Freud Jung And Jonah

A multidisciplinary analysis of the Freud-Jung wars that still rage on the discursive territory of religion.

Religion, more than sexuality, cast psychoanalysis in controversy and onto the world stage even as it threatened to dismantle the psychoanalytic collective. In the founding years of the first psychoanalytic periodicals, relational dynamics shaped the psychoanalytic corpus on religion. The psychoanalytic pioneers developed their ideas in tandem even if in protest to one another. Religion is a topic worthy of engagement, not least because the symbolized terrain in the history of religion was so often deployed as a vehicle for motivating, disciplining, or editing out a member of the psychoanalytic community in publication. This book offers an interdisciplinary approach to religion and psychology, including a compelling denouement that reveals new narratives about longstanding rumours in the early history of the psychoanalytic movement. Above all, this volume demonstrates that the first generation of psychoanalysts succeeded in writing themselves into the history of religious thought and sacralizing the origins of psychoanalysis.

Jonah’s radical and enigmatic nature calls for deeper exploration and engagement. Given its brevity, it is also an ideal text for multiple readings from a range of perspectives that complement, build upon, or challenge and critique each other. In Jonah’s Story, Our Challenge, each chapter brings a different hermeneutical tool to the text, to demonstrate the wealth of fresh readings and new vistas which can open up, and the rich resources for ministry which can come from these multiple readings.

“Has all the elements of a juicy novel . . . riveting. . . . Reudite and elegant.” —Newsday NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, Direcetd by Dabid Cronenbertg and STARRING KEIRA KNIGHTLY, VIGGO MORENSEN, MICHAEL FASSBENDER, and VINCENT CASSEL In 1907, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung began what promised to be both a momentous collaboration and the deepest friendship of each man’s life. Six years later they were bitter antagonists, locked in a savage struggle that was as much personal and emotional as it was theoretical and professional. Between them stood a young woman named Sabina Spielrein, who had been both patient and lover to Jung and colleague and confidante to Freud before going on to become an innovative psychoanalyst herself. With the narrative power and emotional impact of great tragedy, A Dangerous Method is impossible to put down.

This book gives the substance of Jung's published writings on Freud and psychoanalysis between 1906 and 1916, with two later papers. The book covers the period of the enthusiastic collaboration between the two pioneers of psychology through the years when Jung's growing appreciation of religious experience and his criticism of Freud's emphasis on pathology led, with other differences, to his formal break with his mentor.