Psychoanalysis, Monotheism and Morality

International experts reflecting on psychoanalysis in relation to religion and morality.
In this volume renowned experts in psychoanalysis reflect on the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, in particular presenting various controversial interpretations of the question if and to what extent monotheism semantically and structurally fits psychoanalytic insights. Some essays augment traditional religious critiques of Freudianism with later religio-philosophical theories on, for example, femininity. Others explore the relation between psychopathology and morality from the Freudian premise that psychopathology shows in an excessive way aspects or mechanisms of the human psyche that constitute our subjectivity, and as such also our moral capacities and behaviour.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

Contributors: Andreas De Block (University of Leuven), Fethi Benslama (University of Paris Diderot), Sergio Benvenuto (ISTC, Rome), Gohar Homayounpour (Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran), Felix de Mendelssohn (Sigmund Freud University, Vienna), Julia Kristeva (University of Paris Diderot), Lode Lauwaert (University of Leuven), Siamak Movahedi (University of Massachusetts), Wolfgang Müller-Funk (University of Vienna), Gilles Ribault (University of Paris Diderot), Céline Surprenant (University of Sussex), Inge Scholz-Strasser (Sigmund Freud Foundation), Herman Westerink (University of Vienna), Joel Whitebook (Columbia University), Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv University)

Preface
Inge Scholz-Strasser

Introduction
Wolfgang Müller-Funk and Herman Westerink

Part I: The Forces of Monotheism

Moses' Heritage.
Psychoanalysis between Anthropology, History and Enlightenment
Wolfgang Müller-Funk

The Jewish Tradition in Sigmund Freud's Work
Felix de Mendelssohn

Islam in Light of Psychoanalysis
Fethi Benslama

Part II: Religion and its Critiques

Freud's Conception of Religion within the Context of the Modernist Critical Discourse
Moshe Zuckermann

The Need to Believe and the Desire to Know,
Today
Julia Kristeva

Part III: Femininity and the Figure of the Father

Monotheism and the 'Repudiation of Femininity'
Joel Whitebook

Fort!/Da! Through the Chador: The Paradox of the Woman's Invisibility and Visibility
Siamak Movahedi and Gohar Homayounpour

Part IV: Morality

The Two Sources of Morality in Freud's Work
Gilles Ribault

On Moral Responsibility: A Freudian Perspective
Herman Westerink

Pathology and Moral Courage in Freud's Early Case Histories
Céline Surprenant

Part V: Law and Perversion

Does Perversion Need the Law?
Sergio Benvenuto

Outlawed by Nature? A Critique of Some Current
Psychiatric and Psychoanalytic Theories of Sexual Perversion
Andreas De Block and Lode Lauwaert

Bibliography
Notes on the Contributors
Index of Names

Format: Edited volume - paperback

Size: 240 × 160 × 10 mm

216 pages

ISBN: 9789058679352

Publication: May 02, 2013

Series: Figures of the Unconscious 12

Languages: English

Stock item number: 81653

Herman Westerink is senior researcher and lecturer at the Radboud University Nijmegen and extraordinary professor at the University of Leuven.
Inge Scholz-Strasser is Chairwoman of the Sigmund Freud Foundation and Director of the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna.
Wolfgang Müller-Funk is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Department of European and Comparative Literature and Language Studies (University of Vienna) and research coordinator of his faculty.