Religion and Psychology is a thorough and incisive survey of the current relationship between religion and psychology from the leading scholars in the field. This is an essential resource for students and researchers in the area of psychology of religion. Issues addressed are:
* The Psychology-Theology Dialogue
* The Psychology-Comparativist Dialogue
* Psychology, Religion and Gender Studies
* Psychology as Religion
* Social Scientific Approaches to the Psychology of Religion
* The Empirical Approach
* International Perspectives

It is well known that in formulating his general theoretical framework and views on religion Freud drew on multiple disciplines within the natural and social sciences, as well as from the humanities. This edited collection adds to the continued multidisciplinary interest in Freud by focusing on his understanding and interpretation of_as well as his relationship to_religion. It 'disciplines' Freud by situating his work on religion from the methodological interests and theoretical advances found in diverse disciplinary contexts. Scholars within the field of religious studies, Jewish Studies, philosophy, and the natural sciences bring together their diverse voices to heighten the academic understanding of Freud on religion. The contributors aim to establish closer and more direct interdisciplinary communication and collaboration with regard to Freudian Studies. This volume should appeal to a wide range of scholars, for upper level undergraduate and graduate classes and those training in psychoanalysis.

Religion and Psychology is a thorough and incisive survey of the current relationship between religion and psychology from the leading scholars in the field. This is an essential resource for students and researchers in the area of psychology of religion. Issues addressed are:
* The Psychology-Theology Dialogue
* The Psychology-Comparativist Dialogue
* Psychology, Religion and Gender Studies
* Psychology "as" Religion
* Social Scientific Approaches to the Psychology of Religion
* The Empirical Approach
* International Perspectives

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415206170

As one of the first theorists to explore the unconscious fantasies, fears, and desires underlying religious ideas and practices, Freud can be considered one of the grandparents of the field of religious studies. Yet Freud's legacy is deeply contested. His reputation is perhaps at its lowest point since he came to public attention a century ago, and students often assume that Freud is sexist, dangerous, passe, and irrelevant to the study of religion. How can Freud be taught in this climate of critique and controversy? The fourteen contributors to this volume, recognised scholars of religion and psychoanalysis, describe how they address Freud's contested legacy: 'they teach the debates'. They describe their courses on Freud and religion, their innovative pedagogical practices, and the creative ways they work with resistance.

In this bold rereading of Freud's cultural texts, Diane Jonte-Pace uncovers an undeveloped "counterthesis," one that repeatedly interrupts or subverts his well-known Oedipal masterplot. The counterthesis is evident in three clusters of themes within Freud's work: maternity, mortality, and immortality; Judaism and anti-Semitism; and mourning and melancholia. Each of these clusters is associated with "the uncanny" and with death and loss. Appearing most frequently in Freud's images, metaphors, and illustrations, the counterthesis is no less present for being unspoken--it is, indeed, "unspeakable."
The "uncanny mother" is a primary theme found in Freud's texts involving fantasies of immortality and mothers as instructors in death. In other texts, Jonte-Pace finds a story of Jews for whom the dangers of assimilation to a dominant Gentile culture are associated unconsciously with death and the uncanny mother. The counterthesis appears in the story of anti-Semites for whom the "uncanny impression of circumcision" gives rise not only to castration anxiety but also to matriphobia. It also surfaces in Freud's ability to mourn the social and religious losses accompanying modernity, and his inability to mourn the loss of his own mother.
The unfolding of Freud's counterthesis points toward a theory of the cultural and unconscious sources of misogyny and anti-Semitism in "the unspeakable." Jonte-Pace's work opens exciting new vistas for the feminist analysis of Freud's intellectual legacy.