When the light shed by God is dimmer than the light shed upon God: countertransference illumination of latent religious object representations of a Jewish patient in psychoanalysis.
The journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry January 1, 2009 Moshe Halevi Spero
A psychoanalyst recounts the analysis of a religiously devout Jewish priest (ko'hen) who was emotionally constricted. For over three years, the patient produced many dreams but the sessions remained emotionally flat and repetitive, with a restricted transference. The patient's relationship with God initially seemed absent from the therapeutic dynamic, mirroring a void in his emotional representation of parental figures. This absence distanced the analyst from his own sense of divinity. A spontaneous enactment in the countertransference helped reframe the shared and divergent religious perceptions of both, leading to a significant transformation in the patient's religious experience.