title: Prayer as therapeutic process toward transforming destructiveness within a spiritual direction relationship.
abstract: This article will expand previous conceptualizations (Kuchan, Presence Int J Spiritual Dir 12(4):22-34, 2006; J Religion Health 47(2):263-275, 2008; J Pastoral Care Counsel, forthcoming) of what might be occurring during a prayer practice that creates space within a spiritual direction relationship for the creation of inner images that reveal a person's unconscious relational longings and co-created representations of God that seem to facilitate therapeutic process toward aliveness. In previous articles, I suggest one way to understand the prayer experience is through a lens of Winnicottian notions of transitional space, illusion, and co-creation of God images. This article expands on these ideas to include an understanding of God as Objective Other (Lewis, The four loves, 1960) interacting with a part of a person's self (Jung, in: The structure and dynamics of the psyche, collected works 8, 1934; Symington, Narcissism, a new theory, 1993) that has capacity for subjectivity (Benjamin, Like subjects, love objects: Essays on recognition and sexual difference, 1995) and co-creation (Winnicott, Home is where we start from: Essays by a psychoanalyst, 1990), of inner representations of God (Ulanov, Winnicott, god and psychic reality, 2001). I also expand on a notion of God as "Source of aliveness" by integrating an aspect of how Symington (Narcissism, a new theory, 1993) thinks about "the lifegiver," which he understands to be a mental object. After offering this theoretical expansion of the prayer practice/experience, one woman's inner representations of self and God are reflected upon in terms of a therapeutic process toward transforming destructiveness, utilizing ideas from Winnicott, Kohut, and Benjamin.
authors.affiliation: Alive at Center, 444 South Marengo Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA. kkuchan@sbcglobal.net
authors.forename: Karen L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Kuchan
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D002835:Christianity; D006801:Humans; D009289:Narcissism; D011572:Psychoanalysis; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012067:Religion; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D029181:Spirituality