The Religious and Romantic Origins of Psychoanalysis
Individuation and Integration in Post-Freudian Theory

A cultural history of psychoanalysis, tracing it back to Judaeo-Christian and Greek sources.

Suzanne R. Kirschner (Author)

9780521444019, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 February 1996

254 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.54 kg

"Kirschner's presentation reflects broad scholarship in history, literature, psychology and religion....Kirschner makes contemporary psychoanalytic theory accessible in a new and powerful way--for its practitioners, as well as for those who stand outside the discipline." E. James Lieberman, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

In this book, Suzanne Kirschner traces the origins of contemporary psychoanalysis back to the foundations of Judaeo-Christian culture, and challenges the prevailing view that modern theories of the self mark a radical break with religious and cultural tradition. Instead, she argues, they offer an account of human development which has its beginnings in biblical theology and neoplatonic mysticism. Drawing on a wide range of religious, literary, philosophical and anthropological sources, Dr Kirschner demonstrates that current Anglo-American psychoanalytic theories are but the latest version of a narrative that has been progressively secularized over the course of nearly two millennia. She displays a deep understanding of psychoanalytic theories, while at the same time raising provocative questions about their status as knowledge and as science.

Introduction
1. Toward a cultural genealogy of psychoanalytic developmental psychology
2. The assenting ego: Anglo-American values in contemporary psychoanalytic developmental psychology
3. The developmental narrative: the design of psychological history
4. Theological sources of the idea of development
5. The Christian mystical narrative: Neoplatonism and Christian mysticism
6. Jacob Boehme: towards worldly mysticism
7. Romantic thought: from worldly mysticism to natural supernaturalism
8. Personal supernaturalism: the cultural genealogy of the psychoanalytic developmental narrative
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Psychoanalytical theory [Freudian psychology JMAF]