The Suicide of Thomas Merton: Moral Narcissism,Contemplative Prayer,and the Religion of Humor

In this third and final of three successive essays, the author argues that Thomas Merton suffered from narcissistic personality disorder in conjunction with his melancholic condition. The author argues that contemplative prayer disabled Merton from working through his melancholic condition. Finally, the author argues that Merton’s melancholia, coupled with his heightened identity conflicts lead him to kill himself.     

The Book of Job and Male Melancholia: A Bizarre Story about Hating Mother God and the Maternal Jesus,Featuring Mel Gibson

This article tells, or advocates, a bizarre story about male revenge. By drawing from literature in the psychology of religion that deals with the Book of Job and by assuming the standpoint of “cultural hermeneutics” in biblical studies, the author playfully takes up an issue identified by Donald Capps: the issue of repressed rage in male melancholia. The author takes his cue from a recent doctoral dissertation from Princeton Theological Seminary. Jacobus Hamman (2000) applies a Winnicottian analysis to the Book of Job and argues that the Book of Job can be a useful pastoral resource today in a number of ways, including his proposal for believers to direct their aggression toward God. Implicit in Hamman’s Winnicottian analysis, but never explicitly stated, is the fact that God is Mother. The plot here is how the Book of Job might lead contemporary American men to hate Mother God and the maternal Jesus, thereby aiding them in externalizing their repressed and self-directed rage. Mel Gibson stars, if only briefly, in this childish story that presses the limits of Christian theology.     

John Prine’s Images of God and Male Melancholia: Terror,Forgiveness, and the Persistence of Desire

Examines the God-representations of the country-folk singer John Prine in the light of psychological theory about male melancholia, drawing from Donald Capps and Erik H. Erikson. Describes the manner in which songwriting serves as a therapeutic enterprise to express and interpret melancholia in Prine's lyrics, especially in the songs "Saddle in the Rain" and "Fish and Whistle." At times these images evoke terror and at other times they humorously erase the authority divide between the divine and the human, suggesting that God may even need to be forgiven. Describing how melancholia is rooted in the man's experience with mother, this article interprets Prine's image of God in light of the need for sustenance, acknowledgement, and care.

The Evolution of John Nash's Male Melancholia: From Honor to Hope to Humor

This article is a response to the psychoanalytic study of mathematical genius John Nash by Donald Capps, and I apply Capps's own theory of male melancholia to John Nash. Capps interpreted Nash's life by dividing it into three phases: 1) predelusional; 2) delusional; and 3) postdelusional. I correlate Capps's three forms of male religiousness (i.e., honor, hope, and humor) with these three phases, respectively. The explanatory value of this interpretation is that it locates Capps's psychobiography of Nash within Capps's larger writings, thus providing an understanding of Nash as a deeply (if unconventionally) religious man.     

Shame,Ministry, and Theological Education: Leaves from the Notebook of a Defiant Seminarian

Many young adult Christians are highly influenced by relativism of all sorts, which can lead them to a state of doubt. If they voice their doubts too loudly, they are often shamed and abandoned by their elder Christians who do not have (or, perhaps better, do not voice) these doubts. I suggest that those of us involved in youth ministry must meet our youth where they are at, that is, meet them in their doubt, which is not, in my view, a bad place to be. This article focuses on a psychoanalytic understanding of shame and draws from the work of Donald Capps, Erik H. Erikson, Heinz Kohut, and D. W. Winnicott.     

Ritual and Heroism: A Study in Cross Cultural Religious Practices and Religious Personalities

In this article, the author argues that heavily ritualized cultures need heroic religious personalities to sustain their hierarchical structures. The religious hero becomes the central symbol of what is socially peripheral in the culture, and though these heroes are thought to perform superhuman altruistic deeds, they actually are the cornerstone of the maintenance of oppressive social orders. While the heroic or resigned religious posture is a legitimately religious posture, the author argues for the superiority of an aesthetic religious posture in light of anthropological and psychological studies of religion.     

Merton’s Melancholia: Mother,Monasticism, and the Religion of Honor

In this first of several successive articles on Thomas Merton, the author interprets Merton’s vocational call, identity conflicts, and radical asceticism in light of the psychoanalytic study of Donald Capps, Erik Erikson, and Sigmund Freud. The author argues that Merton’s early identity and religious development formed deep conflicts in his psyche. These conflicts remained unconscious and unresolved, leading to disastrous consequences. This article examines Merton’s life until his affair with Margie Smith in 1966.