1A Paper Session: Aging, illness and spirituality Chair: Oddgeir Synnes a. Family carers of advanced cancer patients – experiences with pastoral care Ingebrigt Røen, Hans Stifoss-Hanssen, Anne Kari Knudsen Background Family carers of advanced cancer patients need support. Palliative care services for patients and family carers were developed in Mid-Norway from 2012. The aim of the present study was to investigate family carers’ experiences with pastoral care. Method Qualitative, semi-structured, individual interviews with adult primary carers of advanced cancer patients were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using systematic text condensation. Results Fourteen family carers were interviewed, 7 women and 7 men; mean age 59; 11 still caring, 3 bereaved. The carers, believers and non-believers, expected chaplains/pastors, all Lutherans, to be competent concerning i.e. illness and death. They reported pastoral care concerning i.e. children, coping, marriage, death, and grief to have been positive for patients and carers. However, wish and need for pastoral care was not assessed systematically. Some were not offered pastoral care. Conclusion Carers of advanced cancer patients had positive expectations to, and experiences with pastoral care. But there was a lack of systematic assessment of carers’ wish and need for pastoral care. Further studies are encouraged to explore what may hamper and promote more systematic assessment of need and wish for pastoral care. The findings may contribute to further development of regional, national, and international palliative care services. Keywords: family carers, pastoral care, palliative care, cancer b. Religious faith and subjective well-being in institutionalized elderly people in Switzerland Zhargalma Dandarova-Robert, Karine Laubscher, Grégory Dessart, Pierre-Yves Brandt According to sociological surveys the number of religious people decreases continuously in Switzerland. The present exploratory study aims to investigate if and how elderly people use religion and spirituality to cope with changes and challenges in their life. The study sample consists of 30 participants residing (long-term, short-term and assisted living) in two Care Homes for elderly people. Data were collected using qualitative and quantitative methods. Semi- structured interviews were especially useful for enquiring into the both the role of religious and spiritual dimensions in later life, and the importance of related practices and beliefs over the life course. Measures of well-being (The Psychological General Well-Being Index (PGWBI), the Moral scale for residents in health institution and Spiritual well- being scale (FACIT-Sp12) suggest that relation between religious/spiritual dimensions and subjective well-being of elder people is not always linear. Keywords: religious involvement, spirituality, aging, subjective well-being c. Researching existential needs in persons with dementia Oddgeir Synnes, Hans Stifoss-Hanssen In this presentation we investigate how different strategies of qualitative research can illuminate existential needs, challenges and strategies among persons with dementia. We take as a starting point a theoretical foundation of dementia as linked to the concept of dignity. Dignity necessitates a holistic understanding of people with dementia and stresses that dementia is a multi-faceted condition that implies much more than a biomedical perspective. As such an understanding of dementia requires perspectives where language, narrative, social interaction as well as access to different arenas play just as large part as medical treatment when it comes to the well being, meaning making and spiritual care. In our paper we want to outline theoretical and methodological dimensions of a study of dementia and spirituality by looking at the representation of dementia in: (1) media, (2) health care workers in dementia care, (3) family carers, and (4) by looking at how people with dementia expresses existential needs. Keywords: existential needs, dementia, qualitative research, lived experience, dignity d. An existential-psycho-social reading of a biographical narrative Kjetil Moen The paper relates to an empirical study exploring how encountering the death of others may, or may not, inform the self-understanding of health professionals in end of life care. The main question pursued in the paper is how one may one go about undertaking an “inter-contextual” reading that relates current existential challenges to past and present social contexts. Through a biographical-narrative approach, and an existential philosophical (Heidegger) and psychoanalytic (Rizutto) theoretical frame (existential-psycho-social), the paper explores how the individual subject struggles to navigate the relation to its “world(s)” of significance in an idiomatic way. The account of “Dina”, a palliative-care physician, serves to elucidate how experiences from various cultures and contexts, not least her religious upbringing, her divorce and her encounters with death, are informing her existential concerns. It thus contributes to the discussion called for under the conference heading “Culture, Context and Existential Challenges”. Keywords: existential, biographical, narrative, end of life 1B Panel Session: Psychoanalysis and Religion: Contextualizing the believer and unbeliever, mysticism and metaphors - In honor of Ana-Maria Rizzutto Chair: Göran Ståhle Ana-Maria Rizzuto has made significant and groundbreaking contributions to the psychoanalysis of religious experience. She is trained in psychoanalysis in Boston and was for forty years in the PINE Psychoanalytic Center Faculty and is Training and Supervisory Analyst Emerita. Ana-Maria Rizzuto examines the origin, development, and use of our God images. Rizzuto has demonstrated that the God representation of the individual draws from a variety of sources and is a major element in the fabric of one's view of self, others, and the world. Mario Aletti direct the attention to becoming a believer or an unbeliever, Herman Westerink elaborate on psychoanalytic reflections on mysticism, and Gry Stålsett and Arne Austad illustrate her crucial contribution addressing metaphors in clinical work through a clinical example from the VITA treatment model at Modum Bad Psychiatric Center in Norway. Keywords: psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, Ana-Maria Rizzuto, metaphors, representation of God, mysticism a. Becoming a believer, becoming an unbeliever, The contribution of Ana_Maria Rizzutto to the Psychology of Religion in the light of Clinical Practice Mario Aletti Ana-María Rizzuto’s The Birth of the Living God (1979) is the most prominent and influential publication resulting from a research that lasted half a century and had a deep impact on psychology of religion worldwide. Rizzuto studies the formation, the evolution, the transformation and use of the representation of God in the lifespan. Her work is a turning point of the contribution of psychoanalysis to a better understanding not only of the believer, but also of the non believer. On account of the richness and the novelty of the contents, and methodological and epistemological accuracy it has raised a widespread international debate. The emphasis on the idiosyncrasy and dynamicity of the representation of God encourages scholars to better explore and define the idea of “unconscious representation of God”; at the same time it suggests that, actually, the topic covered in The Birth of the Living God mainly concerns the possible development paths of the birth of the believing person. b. Psychoanalysis and Mysticism: Problems and possibilities Herman Westerink This paper will examine the problematic relation between (Freudian) psychoanalysis and the conceptualization and study of mysticism in the 20th century. First, the discussion between Freud and Romain Rolland on the oceanic feeling is reconsidered, i.e. contextualized against the background of the medical (neurological, psychiatric) rediscovery of modern mysticism. Second, the Lacanian interest in mysticism is reconsidered, and notably also its application in the writings of Michel de Certeau, focusing on the dynamics of the melancholic loss and desire for presence. Third, the paper will address a return to a Freudian-Foucauldian approach of mysticism, focussing on the mystic's 'body of pleasures'. Ana-Maria Rizzutto `s contemporary psychoanalytic (the embodied mind) contribution to the dialogue on mysticism will be presented in this context. c. The Vital Role of Metaphors in Psychotherapy Gry Stålsett, Leif Gunnar Engedal, Arne Austad Ana-Maria Rizzuto gives special attention to the meaning and function of affect and metaphors in the patient’s idiosyncratic ways of talking in two groundbreaking publications (Rizzuto 2001;2003). This presentation illustrate how the genesis of specific metaphors is found in the self-presentation and treatment of a very troubled patient and came to play a significant role as dynamically related and interacting metaphors in his therapeutic process. While looking in to the many layers a metaphor may contain, we address existential, narrative, dynamic-relational and affective sources. Rizzuto helps us to see that, this patient's use of metaphors was of crucial to communicate his inner relational dynamics, deeply connected to his life story and existential and religious concerns, organizing his psychic life and a necessity to address for his healing process. 1C Paper Session: Fanaticism and fundamentalism Chair: Gregory Dessart a. Fanaticism, religious or other: some