Download or read book Religion and Psychology in Transition written by James W. Jones and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thought-provoking book, clinical psychologist and professor of religious studies James W. Jones presents a dialogue between contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and contemporary theology. He sheds new light on the interaction of religion and psychology by viewing it from the perspective of world religions, providing an epistemological framework for the psychology of religion that draws on contemporary philosophy of science, and bringing out the importance of gender as a category of analysis. Developments in psychoanalysis provide new resources for theological reflection, Jones contends. The Freudian view that human nature is isolated and instinctual has shifted to a vision of the self as constituted in and through relationships. Jones uses this relational model of human nature to explore the convergence between contemporary psychoanalysis, feminist theorizing, and themes in religious thought found in a variety of traditions. He also critiques the reductionism inherent in Freud's discussion of religion and proposes nonreductionistic and genuinely psychoanalytic ways for psychoanalysis to treat religious topics. For therapists, psychologists, theologians, and others interested in spiritual or psychological issues, Jones offers illuminating clinical material and insightful analysis.

Download or read book God Freud and Religion written by Dianna T. Kenny and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Choice Essential Read Did God create man or did man create God? In this book, Dianna Kenny examines religious belief through a variety of perspectives – psychoanalytic, cognitive, neuropsychological, sociological, historical and psychiatric – to provide a coherent account of why people might believe in God. She argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a fertile and creative approach to the study of religion that attempts to integrate religious belief with our innate human nature and developmental histories that have unfolded in the context of our socialization and cultural experiences. Freud argued that religion is so compelling because it solves the problems of our existence. It explains the origin of the universe, offers solace and protection from evil, and provides a blueprint about how we should live our lives, with just rewards for the righteous and due punishments for sinners and transgressors. Science, on the other hand, offers no such explanations about the universe or the meaning of our lives and no comfort for the unanswered longings of the human race. Is religion a form of wish-fulfilment, a collective delusion to which we cling as we try to fathom our place and purpose in the drama of cosmology? Can there be morality without faith? Are science and religion radically incompatible? What are the roots of fundamentalism and terror theology? These are some of the questions addressed in God, Freud and Religion, a book that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists, students of psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and theology and all those with an interest in religion and human behaviour. Dianna Kenny is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of over 200 publications, including six books.

Download or read book Faith Theology and Psychoanalysis written by Trevor M Dobbs and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2010-03-25 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces the various influences on the development of Harry S. Guntrip's thought, including his personal history of family relationships, memberships in various religious organizations, and the weight of his academic professional mentors, both theological and psycoanalytic, Ronald Fairbairn and Donald Winnicott. Guntrip, both a minister and lay therapist, is shown as a fascinating example of the adversarial tension between psychology and theology, commonly known as the battle between science and religion.

Download or read book Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Religion written by James William Jones and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the latest psychoanalytic "theories" and their relevance for religious studies. The author, a clinical psychologist and professor of religion, builds on more recent theories in which the self is constued as a matrix of interalized relationships, investigates ways in which religious beliefs, practices, and experiences reflect the structure of the relational self.

Download or read book Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century written by David M. Black and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can be gained from a dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion? Freud described religion as the universal obsessional neurosis, and uncompromisingly rejected it in favour of "science." Ever since, there has been the assumption that psychoanalysts are hostile to religion. Yet, from the beginning, individual analysts have questioned Freud's blanket rejection of religion. In this book, David Black brings together contributors from a wide range of schools and movements to discuss the issues. They bring a fresh perspective to the subject of religion and psychoanalysis, answering vital questions such as: How do religious stories carry (or distort) psychological truth? How do religions 'work', psychologically? What is the nature of religious experience? Are there parallels between psychoanalysis and particular religious traditions? Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic therapists, psychodynamic counsellors, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding psychoanalysis, religion, theology and spirituality.

Download or read book Freud and the Problem of God written by Hans Küng and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly acclaimed book, one of the most prominent theologians in the world offers a theological and psychoanalytic assessment of Freud’s atheism and of its implications for current psychoanalytic practice. In the original section of the book, now entitled "God--An Infantile Illusion?,” Hans K�ng traces Freud’s views on religion and religious longing, compares Jung’s and Adler’s attitudes toward religion, shows that Freud’s arguments against the existence of God are theologically unsound, and concludes with a frank and provocative discussion of what psychoanalysis may be able to teach the Christian Church. In a new section, "Religion--The Final Taboo?,” K�ng points out that religions still plays a negligible role in the practice of psychoanalysis, despite its increasing importance in the lives of most people. Has religion replaced sex, K�ng asks, as an integral facet of human experience ignored or repressed by the very profession that seeks to enlighten? Reviews of the first edition: "This should stand as one of Dr. K�ng’s finest works.”--Edmund Fuller, Wall Street Journal "A balanced, thorough, and very readable discussion of Freud’s critique of religion... A model of the clarity, honesty, and fairness we can always expect to find in K�ng’s writings.” -John F. Haught, America "An honest, sympathetic pro-and-con assessment of specific elements of Freud’s critique by a well-known German Catholic theologian, easily accessible to the interested layperson and valuable for both theologians and psychologists.”--Library Journal "K�ng carefully, sympathetically investigates Freud’s interpretations of religion, both within his clinical theories and personal history.” -Lisa Mitchell, Los Angeles Times

Download or read book God Is Unconscious written by Tad DeLay and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2015-02-20 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sailing into New York Harbor, Sigmund Freud stood on the deck and gazed upon a statue that was meant to symbolize someone else's vague notion of freedom. The embryonic field of psychology--so very interested to hear this theory, which excavated the depths of the psyche--anticipated his arrival in America with lamentably eager fanfare. Whether out of hubris or prescience Freud could only whisper, "They don't realize we are bringing them the plague." It was a theory that undercut our creative justifications for every action and belief, and it suggested our anxious identities are charted by a big Other--one we cannot begin to comprehend. As psychoanalysis undergoes a resurgence of interest within religious studies, political theory, and cultural criticism, its innovative and peculiar claims remain difficult to grasp without any guide for the perplexed. In God Is Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and Theology, Tad DeLay explores the provocative teaching of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and its implications for Christianity. Partly an introductory exposition of Freud, Žižek, and Lacan, and partly an application of psychoanalysis to religion and politics, this book is organized as a theological meditation on an incendiary theory.

Download or read book Inventing God written by Jon Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-22 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this controversial book, philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills argues that God does not exist; and more provocatively, that God cannot exist as anything but an idea. Put concisely, God is a psychological creation signifying ultimate ideality. Mills argues that the idea or conception of God is the manifestation of humanity’s denial and response to natural deprivation; a self-relation to an internalized idealized object, the idealization of imagined value. After demonstrating the lack of any empirical evidence and the logical impossibility of God, Mills explains the psychological motivations underlying humanity’s need to invent a supreme being. In a highly nuanced analysis of unconscious processes informing the psychology of belief and institutionalized social ideology, he concludes that belief in God is the failure to accept our impending death and mourn natural absence for the delusion of divine presence. As an alternative to theistic faith, he offers a secular spirituality that emphasizes the quality of lived experience, the primacy of feeling and value inquiry, ethical self-consciousness, aesthetic and ecological sensibility, and authentic relationality toward self, other, and world as the pursuit of a beautiful soul in search of the numinous. Inventing God will be of interest to academics, scholars, lay audiences and students of religious studies, the humanities, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, among other disciplines. It will also appeal to psychotherapists, psychoanalysts and mental health professionals focusing on the integration of humanities and psychoanalysis.

Download or read book Lacan Today written by Alexandre Leupin and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2004-11-17 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lacan Today: Psychoanalysis, Science, Religion offers a lucid overview of the French psychoanalyst's work. In five sections--"The Structure of the Subject," "Epistemology," "Four Discourses," "There is No Sexual Rapport," and "God is Real,"--the book maps out Lacan's thought for the lay reader with unmatched clarity. It does this by building from Lacan's graph and formulas, which are often misunderstood. This formalization acts as a pedagogical tool of wonderful economy, offering a broad overview without neglecting the essential details. The chapters are summarized by a general graph that visually demonstrates Lacan's rigor and coherence. The book examines often-neglected aspects of Lacan's work, like problems in the history of science, epistemology, and religion, in order to show Lacan's relevance to today's world. It makes the case for Lacan as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, whose reach extends beyond the discipline of psychoanalysis. Indeed, Lacan's thought should lead readers into a reexamination of philosophy, literature, art, politics, economy, and desire. In his introduction, Alexandre Leupin writes: "If the unconscious exists, then Lacan is the only twentieth-century thinker who has drawn the consequences of Freud's discovery to their ultimate limits. I propose here what some will take as bombastic hyperbole: Lacan's radical reevaluation of human thinking is comparable to Einstein's." Though Lacan's thought is making tremendous inroads in countries of Latin culture, it has been slowly fading from public awareness in the English-speaking world. Often Lacan has been nothing more than a pawn in the bundling of contradictory doctrines labeled as "French thought"; or he has been reduced to a means of exchange between psychoanalysts or specialists in the humanities. Leupin's contention is that what Lacan said or wrote is of interest to the general public and that his consignment to oblivion is reversible. This book demonstrates that Lacan's thinking has vast implications, not only for college professors or practicing psychoanalysts, but also for scientists, epistemologists, and every man and woman.

Download or read book Credo written by Patrick Casement and published by Aeon Books. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal reflections on faith and psychoanalysis from a leading British psychoanalyst. What is it that lies beyond our knowing, beyond our imagination and beyond our understanding: beyond the reach of either science or philosophy? Might there be some unimaginable energy, some incomprehensible wisdom and purpose, that will forever remain beyond our comprehending? Patrick Casement explores the questions that arise repeatedly in the minds of all those who have faith, or an interest in faith. Some of the pieces in this collection are from the early part of his life, before he became interested in psychoanalysis, when as a young man he considered ordination. These are followed by reflections from later life, looking at his life's journey and how faith and psychoanalysis have been entwined throughout. This collection is offered to the reader in the hope that some of it might resonate in the minds of others who have been asking similar questions about life, and why are we here.

Download or read book Toward Mutual Recognition written by Marie T. Hoffman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-01-19 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since its nascent days, psychoanalysis has enjoyed an uneasy coexistence with religion. However, in recent decades, many analysts have been more interested in the healing potential of both psychoanalytic and religious experience and have explored how their respective narrative underpinnings may be remarkably similar. In Toward Mutual Recognition, Marie T. Hoffman takes just such an approach. Coming from a Christian perspective, she suggests that the current relational turn in psychoanalysis has been influenced by numerous theorists - analysts and philosophers alike - who were themselves shaped by an embedded Christian narrative. As a result, the redemptive concepts of incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection - central to the tenets of Christianity - can be traced to relational theories, emerging analogously in the transformative process of mutual recognition in the concepts of identification, surrender, and gratitude, a trilogy which she develops as forming the "path of recognition." Each movement on this path of recognition is given thought-provoking, in-depth attention. Chapters dedicated to theoretical perspectives utilize the thinking of Benjamin, Hegel, and Ricoeur. In her historical perspectives, she explores the personal and professional histories of analysts such as Sullivan, Fairbairn, Winnicott, Erikson, Kohut, and Ferenczi, among others, who were influenced by the Christian narrative. Uniting it all together is the clinical perspective offered in the compelling extended case history of Mandy, a young lady whose treatment embodies and exemplifies each of the steps along the path of growth in both the psychoanalytic and Christian senses. Throughout, a relational sensibility is deployed as a cooperative counterpart to the Christian narrative, working both as a consilient dialogue and a vehicle for further integrative exploration. As a result, the specter of psychoanalysis and religion as mutually exclusive gives way to the hope and redemption offered by their mutual recognition.

Download or read book Eros Crucified written by Matthew Clemente and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-08 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing contemporary philosophers, theologians, and psychoanalysts into dialogue with works of art and literature, this work provides a fresh perspective on how humans can make sense of suffering and finitude and how our existence as sexual beings shapes our relations to one another and the divine. It attempts to establish a connection between carnal, bodily love and humanity’s relation to the divine. Relying on the works of philosophers such as Manoussakis, Kearney, and Marion and psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, this book provides a possible answer to these fundamental questions and fosters further dialogue between thinkers and scholars of these different fields. The author analyzes why human sexuality implies both perversion and perfection and why it brings together humanity’s baseness and beatitude. Through it, the author taps once more into the dark mystery of Eros and Thanatos who, to paraphrase Dostoevsky, forever struggle with God on the battlefield of the human heart. This book is written primarily for scholars interested in the fields of philosophical psychology, existential philosophy, and philosophy of religion

Download or read book Freud on Religion written by Marsha Aileen Hewitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freud argued that religions originate in the unconscious needs, longings and fantasies of human minds. His work has served to highlight how any analysis of religion must explore mental life, both the cognitive and the unconscious. 'Freud on Religion' examines Freud's complex understanding of religious belief and practice. The book brings together contemporary psychoanalytic theory and case material from Freud's clinical practice to illustrate how the operations of the unconscious mind support various forms of religious belief, from mainstream to occult. 'Freud on Religion' offers a new way of understanding Freud's thinking and demonstrates how valuable psychoanalysis is for the study of religion.

Download or read book Why Did Freud Reject God written by Ana-Maria Rizzuto and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study, the author reviews and reorganizes data about Freud's development and life circumstances to provide a psychodynamic interpretation of his rejection of God. She contends that Freud's early life made it impossible for him to believe in a provident and caring divine being.

Download or read book The Pursuit of the Soul written by Peter Tyler and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most striking features of contemporary psychology is the return of language of the 'soul' in contemporary discourse. In this original analysis Dr Peter Tyler investigates the origins and use of 'soul-language' in the Christian tradition before turning his attention to the evolution and preoccupations of modern psychoanalysis. In his forensic examination he explores the dynamics of psychoanalysis as a 'tool to rediscover the soul' of the 21st century seeker. Central to his book is the perceived clash between analysis and the spiritual tradition. His uncompromising conclusion is that the dialogue of the two in our present time will have far-reaching repercussions for church, society and future human well-being. Read more about his work on http://insoulpursuit.blogspot.co.uk

Download or read book The Analyst and the Mystic written by Sudhir Kakar and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kakar goes beyond the traditional psychoanalytic interpretation of Ramakrishna's mystical visions and practices. He clarifies their contribution to the psychic transformation of a mystic and offers fresh insight into the relation between sexuality and ecstatic mysticism. Through a comparison of the healing techniques of the mystical guru and those of the analyst, Kakar highlights the difference in their healing objectives and reveals the positive psychological aspects of the religious experience.

Download or read book Old and Dirty Gods written by Pamela Cooper-White and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freud’s collection of antiquities—his "old and dirty gods"—stood as silent witnesses to the early analysts’ paradoxical fascination and hostility toward religion. Pamela Cooper-White argues that antisemitism, reaching back centuries before the Holocaust, and the acute perspective from the margins that it engendered among the first analysts, stands at the very origins of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The core insight of psychoanalytic thought— that there is always more beneath the surface appearances of reality, and that this "more" is among other things affective, memory-laden and psychological—cannot fail to have had something to do with the experiences of the first Jewish analysts in their position of marginality and oppression in Habsburg-Catholic Vienna of the 20th century. The book concludes with some parallels between the decades leading to the Holocaust and the current political situation in the U.S. and Europe, and their implications for psychoanalytic practice today. Covering Pfister, Reik, Rank, and Spielrein as well as Freud, Cooper-White sets out how the first analysts’ position as Europe’s religious and racial "Other" shaped the development of psychoanalysis, and how these tensions continue to affect psychoanalysis today. Old and Dirty Gods will be of great interest to psychoanalysts as well as religious studies scholars.