Contemplating spiritual experience: Winnicott's potential space,Tibetan bardo,and liminality

Abstract

In this paper, ways of contemplating and accommodating the unfamiliar, especially the “other” of spiritual experience, are considered. Some concepts from psychoanalysis, such as Winnicott's “potential space” and his notion of “holding,” are helpful in comprehending spiritual experiences that can easily be misunderstood, or “flattened out” to use Bion's phrase. Interesting and rather remarkable confluences in these concepts from psychoanalysis and from Tibetan Buddhism (bardo) and cultural anthropology (liminality) are considered in their functions of both enabling and comprehending these extraordinary and often life-enhancing experiences.