Abstract
Spirituality is defined psychologically as a specific personal relatedness transcending the ordinary, profane level of experience and activity. From this perspective, early object relations are the most natural focus of interest if development of spirituality is the issue.
The authors start from the Freudian concept of religion derived from the relationship towards the oedipal father. They discuss attempts within psychoanalysis to supplement and revise Freud by going to an earlier stage of development when maternal sphere with more primitive object relations is dominant.
Ideas of Suttie, Erikson, Klein, Winnicott, Rizzuto, Kernberg and others are used to document an essentially positive outlook of the postmodern psychoanalysis upon the mature forms of religious experience, which may be regarded as equivalent to art or other activities realizing the most creative potential of man. Practical consequences of this new perspective upon religion are seen in the respect towards irrationality, in the cultivation of fantasy, in the openness toward own experience in education as well as psychotherapy.