Religion is often controversial and associated with contentious debate and social exclusion. How are we to understand and talk about its deep emotional significance for many of our patients? We propose a new model of constructive dialogue between faith and psychoanalysis that is deeply ethical and irreducibly relational. Unlike more classical deliberations concerning religion and psychoanalysis, in this presentation we outline a model of clinical engagement where constructive intersubjective dialogue between religious tradition and psychoanalytic process emerges without foreclosure.  We avoid subsuming one discipline to the other (e.g., a psychoanalysis of religion or religious psychoanalysis). Instead, we prefer a dialogic approach of mutual constructive engagement that avoids reducing one discipline to the categories and language of the other.

Earl D. Bland, Psy.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University in La Mirada California. He teaches applied courses in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, contemporary psychoanalytic theory, psychotherapy & religion and coordinates the psychoanalytic curriculum.  Earl has received training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis & the Greater Kansas City Institute and is a psychoanalytic candidate at the Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and a faculty member at the Brookhaven Institute for Psychoanalysis and Christian Theology.  Earl is the author/editor (with Brad Strawn) of Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation, published in 2014.  Earl writes and presents in the areas of psychoanalytic treatment, self psychology, and the integration psychology and Christianity.  He maintains a private practice where he treats individuals and couples.

Brad D. Strawn is the Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor for the Integration of Psychology and Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary Graduate School of Psychology in Pasadena, California. He holds a degree in theology and a PhD in clinical psychology as well as being an ordained clergy. Brad obtained advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute in San Diego, California and co-edited Christianity and Psychoanalysis: A New Conversation (with Earl Bland), authored The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology & the Church (with Warren Brown) and regularly publishes in the area of religion and psychoanalysis. Brad is a licensed psychologist and maintains a private practice in Pasadena.