the True Self is hidden. Less extreme: the False Self defends the True Self; the True Self is, however, acknowledged as a potential and is allowed a secret life . . . More towards health: The False Self has as its main concern a search for conditions which will make it possible for the True Self to come into its own. If conditions cannot be found then there must be reorganized a new defence against exploitation of the True Self, and if there be doubt then the clinical result is suicide. Suicide in this context is the destruction of the total self in avoidance of annihilation of the True Self. . . . Still further towards health: the False Self is built on identifications . . . In health: the False Self is represented by the whole organization of the polite and mannered social attitude, a ‘not wearing the heart on the sleeve’, as might be said. (pp. 142–143)

The concept of ‘A False Self’ needs to be balanced by a formulation of that which could properly be called the True Self. At the earliest stage the True Self is the theoretical position from which come the spontaneous gesture and the personal idea. The spontaneous gesture is the True Self in action. Only the True Self can be creative and only the True Self can feel real. Whereas a True Self feels real, the existence of a False Self results in a feeling unreal or a sense of futility. (p. 148) Winnicott uses the heading Degrees of False Self in italics (p. 150).

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world and what one believes in—what determines one’s being and not being—in conjunction with or in response to an unseen order, a something more. To be human is inevitably to be religious (in the sense defined). BI^ learns to be religious (in this sense) from the very outset of life. BI^ forms judgments about all that is, seen and unseen, that is most basically expressed in the nature and shape of one’s particular being (that is, personality or character), habits of mind and action (that is, practices), and only later in words and ideas (that is, beliefs). We should not, in other words, assume that human beings somehow become religious when they hear and use certain kinds of discourse or practice certain kinds of actions (Brituals^). Indeed, BI^ is negotiating life and death and making judgments about what determines BI’s^ life and death from BI’s^ first moments (in utero), developing an increasingly elaborate network of practices and, with the acquisition of language and even later with exposure to religious communities and traditions, acquiring a community’s ways of wording and reflecting upon some of these judgments. Thus, for example, consider some of the ways in which Bjudgments about what determines ‘I’s’ being and non-being^ could show themselves. The less than good enough environment-mother’s failure to protect the infant from impingements regrettably allow BI^ to be overwhelmed; BI^ must learn to anticipate some of the range of factors that could signal the possibility of future impingements. The world is not safe; the integrity of BI^ is at risk; the future is an accident waiting to happen. (None of this is cognitive, much less conscious, but it is Bknown in one’s bones.^) The mother as an object subjectively conceived fails, in her preoccupation with the infant, to sustain BI’s^ developmentally appropriate sense of omnipotence, and BI’s^ exposure to trauma contributes further to its sense of danger and the of the precariousness of the world and of itself. The mother as an object objectively perceived fails, in her unfolding relationship with the infant becoming child, to be sufficiently constant and consistent, perhaps in response to BI’s^ aggression, and absents herself or retaliates. BI^ learns not only about the safety of the world and the integrity of itself but also about other persons (in a most general sense) and about relationships (again, in a most general sense). BI^ must acquire knowledge about how to act with other so as to cultivate a sustaining connection within which to be real and, perhaps more importantly, to inhibit if not foreclose poor connections as well as disconnections that precipitate suffering or, worse, not going-on-being. It is important to note that all of these embodied judgments are formed by a protoverbal and minimally verbal BI,^ are not initially conscious and may never achieve consciousness, and thus cannot be subject to critical reflection and reconstruction. These judgments express what is given, what is there, what is real (and thus are not known to bear the imprint of BI^ much less the imprint of a particular (m)other and BI’s^ relationship with her). As such, they are formed prior to any formal training in the beliefs and practices of a religious community and tradition. As a consequence, the later beliefs and practices are secondary, or derivative, and competition and conflict between what BI^ already knows to be the case and what BI^ may be taught would likely be resolved in favor of the primacy of the earliest truths. Consider, further, that judgments about Bwhat determines BI’s^ being and nonbeing^ will have to do primarily with (a) with whom to be and (b) how to be with others. Ultimate concern, then, can be best understood functionally as anything that BI^ envisions would inhibit if not foreclose the re-experience of breakdown and

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trauma and, more positively, would enhance the possibilities of becoming increasingly alive and real.16 BI^ moves through various forms of being and relating, each involving the good enough Bmother’s^ capacity to fit BI’s^ evolving capacities and needs. BFitting^ is a kind of complex matching. This matching must, in a most general sense, correspond to what the maturing, developing BI^ currently needs. But even more particularly, good enough matching must be in the vicinity of what is needed, so that much of what is needed is provided and the relationship between BI^ and environment-mother is sustained, but it must not be too good or perfectly matching, precisely because that provision will inhibit the evolving BI^ from developing her or his own increasingly complex array of mental and physical actions to secure different evolving needs even more precisely.17 Good enough engagement, then, is a complex and delicate process of fitting neither too poorly nor too precisely. It is a process of connecting and sustaining connection in a manner that takes into account the evolving needs of a unique, developing BI.^ Good enough fitting, or good enough connecting, then, ought not to be approached in binary terms—BI^ is either connected or disconnected from environment-mother (or, later, from other). Rather, good enough connecting is notably more nuanced and dimensioned, as it is a dynamic momentto-moment unfolding between two BI’s^ that bears the imprint of their respective natures and histories. That unfolding is an unceasing recalibration process, moving in a gray area of fitting well enough or of being sufficiently (but not perfectly) connected. BI^ knows life and death, first and foremost, experientially and existentially, only later acquiring concepts (and theories). Much of the design of who BI^ is, with whom and how BI^ relates, and what BI^ is open to seeking and registering expresses the intention of, on the one hand, creating the conditions in which to be, to be real, to play, to create and, on the other hand, of inhibiting if not foreclosing occasions that could precipitate not going-on-being. As Winnicott (1965/1989c) has written in an essay entitled BThe Concept of Clinical Regression Compared with That of Defence Organisation,^ BWhat is common to all cases is this, that the baby, child, adolescent or adult must never again experience the unthinkable anxiety that is at the root of schizoid illness^ (p. 198, emphasis in original). In BThe Relationship of a Mother to Her Baby at the Beginning,^ Winnicott (1960/1965h) elaborates on some of the forms of past trauma to be inhibited if not foreclosed: Faulty holding produces extreme distress in the infant, giving a basis for: the sense of going to pieces, the sense of falling forever, the feeling that external reality cannot be used for reassurance, and other anxieties that are usually described as ‘psychotic’. (p. 18) This Benvisioning^ or Banticipating^ follows patterns or habits of mind. It is usually carried out rapidly and more or less unconsciously. For example, BI^ could subjectively conceive of something in the Bsurround^ that is inhibiting not going-on-being and/or facilitating going-on-being of true self. That could later take the form of whatever diminished danger and harm and enhanced safety and well-being, for example, a divine being, a good enough other (on the model of the good enough mother), a network of relationships, or a community having shared mutual investments, but it could also take the form of something that could provide security, such as power or wealth. 17 Heinz Kohut’s (1984) account of this process, drawn from Freud, is helpful to take into consideration. BI^ must, in order to mature and develop, experience Bfrustration.^ BI’s^ needs must be met neither with Btraumatic frustration^ on one extreme nor with Bno frustration^ on the other. BOptimal frustration^ is what facilitates development. Good enough mothers disillusion by way of Boptimal frustration.^ 16

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Our experiential-existential knowledge of life and death is registered in moments but also in enduring expressions of true self and false self.18 BI^ does not only have memories; the nature and character of BI^ is constituted of memories. From the outset of life, BI^ encounters events that may jeopardize going-on-being. Memories of those events contribute to the formation of habits of mind and action designed to inhibit if not foreclose future encounters that would similarly jeopardize going-on-being. In this regard, not going-on-being has been registered—acutely, in events; indirectly, in events that put BI^ at risk; in memories of discrete events that alert BI^ to danger; in the habits of mind and action and, more generally, Bcharacter^ that in more enduring and global ways embody the encounter with not going-on-being. BI^ thus naturally and inevitably registers not going-onbeing, or the experiential-existential awareness of death (and life), in many ways. BI^ encounters death, or at least the possibility of death, unceasingly and ubiquitously. These encounters at times generate conscious reflection and the forming and addressing of questions about one’s mortality. More often, however, these ideas, questions, and answers are not articulated consciously but are formed preconsciously and responded to in action. By doing so, BI^ can be mindful of death but at the same time hide from awareness this mindfulness of death and its being ever-present. To say that one is persistently forming and addressing questions of life and death is to say, in different words, that one is regularly in the territory of experiencing and reflecting religiously. Who am I such that I will at some point die? To whom do I belong, such that this belonging may help manage my awareness of my mortality? What do I hold dear, and what ought I to hold dear, such that the answer to these questions takes into account my mortality? In what sense may BI^ be aware of an unseen order in which these questions arise and are addressed, whether in thought or action? Among the ways in which habits of mind and action are shaped in response to encountering events that may jeopardize going-on-being is the formation of true self and false self. BI^ designs patterns of relating that ensure the sustaining of relating, but at times doing so by complying. Paradoxically, then, the relating that is sustained is with false self, but to Bbe^ false self is not to be true self—is not to be. So the effort to be entails not being. The effort to go on being (as real) entails becoming false (and, thus, not going-on-being). In this regard, questions about true and false self are, at the same time, questions about life and death. Questions about true and false self are also questions about what is real and unreal. Simply because something or someone exists physically does not mean that it or (s)he is real. By implication, simply because something or someone does not physically exist does not mean that it or (s)he is not real. It is in this regard that matters of what is seen and unseen, and the reality of seen and unseen, naturally emerge. Life is a project of negotiating transition such that each person must connect with others sufficiently well. When BI^ lives, on balance, from true self, in good enough connection with other (in whatever developmental form), BI^ is going-on-being; BI^ is real, there, alive. When BI^ lives, on balance, from false self, sustaining connection with other for purposes of forestalling disconnection, BI^ is marginally going-on-being; BI^ is comparatively less real, there, alive. When BI^ experiences disruptions in connection—that is, disruptions in going-onbeing—BI^ is in those traumatic moments not there, not alive.

18 Winnicott (1971a), in BCreativity and Its Origins,^ writes, BOur theory includes a belief that living creatively is a healthy state, and that compliance is a sick basis for life^ (p. 65).

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Negotiating transition is thus a project of connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting, in itself a matter of ultimate concern, a matter literally of life and death. BI’s^ relative success and failure in being alive depends upon BI’s^ capacity to have formed and to reform interrelated judgments about her or himself, others, and the real and also about how to think and act in this world. As such, what Winnicott has written presents the contours of a theory of being religious.

Implications Perhaps the most basic implications of this study have to do with how we have been socialized to think about academic fields of inquiry and, following from that, how we are to approach research and scholarship within those fields (as well as professional and clinical practices emerging from them). We live at a time when fields have become not simply highly specialized and focused but also differentiated and fragmented from one another. It is less that I do not truly understand the research my colleagues are doing across campus in the myriad hard sciences; I do not truly understand what my colleagues Bdown the hall^ in Bmission studies,^ Bspirituality,^ Breligion, science, and philosophy,^ or Bsocial ethics^ (among many others) are doing. The conferences we attend, texts we read, languages we speak, methods we employ, and questions we address differ widely from one another’s. Within this context, we may be disposed to assume that we are, in effect, working in different domains of reality. Thus, a psychological study, by definition, is not philosophical or does not have to do with religion. This myth is not only erroneous but also misleading. In fact (as one appreciates by way of psychoanalytic theorizing), every statement is Boverdetermined^ and serves Bmultiple functions.^ Every document carries Ba surplus of meaning.^ Every argument presupposes ontological and epistemological assumptions and claims and has implications well beyond the borders of the field in which it is ostensibly situated, not to mention the subject matter it explicitly discusses. We may wish for simplicity, clarity, and some measure of control and proceed as if we could truly understand what someone in conversation or in writing Breally^ and Bfinally^ means, but that is expressing, as Freud would remind us, Bnothing but a wish.^ Conversations are ambiguous; texts are inordinately complex; a theorist’s corpus is replete with untold, unidentified meaning. This study unmasks traditional habits of mind and prompts alternatives. Assume the text before you is conveying many things and, further, assume that in your engagement you are, all along the way, carrying out many different kinds of reflection, formulating and addressing multiple questions. And, in a particular form of this shift in habits, assume, on the one hand, that psychological writings are doing many things—often expressing judgments having to do with religion and being religious—and, on the other hand, assume that in many instances, however unexpected, judgments having to do with religion and being religious are embedded in work in many fields of study, in many languages and methods. For the academic as well as the clinician, two observations emerge. The theories one employs, whether in the academy and/or the clinic, carry within them assumptions and claims that extend beyond the borders of one’s particular field. More particularly for those researching within or practicing Bpsychology,^ one’s Btheory^ or Borientation^ expresses tacit philosophical and religious judgments, despite the fact that the language of that theory or orientation is not customarily regarded as Breligious.^ Second and related, the topics and persons psychologists investigate and the individuals for whom we provide clinical care express judgments

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having to do with religion, often in languages and practices that we do not customarily consider Breligious.^ In both instances, we must develop a habit of mind and theories and practices of inquiry and care that prepare us to identify and reflect critically on dimensions having to do with religion that are more or less ubiquitous. Consider, for a moment, what this means. To say that each person is unavoidably religious is to acknowledge that we are unceasingly confronting questions of life and death, however consciously and directly, and thus perpetually making judgments about what determines our living and dying. Retrieving the notion that we live on a continuum of true self and false self, or alive and dead, those judgments express where we are on that continuum and how we may inhibit if not foreclose being less alive or, ultimately, dying. Consider how this shows itself in clinical care. Rather than assuming that religion and being religious are relevant only to some clinical processes and relationships, their presence determined by the patient’s use of Breligious language^ assumes that every patient is, in the sense proposed in this essay, religious. Embedded in every presenting problem or chief complaint are expressions of the patient’s way of being religious. Conversations about everything, and most especially about relationships—such that they express the dynamics of disconnecting and reconnecting—are seeking exploration and perhaps revision of how to understand life and death. In regard to Winnicott’s writings, we can observe, more particularly, how he is addressing some perennial questions, and so his commentary on how an infant may be relating to her or his mother is not simply and solely about how infants experience and make sense but also about how every human being is registering information, developing habits, and making grand judgments. Well before having words or the capacity to be self-aware, much less before having the ability to participate in complex conversations about Bcauses^ and Breasons,^ Bphenomena^ and Bnoumena,^ Bnature^ and Bnurture,^ Bmind^ and Bbrain,^ Bhuman^ and Bdivine,^ or Bsecular^ and Bsacred,^ among so many other things, BI^ is Breligious.^ There are, of course, even more particular implications arising from this study. One could say, for example, that to be human is to be an existentialist from birth, because we are always making choices as we confront matters of life and death. Or, to make a similar point, to be human is to be unavoidably religious, required to negotiate potential if not actual disconnections and forge reconnections, living on a continuum of our own unique ongoing experiencing of living and dying and having to decide, What determines my life and death? Yes, we can become acquainted with, however deeply, some of the range of ways human beings have formulated these issues in the languages and practices of Breligious^ communities and traditions. But we should not ignore, perhaps as we have become accustomed to do, that simply by virtue of being human we have, in fact, been operating according to answers to the Bbig questions^ whether or not we have consciously ever raised those questions. Those answers and questions are known by us in different ways, in our thoughts and ideas, in our behaviors and practices, and in our very being. Related to this, consider a series of questions. How do we take more seriously the needs each infant and child has for good enough mothering, as her or his experiencing and learning play an unusually profound role in that person’s judgments throughout her or his lifetime? How do we as family, friends, communities, scholars, religious leaders, or clinicians pay attention to some of the range of ways people can and do relate to one another so as to temper, as much as possible, unnecessary impingements and trauma, facilitate development (of relating to objects objectively perceived, of engaging in object usage, of being able to play in potential space) so as to be more rather than less alive? How may we be mindful of the myriad ways

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each of us has designed our very character, as well as our choices of persons, forms of relating, and activities in the world, for the purpose of inhibiting re-experiencing the trauma that has jeopardized our going-on-being? How can we develop habits of mind and action that alert us to recognizing and addressing our own and one another’s ongoing habits of being and being with, moving on a continuum of true self and false self, of being real and alive and less real and not truly alive? How, finally, can we recognize and act in mind of the fact that Bthere is no such thing as a person^—we are all a part of one another, deeply dependent on one another to be and become, to be alive while we are alive? In that regard, each of us plays an intimate and profound role in determining one another’s being and non-being. Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Nancy Devor, Courtney Goto, Leonard Hummel, Ron Nydam, Steve Sandage, George Stavros, and an anonymous reviewer for critical responses to earlier drafts of this article.

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