This book is a philosophical study of the Freudian psychoanalysis of religion from a hermeneutical perspective. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, the twentieth-century French phenomenologist, the author offers a sustained and rigorous reflection on Freud s critique of Christian religion and raises the pertinent question of whether psychoanalysis should be conceived of as a form of hermeneutics. To this end, the author details the often acrimonious debates and discussions that took place between Ricoeur and Jacques Lacan, as well as drawing on the work of Slavoj i ek on this intriguing...

It was Freud, borrowing Nietszche's phrase from Thus Spake Zarathustra, who described as 'pale criminals' those who committed criminal acts out of deep-lying (unconscious) guilt. The focus of this challenging and penetrating study is on this type of criminality. The book bring sa 'unifying vision and theoretical integration' to the array

This work is an ambitious, original, and searching study as to what constitutes and comprises 'mental health'. It advances the proposition that existential or holistic health depends on integral wholeness, the synthesis of body, mind, and heart. As such, a tri-dimensional model is proposed based on the triadic self, rooted in philosophical perspectives on the subject, arguing throughout that the human person is a unity-in-diversity, that one is always whole and well in one's Self (essence), which must be distinguished from the ego (personality). The importance and relevance of the Enneagram...

Drawing on a host of philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Gabriel Marcel, Josef Pieper, Paul Ricoeur, Viktor Frankl, Eric Voegelin, Bernard Lonergan, Roger Scruton, John Caputo, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, this book argues passionately for the place of hope as the 'beyond' of both a will-o'-the-wisp, facile optimism, on the one hand, and a world-weary, fatuous pessimism, on the other. Drawing on the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta in the concluding chapter, it suggests that only by...

This work is an ambitious, original, and searching study as to what constitutes and comprises 'mental health'. It advances the proposition that existential or holistic health depends on integral wholeness, the synthesis of body, mind, and heart. As such, a tri-dimensional model is proposed based on the triadic self, rooted in philosophical perspectives on the subject, arguing throughout that the human person is a unity-in-diversity, that one is always whole and well in one's Self (essence), which must be distinguished from the ego (personality). The importance and relevance of the Enneagram...