Religion, Society, And Psychoanalysis: Readings In Contemporary Theory / Edition 1

by Janet L Jacobs, Donald Capps

Overview

Religion clearly remains a powerful social and political force in Western society. Freudian-based theory continues to inform psychoanalytic investigations into personality development, gender relations, and traumatic disorders. Using a historical framework, this collection of new essays brings together contemporary scholarship on religion and psychoanalysis. These various yet related psychoanalytic interpretations of religious symbolism and commitment offer a unique social analysis on the meaning of religion.Beginning with Freud's views on religion and mystical experience and continuing with those of Horney, Winnicott, Kristeva, Miller, and others, this volume surveys the work of three generations of psychoanalytic theorists. Special attention is given to objects relations theory and ego psychology, as well as to the recent work from the European tradition. Distinguished contributors provide a basic overview of a given theorist's scholarship and discuss its place in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought as it relates to the role that religion plays in modern culture.Religion, Society, and Psychoanalysis marks a major, interdisciplinary step forward in filling the void in the social-psychology of religion. It is an extremely useful handbook for students and scholars of psychology and religion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813326481
Publisher:	Westview Press
Publication date:	04/25/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1440L (what's this?)

About the Author

Janet Liebman Jacobs is associate professor of women studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self and Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions.Donald Capps is professor of pastoral theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Depleted Self: Sin in a Narcissistic Age;The Child's Song: The Religious Abuse of Children; and Men, Religion, and Melancholy, a book on classic texts in the psychology of religion. Janet Liebman Jacobs is associate professor of women studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self and Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religions.Donald Capps is professor of pastoral theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including The Depleted Self: Sin in a Narcissistic Age;The Child's Song: The Religious Abuse of Children; and Men, Religion, and Melancholy, a book on classic texts in the psychology of religion.

Table of Contents

Introduction -- Freud -- Freud and Hasidism -- Freud, Maimonides, and Incest -- Freud as Other -- Psychoanalysis and Fundamentalism -- Psychoanalysis and the Second-Generation Theorists -- Karen Horney’s Encounter with Zen -- Melanie Klein, Motherhood, and the “Heart of the Heart of Darkness” -- Playing and Believing -- Childhood Fears, Adult Anxieties, and the Longing for Inner Peace -- Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives -- Heinz Kohut’s Struggles with Religion, Ethnicity, and God -- Creating a New Research Paradigm for the Psychoanalytic Study of Religion -- Alice Miller’s Insights into Religious Seekership -- Illusions with Futures: Jacques Lacan -- God and Lacanian Psychoanalysis -- Julia Kristeva and the Psychoanalytic Study of Religion: Rethinking Freud’s Cultural Texts