ABSTRACT
An interest in psychoanalytic thinking existed within the churches, as was shown in the life the Scottish Pastoral Association, founded in 1959. While Scottish religious thinking may have made its way into psychoanalysis via the ideas and writings of psychoanalysts from the 1920s onwards, psychoanalytic ideas took longer to filter into the Scottish ministry. Making psychotherapy more accessible to individuals who happened to include some members of the clergy did not foster psychodynamic thinking about the diverse range of issues lay and ordained ministers faced within their parishes. Some ministers would try to push the psychiatrist out of the role of colleague into that of lecturer. Incidents were recounted where ministers had felt excluded or humiliated in their hospital work. A minister described how Dr Wilfred Bion had, for some months, given many hours of ministering to particularly tragic person who, after being chronically ill all his life with a rare disease, had now been told he was terminally ill.
