ABSTRACT
In the extent to which contemporary psychoanalytic approaches have reacted against the dogmatisms of the past by disavowing speculative thinking, the danger now arising is that our most basic assumptions go unrecognized as such. Ferrer suggests that efforts to explain conflicting religious truth claims have tended to assume one of three forms: "dogmatic exclusivists" argue that only their own system of belief reflects the final truth; "hierarchical inclusivists" likewise take their own tradition to be final, yet concede that other systems of belief may grasp religious truth incompletely; while "ecumenical pluralists" approach religious divergences with the idea that all systems of belief ultimately point to the same basic metaphysical reality. All three approaches share the objectivist assumption of a singular plane of spiritual truth, and only vary in the extent to which they grant other traditions access. The limits of psychoanalysis as a pluralistic discourse are necessarily given by virtue of practice.
