Interpreting the transforming function of Eucharist using Winnicott's object relations theory and Neville's theory of religious symbols (Robert Neville, D. W. Winnicott).

摘要

The ritual of the Eucharist is a public expression of Christian worship. It is celebrated in different forms with different theological understandings and in different church contexts. Thus, there are varieties of experiencing the Eucharist. One dimension that has received minimal scholarly attention is the Eucharist's function in potentially transforming the psychological realities of ritual participants. This psychological function cuts across differences in form, theology, context, experience and interpretation, although the extent to which this might be true is not the subject of this dissertation.; This dissertation investigates a psychological function of participation in the Eucharist using object relations theory of Donald Winnicott. According to this theory, transitional objects (a teddy bear, for example) enable the child to separate gradually from and to relate inter-subjectively with his or her object of attachment (the mother, for example) who had previously been indistinguishable from the child's own reality. This dissertation argues that the Eucharist may function as a transitional object that helps ritual participants recognize the external and objective reality of the divine and thereby overcome some of the limitations of religious projection.; However, the psychological theory does not address the peculiar character of the religious symbols of the Eucharist, namely, that their symbolic meanings are less "descriptive" than "indexical." They refer in such a way as to cause participants to become better acquainted with God. Robert Neville's semiotic theory of "broken" religious symbols is used to demonstrate that the elementary symbols function as causal indices to reorient the person.; The dissertation eventuates in a discussion in which the insights into the psychological life of participants accounted for by object relations theory are brought into conversation with the insights into the symbolic structure of the Eucharist accounted for in the semiotic theory. This conversation reveals how the normative claims about the truth of Eucharistic symbols are expressed in personal transformation, at least in some instances.