Views dissenting from the status quo in psychoanalysis are presented in four areas: Psychoanalysis and Early Dissidents, The Psychoanalytic Process, Psychoanalysis and Culture, and Psychoanalysis and Religion. Authors introduce ideas on the analyst's freedom and imagination, the use of humor and play, and the importance of small talk, as well as new perspectives on understanding and working with trauma. The section on psychoanalysis and culture addresses an area rarely considered in psychoanalysis today, regardless of theoretical model. As the global culture becomes more salient, clinicians can ignore the issues of culture with a diversity of patients only to their detriment. The volume's final attention to psychoanalysis and religion frames a new paradigm for understanding mysticism and the relationship to psychopathology to spiritual disciplines and experiences.

???Are Jung??'s views compatible with Christian faith? Will evangelical Christians be led astray if they rely on Jung as a psychological guide? What would it look like to place Jung??'s psychological ideas into an authentically Christian framework?

Ulanov tackles some of the most vexing theological and spiritual issues raised by Jung??'s approach to psychological healing. Challenging Jung when he diverges from core Christian beliefs, Ulanov nevertheless builds on key Jungian concepts to show how depth psychology can enrich and enliven our life of faith.

In the introduction, Dueck (with Brian Becker) interprets Jung??'s corpus as ???a pastoral attempt to counter the corrosive effects of modernity.??? In his conclusion, he contextualizes Ulanov??'s lectures for the evangelical community. The book is a finely-nuanced discussion, glittering with gems of insight. Anyone who has struggled to understand Jung, any psychotherapist longing to include spiritual issues in the work of healing, indeed, any person of prayer seeking to relate authentically to God over the long haul, will relish this book.???
? Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger
Princeton Theological Seminary

Seated in her nest of ashes, Cinderella embodies human misery. The essence of inner and outer nobility, she is the envy of her cruel stepmother and her ugly sisters. Using this familiar story, Ann and Barry Ulanov explore the psychological and theological aspects of envy and goodness. In their interpretation of the tale, they move back and forth between internal and external issues--from how feminine and masculine parts of persons fit or do not fit together to how individuals conduct their lives with those of the same and opposite sexes, how they conflict, compete, or join harmoniously. The central role of envy in determining the very nature of our society--its politics, for example--is, the authors think, crucial. The authors focus on the nature of goodness as it surfaces in the envy experience. They reflect on its abundance, ability to unite disparate parts, its abiding presence, and its joy, and conclude with a brief review of the psychological literature on envy.

Aliveness and Deadness are processes that cannot be captured, only symbolized within the precincts of psychology and religion.
Opening under the shadow of 9/11, our new century must reassess the preciousness of life and what we are living for, what we love, and what we find worth dying for. In the face of loss and absence, we must again ask what makes us feel connected to the source of aliveness. Yet, we must also understand that feeling fully alive means that we must come to fresh insight about the contrary of aliveness, which is deadness. Both aliveness and deadness are part of the same fabric of being. But how do we talk about them? Or do we leave these unnamed? For Ann Belford Ulanov, aliveness is to make something of what we hear, and to hear what we hear makes of us. Working on oneself enlarges; thus, society as psychological work and spiritual practice form a kind of social action. Our heart becomes unshuttered making new depths possible for the self and others.

The transcendent is a reality that functions in all our lives all the time - call it God, the unknown, or the holy. It is not some obscure out-of-reach Other available only to those with specialized knowledge or a phenomenon spoken about only in a church, temple, or mosque. The Transcendent is both beyond us, yet functioning within each of us. It is present in our exchanges with others, yet nearer to us than our own heartbeat. In our daily lives, the Transcendent is often experienced addressing us through our compulsions, perversions, and ordinary struggles. We find it touching us through our most shameful problems and bidding us to realize our most hidden promise. Jungian analyst Ann Ulanov shows us how the Transcendent appears in her clinical work, how to work with it in dreams and symptoms, and how it informs encounters between analyst and analysand. She demonstrates the spiritual aspect of analysis in her case observations dealing with fatness and the female, masochistic suffering, parental relationships, follow-up treatment in patient/therapist sex, and the resolution of suicidal temptations.

The Ulanovs examine the images of the witch and the clown not only as mere literary, anthropological, or historical themes, but as determining much of the complexity of human sexual life. The common notions of male sexuality based upon strength and aggression, and female sexuality upon weakness and submission are thoroughly undone in this analysis.