ABSTRACT
Much ecclesiological writing suffers from a temptation towards idealism and, according to Nicholas Healy, this leads to a disjuncture between the theological modelling and the lived experience of the church. Projection is perhaps the best known of all unconscious interpersonal dynamics. It begins with a split in the psyche whereby aspects of the self are split off and then projected externally onto another. The impact of unconscious psychodynamics in groups was analysed and developed by a group of British psychoanalysts in the post-war period at the Tavistock Institute in London; notable among them were Bion, Bowlby and Winnicott. Among the theologians who seek to apply psychodynamic theory to the life of the church, there is a clear recognition that while all of Bion's basic assumptions are present, the most prevalent is that of dependency. A church that ignores its latent function can be considered to have lost its character.
