In this study the engagement of scholars in theology and religious studies with Freudian psychoanalysis is examined. The book focuses on the explicit or implicit theological ideas and aims that have determined its reception. The analysis includes a review of Freud's theories as suggestions for reconfigurations of psychoanalysis are made in order to further theorize on concepts or fields of attention that are important in theology and religious studies. The aim of this double critical review is to establish what the theoretical potential of Freud's psychoanalysis might be.
This book presents a radical look at the founder of psychoanalysis in his broader cultural context, addressing critical issues and challenging stereotypes.
Although the works of C.G. Jung have received worldwide attention, there has been surprisingly little engagement by philosophers. In this volume, internationally recognized philosophers, Jungian analysts, and scholars attempt to fill this void in the literature. Although Jung did not have a formalized, systematic philosophy, the philosophical implications of his thought are explored in relation to his key theoretical postulates on archetypes, the collective unconscious, the mind-body problem, phenomenology, epistemology, psychology of religion, alchemy, myth, ethics, aesthetics, and the question of transcendence. Through analyzing Jung philosophically, new vistas emerge for enhanced explication, theoretical refinement, revision, and redirecting shifts in emphasis that lend more proper cohesion to Jung’s philosophy. For the first time we may observe philosophers attempting to unpack the philosophical consequences of Jung’s thought applied to many traditional topics covered in the humanities and the social sciences. Given that Jung has not been historically taken up by philosophers, critiqued, nor applied to contemporary theories of mind, culture, and human nature, this is the first book of its kind. It is argued that a new generation of research in analytical psychology can benefit from philosophical scrutiny and theoretical fortification. Jung and Philosophy will be of interest to psychoanalysts, philosophers, cultural theorists, religious scholars, and the disciplines of depth psychology and post-Jungian studies.
The aims pursued in this book are quite modest. The text is not an introduction in the traditional sense to any psychological subdiscipline or field of application, nor does it present anything essentially new. Rather, it shows ‘work in progress’, as it attempts to contribute to an integration of two differently structured, but already existing fields within psychology. In order to explain this, it is probably best to say a few words about how the book came into being and about what it hopes to achieve. As a project, the volume owes very much to others. While lecturing in places ranging from South Africa to Canada and from California through European co- tries to Korea, colleagues have often urged me to come up with a volume on ‘c- tural psychology of religion’. For reasons that should become clear in the text, I feel uncomfortable with such a demand. To my understanding, there exists no single cultural psychology of religion. Rather, there are ever expanding numbers of div- gent types of psychologies, some of which are applied to understanding religious aspects of human lives or to researching specific religious phenomena, while others are not. Within this heterogeneous field that is, correctly or not, still designated as ‘psychology’, there are also many approaches that are sometimes referred to as ‘cultural psychology’ or as ‘culturally sensitive psychologies’. It would be wor- while applying many of these to research on religious phenomena, but at present not too many are in fact so applied.
Henri F. Ellenberger, the Swiss medical historian, is best remembered today as the author of The Discovery of the Unconscious (1970), a brilliant, encyclopedic study of psychiatric theory and therapy from primitive times to the mid-twentieth century. However, in addition to this well-known work, Ellenberger has written over thirty essays in the history of the mental sciences. This collection unites fourteen of Ellenberger's most interesting and methodologically innovative historical essays, many of which draw on new and rich bodies of primary materials. Several of the articles appear here in English translation for the first time. The essays deal with subjects such as the intellectual origins of psycho-analysis, the work of the French psychological school of Jean-Martin Charcot and Pierre Janet, the role of the "great patients" in the history of psychiatry, and the cultural history of psychiatry. The publication of these writings, which corresponds with the opening in Paris of the Institut Henri Ellenberger, truly establishes Ellenberger as the founding figure of the historiography of psychiatry. Accompanying the essays are an extensive interpretive introduction and a detailed bibliographical essay by the editor. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The acclaimed American sociologist and cultural philosopher Philip Rieff gained great academic prestige with his thesis on the emergence of ‘Psychological Man’ in western culture and with his classic book, Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, published in 1959. In this work and the later The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) he not only offered a highly original interpretation of the work of Sigmund Freud, but critically evaluated the enormous influence of psychotherapeutic thinking on Western culture. However, Rieff’s later work on the theory of culture did not garner the same attention, and his most recent writings have received very little critical engagement. In Sociology and the Sacred, Antonius A.W. Zondervan sets out to remedy this neglect, arguing that Rieff’s work is ripe for intellectual reconsideration. Zondervan begins by presenting an outline of Rieff’s entire body of work, focusing on his theory of culture, and explaining how the sacred is a key notion, pivotal to the overall understanding of Rieff’s work. The author argues that the present upsurge in religion, in many varieties throughout the world, cannot be explained by the classical secularization thesis, making Rieff's theory of sacred order in culture an essential contribution to a new social theory of religion. Including material from personal interviews with Rieff that enabled Zondervan to clarify important aspects of his work, Sociology and the Sacred is an essential contribution to the understanding of contemporary culture’s maintenance of its ties to religion.
Psychology of religion has been enjoying considerable attention of late; the number of publications and people involved in the field is rapidly increasing. It is, however, one of the oldest branches within psychology in general, and one of the few in which an interdisciplinary approach has been kept alive and fostered. The fate of the field has been quite varied in the countries where psychology of religion has been initiated and developed during the 20th century. In this volume, some aspects of this international history are examined. Coming from six different Western countries, each of the contributors has a record in the historiography of psychology and profound knowledge of psychology of religion. Their approaches combine elements from the history of mentalities, the social history of science and biographical studies. The volume contains in-depth treatments of such topics as the growth of the field as reflected in university politics, developments within international organizations, and the personal involvement of contributors to the field. A wealth of information is provided on the background of the work of well known psychologists of religion like James Henry Leuba, Oskar Pfister, Gordon Allport, Werner Gruehn, Antoine Vergote and others.
Figures of the Unconscious, No. 8Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of "reading a dark trace," thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth about the problem of human guilt. In Freud's view, this sense of guilt is a trace, a path, that leads deep into the individual's mental state, into childhood memories, and into the prehistory of culture and religion. Herman Westerink follows this trace and analyzes Freud's thought on the sense of guilt as a central issue in his work, from the earliest studies on the moral and "guilty" characters of the hysterics, via later complex differentiations within the concept of the sense of guilt, and finally to Freud's conception of civilization's discontents and Jewish sense of guilt. The sense of guilt is a key issue in Freudian psychoanalysis, not only in relation to other key concepts in psychoanalytic theory but also in relation to Freud's debates with other psychoanalysts, including Carl Jung and Melanie Klein.
Deconstructing Normativity? brings together a unique collection of chapters in which an international selection of contributors reflect on the fundamental and often very radical ideas present in Freud’s original 1905 edition of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. The book has three aims: the contextualization of the text, the reconstruction of its central ideas and the further philosophical reflection of the contemporary relevance and critical potential of the 1905 edition. The authors challenge mainstream interpretations of the Three Essays, generally based on readings of the final 1924 edition of the text, and of the development of Freudian thought: including, most importantly, the centrality of the Oedipus complex and the developmental approach relative to a tendency towards heteronormativity. Deconstructing Normativity? makes an important contribution in rethinking Freudian psychoanalysis and reopening the discussion on its central paradigms, and in so doing it connects with queer and gender theories and philosophical approaches. This book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts in practice and training, as well as academics and students of psychoanalysis, philosophical anthropology, continental philosophy, sex, gender and sexualities.
