Skip to Main Content
28
Views
3
CrossRef citations
Altmetric

Articles

When Spirit Comes to Mind

Furthering Transactional Analysis Understandings of Spirituality in Health and Psychopathology

Pages 149-163
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
Translator disclaimer

Moving from the pioneering work of transactional analyst Muriel James (1981) on the human spirit, the author returns to Eric Berne’s (1972) humanistic reflections on the problem of “man’s essence or Self” (p. 438) as a basis for critically reviewing the best-known transactional analysis contributions on religious and nonreligious spirituality. Case material is used to argue that there is a need to advance the transactional analysis understanding of spirituality and its complex interfaces with religiosity and religious psychopathology. This is important because such factors are often responsible for both the existential dilemmas and more practical challenges clinicians face when dealing relationally with patients’ religious and spiritual experiences.

Additional information

Author information

Zefiro Mellacqua

Author Biography
Zefiro Mellacqua, MD, is a consultant psychiatrist currently leading the first home treatment team for the Organizzazione Sociopsichiatrica Cantonale (OSC) in Ticino, Switzerland. He is also a psychotherapist and a Certified Transactional Analyst (psychotherapy) with the European Association for Transactional Analysis (EATA). He has spent several years in London working with the Lambeth Home Treatment Team for the South London and Maudsley (SLaM) National Health Service Foundation Trust in the London borough of Lambeth, United Kingdom (UK). He has worked with individuals and small groups mainly in the field of mental health and academic education. While maintaining his clinical practice, he joined INSEAD (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) in 2013 as a consultant for leadership development programs. He also holds an honorary research fellowship with the First Psychosis Studies Team at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London. Dr. Mellacqua may be reached at Organizzazione Sociopsichiatrica Cantonale, Clinica Psichiatrica Cantonale, via Agostino Maspoli n. 6, 6850 Mendrisio, Switzerland; email: . The material on which this article is based was presented as a workshop entitled ‘‘When Spirit Comes to Mind: Fundamentals for Advancing TA Theory and Research on Spirituality and Religious Psychopathology’’ on 10 July 2015 at the EATA Conference in Rome, Italy. The author is grateful to Transactional Analysis Journal Managing Editor Robin Fryer and especially Coeditor Bill Cornell for their thoughtful suggestions and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper. He also wishes to thank the anonymous TAJ reviewers for their valuable feedback and his friend Carlo Negro, whose stimulating questions filtered into this work in sometimes unpredictable ways. Above all, the author is grateful to his patients, from whom he has learned the most through the years and some of whom gave him permission to include in this article material from their work together.
 

People also read