ABSTRACT
In Abram’s weighty reference book, The Language of Winnicott, there is no entry in the Index for “religion”, “God” or “spirituality”. Although D. W. Winnicott mentions “religion” and “God” more often than he does “spirituality”, in the definition of spirituality which this monograph is using, he thought that the main task of psychoanalysis was a spiritual one. Winnicott writes, “To a child who develops ‘belief in’ can be handed the god of the household or of the society that happens to be his”. Winnicott sees no need to complete the phrase “belief in”, but it seems to mean something like a combination of the capacity to trust and the capacity to imagine. For Winnicott, the intermediate area is the proper place for non-pathological illusion, “that which is allowed to the infant, and which in adult life is inherent in art and religion”.
