Calvinism and psychoanalysis: A comparative study

Summary Although the title of this essay suggests a comparison of psychoanalysis and Calvinism, I have chosen to compare primarily the two leaders of these movements. On many points they shared similar beliefs. Certain of these areas have been highlighted and discussed briefly: ascetic tendencies, work, religion, concepts of God and of man, actions as symptoms, and predestination and determinism.     

A biblical and historical study of homosexuality

This study is a synthesis of biblical and historical material regarding the place of homosexuality in the Christian churches. The author argues that all sexual activity, both heterosexual and homosexual in orientation, should be judged appropriate for Christians when it is a responsible, mutually respectful and loving act between adult persons that is intended to enhance the building and maintaining of whole persons. Therefore, if a person is in all other ways qualified for membership and its contingent responsibilities in the Christian community (or any other community), his or her sexual orientation and behavior should not be a barrier.This study was initially prepared for the Human Sexuality Task Force of the Diocese of Western North Carolina.     

Lessons from Watergate. A derivative for psychoanalysis.

Periods of social upheaval, by revealing aspects of behavior ordinarily repressed, provide an opportunity for deepening out insights into the nature of man. The searing experience of Watergate is viewed not as the psychopathology of a man, or the group psychology of forty men under the ex-President, but as reflecting psychic processes at the base of the population pyramid. The people supported Nixon for a quarter century during which his character traits were known, and were in collusion with the cover-up to the end during the two and half years of Watergate. The theory is advanced that this was due to an identification with Nixon based on the universal wish to triumph over the superego. Ego-superego conflicts are as ubiquitous and ongoing in mental life as the struggle between ego and id. The latter results in neuroses, the former in compromises of integrity. The 'syndrome of the compromise of integrity' is on a par with neurosis in human affairs.     

Analytical psychology and its relation to psychoanalysis. A personal view

Jungian analysis is a process based on analytical psychology; it shows local variations giving emphasis to different aspects of Jung's work within the various societies which make up the IAAP. I describe the orientation of the Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP). I have emphasized the different origins of psychoanalysis and analytical psychology and described how, because we encounter the same clinical phenomena, our differences centre on technique and interpretation in the context of our theoretical differences (see Astor 1998, p. 697 & 2001). In the main the link to psychoanalysis has come from the connection forged by Fordham, who recognized that Jung and Klein shared a similar perception of the significance of unconscious phantasy. For Klein unconscious phantasy was the primary unconscious content, and this is different, as Spillius has recently pointed out, from Freud for whom, 'the prime mover, so to speak, is the unconscious wish.