Relating to God : clinical psychoanalysis, spirituality, and theism / Dan Merkur.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Merkur, Daniel, author.

Series:

New imago

New Imago

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychoanalysis and religion.

Physical Description:

xii, 305 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lanham, Maryland : Jason Aronson, [2014]

Summary:

In Relating to God: Clinical Psychoanalysis, Spirituality, and Theism, Dan Merkur conceptualizes religious discourse within psychoanalysis. He proposes that God be treated as a transferential figure whose analysis leads to a reduction of the parental content that is projected onto God. Merkur notes that religious conversion experiences regularly involve theological intuitions that are either rational or, owing to morbid complications, have undergone displacement into irrational symbolism. Analysis renders the religiosity more wholesome. This book presents a clinical alternative to both the dismissal and the culturally relative endorsement of the client's religion, proposing a contemporary psychoanalytic distinction between wholesome spirituality and its symbolic and symptomatic displacements. Spirituality compatible with psychoanalysis is identified with the via negativa, "way of negating," that is found historically in selected Christian and Jewish encounters with God. Book jacket.

Contents:

Freud on animism and religion

Freud's search for spirituality

Clinical psychoanalysis and religion

Analyzing the transference onto God

Interpreting numinous experiences

Mentalizing God

Unsaying God

Revelation and prophecy.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780765710154

0765710153

OCLC:

856647682