Religion, Society, And Psychoanalysis: Readings In Contemporary Theory

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.

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.