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Beyond Yahweh and Jesus constitutes the first in-depth psychoanalytic study of the Old and New Testaments in terms of God's role in enabling humans to cope with death and the anxiety it evokes. The journey on which this study embarks leads through an examination of the related topics of knowledge acquisition; divine wisdom; conscious and unconscious morality; what the author argues is the failure of psychoanalysis to ally itself with religion and the failure of religion to bring peace to the world; and a proposition for how to enhance both religious and secular forms of morality and adaptation to death anxiety.
List of contents
Chapter 1 Author's Note Chapter 2 My Appointment in Samara Chapter 3 The First Question: God's Answer Chapter 4 The First Question: Eve's Answer Chapter 5 Death Anxiety and Divine Wisdom Chapter 6 Augustine's Version of Adam's Sin Chapter 7 Eve's Motives Chapter 8 Cain and Abel Chapter 9 Augustine's Reliving of the Sin of Cain Chapter 10 The Failure to Master Death Anxiety: Yahweh Chapter 11 Resolving Death Anxiety: Jesus Christ Chapter 12 The Failure of Religious Beliefs Chapter 13 Why Psychoanalysis Failed Religion Chapter 14 The Future of Religious and Secular Spirituality
About the author
Robert Langs, M.D. is the author of 45 books and some 170 papers on psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, the emotion-processing mind and its evolutionary history and adapative capacities, the therapeutic interaction and its boundaries, ground rules, and techniques, and the role played by trauma, death, and death anxiety in both human creativity and emotional difficulties as played out in the treatment situation and everyday life.
Summary
Constitutes a psychoanalytic study of the Old and New Testaments in terms of God's role in enabling humans to cope with death and the anxiety it evokes. This study embarks on a journey that leads through an examination of the related topics of knowledge acquisition; divine wisdom; conscious and unconscious morality.
