Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Religion: Transference and Transcendence - Hardcover

This book offers a re-evaluation of Freud's view that religion rests on a one-way transference of the devotee's instinctually based childhood wishes, fears and behaviours, onto a religious construct. Following on recent psychoanalytic theorizing about interactional patterns, James W. Jones - a clinical psychologist and professor of religion - investigates the interactive relationship between the devotee and the religion, focusing on the emotional content of the person's experience of the sacred as a means to illuminate aspects of religion overlooked in Freud's paradigm. He discusses models of transference since Freud; examines previous applications of psychoanalysis to religion; and explores theological views on the experience of the sacred. He then applies his own views to the therapeutic and religious transformations of patients in four case studies from his clinical practice. This book should give the scholar and student of religious studies the latest psychoanalytic theories and demonstrate their relevance for religious studies. It should also help the clinician grasp the role of religion in human life.