Being and potential: psychoanalytic clinicians' concepts of God

Psychoanalytic clinicians interested in spiritual matters were interviewed concerning their concepts of God. For most of the 25 participants in this research, in which two methods of qualitative analysis were employed, the notion of God was problematic but was not rejected per se. Participants reported personal concepts of a force or energy which is immanent, and for most, also transcendent, having evolutionary and moral scope, to do with awareness of the cosmos and levels of consciousness, and beyond the usual limitations of understanding. These non‐anthropomorphic, non‐image bound concepts were also shared by those who had a commitment to religious organizations. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.