“Love Supreme”: On Spiritual Experience and Change in Personality Structure

This article attempts to address the crucial question of how an experience of God might lead to changes in personality. Important concepts are drawn from psychoanalytic theory emphasising relational perspectives which have developed in recent decades. While somewhat under developed, there were relational aspects in Freud's thinking, both clinically in the transference and theoretically with oedipal dynamics and the formation of the superego. There is a brief mention of other psychoanalytic theorists and an outline of the work of Hans Loewald in regard to internalization of relationship patterns. There is an examination of some relevant results from infant observation and developmental research. And finally the article presents a view about how experiences of God are internalized in terms of relational patterns, adding structure to personality in a maturing and possibly healing way. This thesis is illustrated with a case drawn from the author's practice.