Jesus the Village Psychiatrist

by Donald Capps

Overview

All of the Gospels and the whole of Christian tradition depict Jesus as a miraculous healer who can cure blindness, leprosy, hemorrhages, and a host of other maladies. But how did Jesus actually heal? In this fascinating book, Donald Capps argues that Jesus was keenly attuned to the psychological causes of illness and through his ministry brought healing to body and soul alike.

Capps argues that one of Jesus' purposes was to heal people from mental illnesses, which people in the ancient world would have seen manifested in physical ailments such as blindness, paralysis, or other symptoms. Fully engaged in historical Jesus scholarship, Capps carefully examines Jesus' deep concern for both physical and emotional health and shows how his proclamation of the kingdom of God envisioned a world without mental illness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780664232405
Publisher:	Westminster John Knox Press
Publication date:	01/21/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Donald Capps is Professor Emeritus of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He has written many books, including The Decades of Life and Jesus the Village Psychiatrist.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     xi
Somatoform Disorders
From Psychosomatic Illness to Somatoform Disorders     3
A Short History of Hysteria     15
Freud's Writings on Conversion Disorder     27
Jesus Cures
Two Paralyzed Men     37
Two Blind Men     57
The Demon-Possessed Boy     81
Jairus's Daughter and the Hemorrhaging Woman     105
Epilogue: The Woman Who Cared for Jesus     133
References     137
Index     141

Editorial Reviews

Jesus has worn so many masks-country boy, unacknowledged king, sex magician-that it can hardly surprise us to see him don another. Capps (pastoral theology, Princeton Theological Seminary) selects several of Jesus's "healing miracles" and makes of them something not beyond the order of nature but prodigies of psychological and psychiatric insight and healing. Capps is necessarily reliant on Freud's definitions of hysteria-broadly rejected by his own profession-so his analysis has a shaky foundation. Yet the kernel of his idea is striking, and this provocative study may give rise to others with better grounding.

—Graham Christian Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

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