Modeling Freud and fundamentalism / Andrew Parker -- Myth and dogma in 1920 : the fundamentalist-modernist controversy and Freud's "death drive" / David Adams -- Trees, pain, and beyond : Freud on masochism / Branka Arsić -- Of rats and names / Gil Anidjar -- Mad country, mad psychiatrists : psychoanalysis and the Balkan genocide / Dušan Bjelić -- Everything you always wanted to know about David Lynch, but should be afraid to ask / Slavoj Žižek, Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli -- Fictions of possession : psychoanalysis and the occult / Lecia Rosenthal -- Religion and the future of psychoanalysis / Jacob Taubes -- The contribution of psychoanalysis to understanding the genesis of society / Cornelius Castoriadis -- The hermeneutics of suspicion reconsidered / Joel Whitebook -- On the epistemological status of psychoanalysis / Aristides Baltas.

An account of the final two years in the life of Sigmund Freud and their legacy describes how, in 1938, the elderly, ailing, Jewish Freud was rescued from Nazi-occupied Vienna and brought to London, where he finally found acclaim for his achievements, battled terminal cancer, and wrote his most provocative book, Moses and Monotheism.

Choice Essential Read Did God create man or did man create God? In this book, Dianna Kenny examines religious belief through a variety of perspectives – psychoanalytic, cognitive, neuropsychological, sociological, historical and psychiatric – to provide a coherent account of why people might believe in God. She argues that psychoanalytic theory provides a fertile and creative approach to the study of religion that attempts to integrate religious belief with our innate human nature and developmental histories that have unfolded in the context of our socialization and cultural experiences. Freud argued that religion is so compelling because it solves the problems of our existence. It explains the origin of the universe, offers solace and protection from evil, and provides a blueprint about how we should live our lives, with just rewards for the righteous and due punishments for sinners and transgressors. Science, on the other hand, offers no such explanations about the universe or the meaning of our lives and no comfort for the unanswered longings of the human race. Is religion a form of wish-fulfilment, a collective delusion to which we cling as we try to fathom our place and purpose in the drama of cosmology? Can there be morality without faith? Are science and religion radically incompatible? What are the roots of fundamentalism and terror theology? These are some of the questions addressed in God, Freud and Religion, a book that will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists, students of psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy and theology and all those with an interest in religion and human behaviour. Dianna Kenny is Professor of Psychology at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of over 200 publications, including six books.

In this outstanding book, originally published in 1997, and subsequently translated into many languages, Michael Palmer presents a detailed and comparative study of the two most famous theories of religion in the history of psychology: those of Freud and Jung. The first part of the book analyses Freud's claim that religion is an obsessional neurosis—a psychological illness fueled by sexual repression—and the second part considers Jung's rejection of Freud's theory and his own assertion that it is the absence of religion, not its presence, which leads to neurosis. Originally given as a series of lectures at Bristol University, this Classic edition of Freud and Jung on Religion is important reading for general and specialist readers alike, as it assumes no prior knowledge of the theories of Freud or Jung and is an invaluable teaching text.

Freud argued that religions originate in the unconscious needs, longings and fantasies of human minds. His work has served to highlight how any analysis of religion must explore mental life, both the cognitive and the unconscious. 'Freud on Religion' examines Freud's complex understanding of religious belief and practice. The book brings together contemporary psychoanalytic theory and case material from Freud's clinical practice to illustrate how the operations of the unconscious mind support various forms of religious belief, from mainstream to occult. 'Freud on Religion' offers a new way of understanding Freud's thinking and demonstrates how valuable psychoanalysis is for the study of religion.

The collection "Mediterranean Id-entities" is devoted to publish books in order to investigate the role of Mediterranean cultures from a psychoanalytic point of view, in front of the anthropological transformations concerning human societies and social institutions in the contemporary world. This book has the hard task to cover an interdisciplinary area in which psychoanalysis has to deal with fundamentalism as a social phenomenon and therefore with 'bordering' disciplines (such as religion history, transcultural studies, cultural anthropology) often with epistemologies that for origin and history appear to be incomparable to it. Lene Auestad intends to integrate the psychological analysis of the subject with its social embedding. She investigates the importance of the social unconscious and its effects on the prejudiced intentions of the individual apart from its own active interpretations. She highlights the importance the psychoanalytical approach provides in understanding the unspoken, unconscious contents of the social phenomena and how much the socially critical approach is able to enrich the analytical view which merely focuses on the subject regarding the effects of the social consensus. While Auestad's scrutiny aims at the social convention's role as an agent affecting the individual's deeds and thinking, Linden West's contribution draws on 'psycho-social' understandings, combining psychoanalysis and critical theory, as well as the work of John Dewey, to interrogate Islamic fundamentalist groups in a post-industrial city. It explores processes of self-recognition in groups and paranoid-schizoid modes of functioning, in which unwanted parts of self and of culture are split off and projected on to the other. The world is correspondingly divided into good and bad, pure and impure. John Dewey makes a crucial distinction between processes of democratic education and closed groups, which is what fundamentalist groups are, by reference to the quality of relationship to the other, and to experiential and narrative openness. However, it is also suggested that fundamentalism is ordinary, in that each of us can feel out of our depth, at times, and we may grab at ideas promising truth and nothing but the truth, which is ultimately illusion. Except not everyone reaches for a Kalashnikov, which is where individual biographies matter for subtler understanding of difference within commonalities. Fundamentalism has increasingly become a part of the political discourse in Western countries and is to a large degree associated with Islamic Jihadism. Fundamentalism has, however, been a concern in all religions, and Werner Bohleber in this book discusses its connections with violence in monotheistic religions. Fundamentalism is also a concern in professional organisations and in this book Sverre Varvin discusses the relation between fundaments for a science and fundamentalism in psychoanalysis. This is related to general trends of fundamentalism in religious and political contexts. A central question is how adherence to fundamentals, understood at basic principles for a profession or a religious-political movement, may develop into fundamentalism and how this may develop into more violent forms. Psychoanalytic understanding of mass psychology and unconscious processes at group levels are developed in this book by each of the outstanding authors in order to understand present Islamic and other forms of fundamentalist movements in the European context.

Whether Sigmund Freud's theory precludes serious engagement with psychoanalytic theory for those professing faith in the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition has been controversial for years. Coming to terms with Freud's theory has proved difficult for religious believers because of his stance that religious faith is little more than psychological projection. Building on the work of philosopher and theologian Paul Ricoeur, psychoanalyst Ana-Maria Rizzuto, and feminist theorist Judith Van Herik, author Kirk A. Bingaman demonstrates that it is possible and even advantageous for believers to hold their religious faith in dialectical tension with psychoanalysis. Bingaman shows how Freud's critique of religion can enrich and strengthen, rather than destroy, the faith of the believer. What emerges from the author's argument is a creative method for living within the emotional and spiritual tension that develops whenever our belief system is challenged or disrupted.