ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the psychoanalytic encounter is made more comprehensible by the invocation of demonology (as well as angelology) and “exorcism” as metaphoric models to be employed within the context of a religious passion play. The concept of the (shamanistic) “exorcistic rite” in psychoanalysis depends on the employment of the one two-person model in which the analysand and analyst each feels the presence of the same emotional demons. In the course of psychoanalytic treatment the patient’s infantile (and traumatic) neurosis becomes transformed into a transference countertransference neurosis within the structure of the psychoanalytic field, during which, under the watchful ear of the analyst’s reverie, the original infantile neurosis becomes modified and even healed. The conjoined-twin model, which the relationship typologies represent, constitutes the “executive producer” and stage of the analytic passion play. The passion play of the crucifixion is the mythic template that embraces this “therapeutic” sacrificial rite.
