De l’hypothèse d’une analogie entre « direction spirituelle » et cure psychanalytique

• Main Author: Léo Botton
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Centre de Recherches Historiques 2015-11-01
• Series: L'Atelier du CRH
• Subjects: spiritual direction; Jesuit; psychoanalysis; self-practice
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/acrh/6705

This article was presented in a doctoral conference entitled « Sacrés liens ! » that was organised by the CEIFR and the CARE research laboratories and took place at the EHESS school on may 21st of 2013. The purpose of this conference was to question the notion of « bond », expected to have an heuristic value in religious studies. The fourth session of this conference, devoted to « asceticism and self-practices : individual and holy bonds », gave us the opportunity to question and examine the daring hypothesis of an analogy between the practice of the Spiritual exercices and the psychoanalytical therapy, hypothesis that was suggested but never really developed by Michel de Certeau.This article’s object is to show a special feature of the triangulation that takes place between the director, the Ignatian spirituality practioner and God in the the Spiritual exercices. These Exercices were developed by Ignatius Loyola in Spain during the 16th century, and are still taught today to both secular and religious publics. This article analyses three different excerpts from the Spiritual exercices, the primera annotacion, the prosupuesto and the principio y fundamento, in order to show the circulation of experience in the Jesuit spirituality, which could therefore present surprising analogies with the contemporary psychoanalytical practise.