Religion, Society, and Psychoanalysis

by Jacobs, Janet Liebman; Capps, Donald

• ISBN13: 9780813326474
• ISBN10: 0813326478
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-03-01
• Publisher: Westview Pr

Summary

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 Psychoanalysismarks 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.

Author Biography

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	1	(10)
Part One Freud	11	(60)
1 Freud and Hasidism	11	(12)
Dan Merkur
2 Freud, Maimonides, and Incest	23	(5)
David Bakan
3 Freud as Other: Anti-Semitism and the Development of Psychoanalysis	28	(14)
Janet Liebman Jacobs
4 Psychoanalysis and Fundamentalism: A Lesson from Feminist Critiques of Freud	42	(29)
Ralph W. Hood Jr.
Part Two Psychoanalysis and the Second-Generation Theorists	71	(94)
5 Karen Horney's Encounter with Zen	71	(19)
Marcia Westkott
6 Melanie Klein, Motherhood, and the "Heart of the Heart of Darkness"	90	(16)
Patricia H. Davis
7 Playing and Believing: The Uses of D.W. Winnicott in the Psychology of Religion	106	(21)
James W. Jones
8 Childhood Fears, Adult Anxieties, and the Longing for Inner Peace: Erik H. Erikson's Psychoanalytic Psychology of Religion	127	(38)
Donald Capps
Part Three Contemporary Psychoanalytic Perspectives	165	(104)
9 Heinz Kohut's Struggles with Religion, Ethnicity, and God	165	(16)
Charles B. Strozier
10 Creating a New Research Paradigm for the Psychoanalytic Study of Religion: The Pioneering Work of Ana-Maria Rizzuto	181	(19)
John McDargh
11 Alice Miller's Insights into Religious Seekership	200	(18)
Marion S. Goldman
12 Illusions with Futures: Jacques Lacar	218	(12)
William James Earle
13 God and Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Toward a Reconsideration of the Discipline of Religious Studies	230	(10)
Carl Raschke
14 Julia Kristeva and the Psychoanalytic Study of Religion: Rethinking Freud's Cultural Texts	240	(29)
Diane Jonte-Pace
About the Book and Editors	269	(2)
About the Contributors	271	(2)
Index	273