Suffering, Trauma, and Relational Integration: Re-Envisioning Spiritual Care and Psychoanalysis in a Decolonial Age

Spiritual care is summoned by suffering—by ‘wounds’ that are psychological, relational, spiritual, embodied, and political at once. As disciplines continue to be entrenched and siloed amidst the growing sociopolitical tensions and global crises in a decolonial age, what is at stake is the ability to care for each suffering Other in their complexity. This article offers a selective genealogy and relational integration of psychoanalysis and spiritual care (in a decolonial age). Against both clinical reductionisms and theological certainty, we argue for renewed dialogue between psychoanalysis and spiritual care through a relational integration framework, both as an ethical stance and hermeneutic framework. We first trace how pastoral and practical theology have approached each ‘wound’ in spiritual care through clinical pastoral education, psychoanalytic pastoral care, practical–theological hermeneutics, and liberationist, intercultural, postcolonial, and decolonial turns. We then consider how psychoanalysis itself has undergone significant transformations through object relations, relational–intersubjective theories, existential–phenomenological approaches, and feminist, intercultural, liberationist, and decolonial critiques. Finally, we propose embodied, hermeneutical, developmental, and intercultural commitments for relational integration, further clarified through spiritual dwelling, seeking, and crucibles of transformation. These commitments orient practitioners toward more accountable forms of interdisciplinary formation, witness, healing, justice, and liberation with the suffering Other.