Reading Loewald: Oedipus reconceived

Loewald's 'Waning of the Oedipus complex' is a watershed paper in the history of psychoanalytic thought. By means of a close reading of Loewald's paper, the author frames, discusses and clinically illustrates his understanding of Loewald's reconceptualization of the Oedipus complex. The principal elements of Loewald's reformulation include: 1) the idea that the tension between the pressures of parental infl uence and the child's innate need to establish his own capacities for originality lies at the core of the Oedipus complex; 2) the notion that oedipal parricide is driven, most fundamentally, by the child's 'urge for emancipation.' Parricide involves a revolt against, and an appropriation of, parental authority; 3) the idea that the child atones for the act of parricide by internalizing a transformed version of the child's experience of the oedipal parents. This results in an alteration of the very structure of the child's self (i.e. in the formation of the superego as the agency of autonomy and responsibility); 4) the notion that, in the child's appropriation of parental authority, he in reality 'kill[s] something vital in them [thus] contributing to their dying' and to the succession of generations; and 5) the idea that the incestuous component of the Oedipus complex involves, in health, the creation of a transitional incestuous object relationship which, over the course of one's life, mediates the interplay between undifferentiated and differentiated aspects of self and relatedness to others. The author concludes with a comparison of Freud's and Loewald's conceptions of the Oedipus complex.     

Klein's Archaic Oedipus Complex and Its Possible Relationship to the Myth of the Labyrinth: Notes on the Origin of Courage

The ancient Greek myth linking the images of the labyrinth and the Minotaur provides an allegory for Melanie Klein's conception of the archaic Oedipus complex as well as a vivid illustration of Winnicott's notions of object usage and the 'subjective object'. The labyrinth is suggestive of mother's body as the first area for an infant's exploration and putative sadistic conquest. The Minotaur, in turn, suggests the infant's unconscious phantasies about the content of mother's body, namely such projective identifications onto that body as the paternal penis and the 'internal babies'. Further, the heroic dynamic personified by Theseus in the myth of the labyrinth metaphorically signifies what is here proposed as a developmental line that involves the courage to do a number of things, including to become, to create, to seek, to explore, to do, to challenge, to undertake risks, to accept, to rescue, to initiate, to think, to know and to realize. The Minotaur can thus be thought to serve as a universal subjective signifier for an 'Object of Challenge', which, if not successfully dealt with by the ego-development of the infant, transforms that default into the 'Object of Nemesis'. Ultimately, this myth of mastery speaks to the psychoanalytic process itself as well as casting light on the transformative aspects of sexual intercourse as a personal healing ritual.     

重释“宗教”:史密斯对于宗教概念的消解

史密斯质疑宗教概念的普遍有效性,从词源学和观念史角度对宗教的含义及其变迁作了历史考察,指出它不过是西方近代文明的一个产物,并不适合解释其他文明的生活传统,主张用信仰和累积的传统两个独立的概念取而代之。依据这一概念框架来解释儒家传统会消除一些困难。     

Myths, models, and metaphors: Religion as model and the philosophy of science

Clifford Geertz's widely-used paper ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, makes the claim that ‘the importance of religion lies in its capacity to serve … as a source of general, yet distinctive conceptions of the world, the self and the relations between them …—its model of aspect—and of rooted, no less distinctive “mental” dispositions—its model for aspect’. However, apart from a highly critical article by Nancy Frankenberry and Hans Penner (1999) little attempt has been made to investigate this understanding of religion as model. This paper briefly considers the validity of Frankenberry and Penner's criticism and investigates possible applications of the elaborate analysis of models and metaphors in the philosophy of science since the time of Mary Hesse to the analysis of religious phenomena.     

Belonging without commitment: the Christocentric view and the traditionist perspective on modern religion

This essentially theoretical article suggests a novel way to conceptualise the middle spaces of people whose link to religion is perceived as partial and fragmentary – the vast majority of the population in the world of the twenty-first century, who belong to a religious tradition but are quite selective in their observances. We first argue that current conceptualisation of the middle spaces suffers from a predisposition we view as ‘Christocentric’. As the key to an alternative and non-Christocentric approach, we suggest the concept of ‘traditionism’, which permits a new theoretical discussion of the meanings of religion for contemporary individuals who belong to a religious tradition but are not fully committed to its current authorities or affiliated with recognised denominations. As a case study to clarify the new, non-Christocentric conceptualisation, we suggest the religious identity of contemporary ‘Arab Jews’ – Jews whose families originated in the Muslim Middle East – to highlight the potential contribution of a certain Jewish perspective to an understanding of modern religion as tradition and of modern practitioners of religion who belong to no denomination as ‘traditionists’.     

The Spiritual Task of Religion in Culture: An Evolutionary Perspective

It is quite impossible to consider human nature within an evolutionary perspective if we leapfrog over culture and establish some direct relation between cosmic and human evolution without taking culture into consideration. Culture holds a significant place within the structures of nature, as the "epic" of evolution portrays nature—cosmic, physical, and biological. Religion emerges within culture, and it plays a role in organizing the human consciousness and in generating the stories, rituals, and morality that constitute the organization of consciousness. Since organization of consciousness determines how culture is conducted, and since we face a global crisis today because of the ways we are conducting our culture, religion's role is critical for the future of culture. Wherever it is attempted, whether in terms of traditional or posttraditional modes, the fashioning of adequate worldviews, rituals, and morality is an essentially religious activity. For both traditional and posttraditional modes, the task is to weave structures of meaning with the sciences of evolution so as to effect the most suitable organization of consciousness.     

Does God Play Dice? A Response to Niels H. Gregersen, “The Idea of Creation and the Theory of Autopoietic Processes”

The idea that the Creator has a plan for creation is deeply rooted in the Christian notion of Providence. This notion seems to suggest that the history of creation must be the execution of the providential plan of God. Such an understanding of divine providence expects science to confirm that cosmic history is under supernatural guidance, that evolution is therefore oriented toward a goal—to bring forth human beings, for example. The problem is, however, that science finds evidence for neither supernatural guidance nor teleology in nature. To address this problem, I understand Niels H. Gregersen to suggest that God is involved in the creative process. The reason science cannot demonstrate God's supernatural guidance of evolution is that the Creator structures the process from within. Gregersen argues that God is involved in the process of creation by changing the overall probability pattern of evolving systems.
In my view, such a model of how God interacts with creation is supported neither by orthodox Christianity nor by modern science. After a critique of Gregersen's argument and a brief history of the relationship between Christianity and science, I shall suggest an alternative. It is that the freedom of creation to create itself is implicit in the fundamental dogma of Christianity that God is love.     

The lethic phallus: rethinking the misery of Oedipus

The author rethinks Sophocles' dramas Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus with a special focus on how self- and object-preservative drives are expressed in the protagonist's thoughts, feelings, and actions. What endangered Oedipus' survival at the beginning of his life-the planned infanticide-becomes the disease that later befalls his kingdom and finally culminates in his self-mutilation, which entitles the blinded Oedipus to be cared for by Antigone until he dies. The concept of the lethic phallus demonstrates how trauma and the resultant failure in structuring the lethic energies of the preservative and death drives can result in a specific pathology in which disease is used as a trophy and a means to bind the object in an ongoing caretaker relationship.     

Marriage as Covenant: Tradition as a Guide to Marriage Education in the Pastoral Context

Public sentiment and rhetoric in recent years have unleashed a maelstrom of discussion over the definition of marriage. The insights that arise from consulting tradition and understanding the development of marriage for Christians are fundamental for explicating the special place matrimony holds in Christianity. Marriage ministry, especially marriage education, must employ an integrated holistic approach that offers a balanced presentation of the social, personal, and spiritual dimensions of marriage. The purpose of this paper is to review Christian tradition in order to inform and guide a ministerial praxis.     

Theory as a Tool in the Social Scientific Study of Religion and Martin Riesebrodt's The Promise of Salvation

No single paradigm or debate currently orients the social scientific study of religion. Because of this, those engaged in the multidisciplinary study of religion find that a public conversation is often difficult. In this article and the Forum it introduces, we explore Martin Riesebrodt's recently published book, The Promise of Salvation: A Theory of Religion. Responding to the inadequacies of secularization paradigms, rational choice models, and postmodern criticism, Riesebrodt proposes an approach that ideal‐typically reconstructs the subjective meanings of institutionalized religious practices (liturgies). These subjective meanings center on the prevention and management of crises—social, natural, and bodily—through appeal and access to superhuman powers. This pragmatic emphasis on the superhuman defines religion as a distinct sphere of social action transhistorically and transculturally. Riesebrodt's theory creates new analytical possibilities, especially for understanding the modern resurgence of religion under conditions of secularization.     

The Little Mermaid: Hans Christian Andersen's Feminine Identification

While verbally transmitted fairy tales express universal human concerns, the literary fairy tale, the written creation of an individual author, permits a psychodynamic understanding of the writer. The little mermaid's willingness to undergo the pain and mutilation involved in the loss of both her tail and was voice in order to become a mortal and marry a prince has been regarded as illustrating problems in female sexual development. However, a review of Hans Christian Andersen's biographical data indicates that the story also represents his unconscious homosexual conflicts and supports Freud's concept of the role of castration anxiety in the negative Oedipus complex.     

From Ghosts to Ancestors: The Psychoanalytic Vision of Hans Loewald

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

The Problem of Many Hands: Climate Change as an Example

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, we propose to define the problem of many hands as the occurrence of a gap in the distribution of responsibility that may be considered morally problematic. Whether a gap is morally problematic, we suggest, depends on the reasons why responsibility is distributed. This, in turn, depends, at least in part, on the sense of responsibility employed, a main distinction being that between backward-looking and forward-looking responsibility.     

Sacred space: function and mission from a sociological and theological perspective

Drawing on interviews with 21 individuals who attend religious services mainly for religious holidays and rites of passage and case studies with a Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation and a Roman Catholic congregation, we offer a sociological and theological discussion of ‘sacred space’. Sociologically, we argue that sacred space is an important reason for why annual attenders attend religious services when they do, mainly because sacred space helps to centre them with some semblance of meaning and direction, transition and transformation in life. Theologically, we show that church leaders, when thinking about and creating sacred space relative to the mission of their church, give importance to individuals' religious journeys and transformation. However, they appear to give greater ascendancy to the missional belief that sacred space should facilitate horizontal relationships between humans more so than vertical relationships between humans and God.     

Heaven on Earth: The Mind Uploading Project as Secular Eschatology

This paper addresses the greatest aspiration of the transhumanist movement: achieving immortal life through a procedure known as mind uploading. This procedure consists in keeping our minds fully and indefinitely operative after death by transferring them to a non-biological substrate that allows man to be liberated from his bodily confinement. My main thesis is that the mind uploading project presupposes a secular eschatology, consummating the Promethean utopia according to which human beings could redeem themselves, expelling God definitively from their existential horizon. On this basis, the paper offers meaningful contrasts between the uploading as secular eschatology and the Christian tradition.     

The Double Face of Christian Mission and Education in India from Dalit and Decolonial Perspectives

Missionaries from Europe came to India starting in the 15th century to preach the gospel. Their mission works have both intended and unintended consequences that affect people even today. Missionaries brought modern education to India and gave Western education to Dalits, leading to the social uplifting of Dalits, who were denied education by the oppressive caste system. Some missionaries also spoke against the social evils during their time. On the other hand, some missionaries’ work at times highlighted the Brahmanic religion as a pan-India religion which placed popular religions in a disadvantaged position. Furthermore, their work also helped the British colonial government to maintain control and become powerful. The translation work of the missionaries and the educational institutions helped the colonial government to strengthen its control over the local population. This article discusses the mission work of Robert de Nobili, Bartholomew Ziegenbalg, and William Carey and evaluates their mission works from Dalit and decolonial perspectives.     

Beyond Christianity: The Status of Women and Rape Myths

The Edwards et al. (2011) paper is an important review of several rape myths that are prevalent in American culture. When discussing religion, Edwards et al. (2011) present a rather thorough review of the presence of such rape myths in Christianity but lack a discussion of rape myths in other religions. Given the profound influence of religion on culture, notably the treatment of women, it is important to go beyond Christianity in a discussion of rape myths. Although there is much attention given to the treatment of women in Islam, the current paper will address religions that often receive less attention as well. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to review the treatment of women and the use of rape myths in non-Western religions.     

The writing of clinical papers: the analyst as illusionist

Rather than begin by defining what we mean when we call a paper 'clinical', I would like to reflect on how such a piece of work originates, how, through the interplay between the written and the spoken word, it becomes clinical and good enough for a professional journal.
In the following, I shall pay particular attention to recent publications from the editorial side, that is, those by Wharton, one of the three editors of The Journal of Analytical Psychology , and by Tuckett, editor of The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis . I shall plead that there should not only be one kind of clinical paper, namely the type that for political reasons seems to be the one that is most wanted at the present time and the aim of which is to put psychoanalysis on more secure foundations than it currently is.