ABSTRACT
In 1913 Ernest Jones published an article entitled “The God Complex” in the course of which he suggested that an unconscious identification with God, when sublimated, was one of the factors which might lead people to a strong interest in psychology and psychiatry. This chapter examines the hypothesis that whether or not unconscious feelings of superiority have been part of the psychiatrist’s original make-up, certain factors peculiarly inherent to the practice of psychotherapy have a tendency to foster such feelings. The psychotherapist pursues an unusually isolated kind of practice. A feeling of grandiosity, like any other character trait that involves some distortion of reality, must be, in part at least, a result of an ego-defense against anxiety. The feeling of superiority expresses itself in a diametrically opposite way, namely, in terms of communicating too much about oneself to the patient.
