Separation-Individuation

As discussed, separation-individuation is an early stage of infant development during which the infant first establishes a sense of identity. Mahler (1968, 1975) postulated that the universal human condition originates in a symbiotic state, followed by a separation-individuation process in normal development. Normal separation individuation is the first crucial prerequisite for the development and maintenance of a sense of identity.

Rebecca Jacoby (2003, 2005), a presenter at the first Global Conference on Hope: Probing the Boundaries, posits that hope is an aspect of the separation-individuation process. Hope she writes, emerges from the experience of "good enough mothering" through the process of separation. One of the most important tasks humans face during development is to attain individuation via the process

Hope and the Religious Imagination 11

of separation-individuation. Hope, writes Jacoby, represents the intermediate area between internal and external reality, thus aiding in the process of individuation. Jacoby relates that she has encountered physicians who have encouraged patients to omit the mourning process after mastectomies, in the belief they are encouraging hope. Yet, for Jacoby, hope arises not from denial of pain, but from confronting it. The work of hope involves painful visits to dark caves, or gratification-frustration sequences characteristic of separation-individuation. During highly stressful conditions, she has observed patients encourage and soothe themselves through the words of lullabies sung to them by their parents when they were young.

According to Jacoby, only the process of individuation enables an orientation towards the future: "If the symbiotic stage persists beyond its normal boundaries, one cannot attain apsychologically free future. Thus, when desertion, abandonment, or death of one object of the symbiotic bondage takes place, then the other 'dies'" (2003, p. 303). A normal process of individuation occurs when, in association with the experience of "good enough mothering," the parent allows the child to go through a process of separation without holding him/her through feelings of guilt and anger, thus enabling the child to internalize a positive experience and fostering a subsequent capacity to reach self-fulfillment. For Jacoby, while the beginning of hope is in the mother's embrace, its additional development depends on her ability to allow the child to go his/her own way, all the while carrying the maternal protective embrace through the travails of life.

The separation individuation process as described by Mahler is also referred to in terms of "transitional experience." Drawing upon the work of object relations theorist D.W. Winnicott, D. Capps (1995) suggests that hope arises out of our experience of life as transitional. The 23^rd Psalm, in his view, embodies this sense of hope: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and they staff, they comfort me." Hope involves both a cognitive component and an imaginative projection, envisioning the not-yet or the yet-to-be.

Imagination and illusion are also key elements in the development of a religious consciousness. P. Pruyser (1983) and D.W. Winnicott (1958, 1971) postulate the psychological origins of religion in transitional experience, or in illusion. According to Winnicott, the infant initially perceives himself or herself as merged with the mother. Separation takes place gradually, through a series of "illusions," in which the infant imaginatively re-creates the mother's presence. These illusions occur in a "transitional space" between mother and infant, eventually resulting in the formation of transitional objects. Transitional objects in turn represent the infant's attempt to separate "me" from "not me." They involve what Winnicott calls an "intermediate" area of experiencing, which he equates with the infant's being lost in the activity of play. Play and transitional objects are later important to cultural phenomena such as religion. A.-M. Rizzuto (1979) locates God quite explicitly in the "transitional space" between illusion and physical reality. God is a creation of the imagination, but that is precisely the source of God's power: "Without those fictive realities life becomes a dull animal existence" (p. 47).

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Similarly, Pruyser (1983) notes that two key terms in religion are "transcendence" and "mystery"; for children, he suggests, religion stands at the highest reaches of the imagination. Illusion formation, for Pruyser, is not a weakness of realistic thought as Freud had supposed, but rather a unique process deriving from the imagination: "religion transforms human experience into an imaginative, illusionistic conception that is sui generis" (p. 165).