Psychology, religion, and spirituality

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Dan Merkur

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. Traditionally, psychoanalytic thought has been dismissive of religion. Freud is on record, however, as having called psychoanalysis a neutral procedure. He argued that religion, with its dependency on a providential God who punishes disobedience, imagines spirituality on the model of human parents and fails to approach spirituality in an appropriately scientific manner. He wrote little of spiritual phenomena, but mentioned both the rationality of the universe and the parapsychological occurrence of thought transference. Occasionally, later psychoanalysts used different language in order to contrast wholesome and morbid forms of religion. Erich Fromm distinguished authoritarian and humanistic religions, while D. W. Winnicott condemned fetishistic behavior while approving of playful illusions that require “belief-in.” These formulations constructed a middle position for clinicians, neither categorically opposed to religion as classical psychoanalysis was, nor do they embrace cultural relativity as “spiritually oriented” psychotherapists are currently advocating. What sorts of spiritual practices does psychoanalysis find unobjectionable? As examples of humanistic religion, Fromm named Zen Buddhism, Buddhist mindfulness meditation, and the via negativa or “way of negating” that some Christian and Jewish mystics have followed. Because the Bible-based approaches are little known, Merkur discusses their histories, procedures, and psychoanalytic understanding.--

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William F. Flack, Jr. & James D. Laird

This new volume in the Series in Affective Science examines the relationship between emotions and psychopathology by bringing together current theory and research and the perspectives of leading figures in the field. Each part addresses general issues in the area and contains reports of research focused on emotions in specific psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders, and personality disorders. Chapters written by outstanding figures from psychiatry, psychology, and cognitive science represent the diversity of informed opinion and methods of investigation in research on emotion and psychopathology.

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Padmasiri de Silva

"An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology is a lucid, intelligible, and authentic introduction to the foundations of Buddhist psychology. It provides comprehensive coverage of the basic concepts and issues in the psychology of Buddhism and thus it deals with the nature of psychological inquiry, concepts of mind, consciousness and behavior, motivation, emotions and percentile, and the therapeutic structure of Buddhist psychology. For the third edition, a new chapter on the mind-body relationship and Buddhist contextualism has been added."--BOOK JACKET.

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John Greenwood

In the new edition of this original and penetrating book, John D. Greenwood provides an in-depth analysis of the subtle conceptual continuities and discontinuities that inform the history of psychology from the speculations of the Ancient Greeks to contemporary cognitive psychology. He also demonstrates the fashion in which different conceptions of human and animal psychology and behavior have become associated and disassociated over the centuries. Moving easily among psychology, history of science, physiology, and philosophy, Greenwood provides a critically challenging account of the development of psychology as a science. He relates the remarkable stories of the intellectual pioneers of modern psychology, while exploring the social and political milieu in which they operated, and dispels many of the myths of the history of psychology, based upon the best historical scholarship of recent decades. This is an impressive overview that will appeal to scholars and graduate students of the history of psychology. -- Back cover.