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Freud’s collection of antiquities—his "old and dirty gods"—stood as silent witnesses to the early analysts’ paradoxical fascination and hostility toward religion. Pamela Cooper-White argues that antisemitism, reaching back centuries before the Holocaust, and the acute perspective from the margins that it engendered among the first analysts, stands at the very origins of psychoanalytic theory and practice. The core insight of psychoanalytic thought— that there is always more beneath the surface appearances of reality, and that this "more" is among other things affective, memory-laden and psychological—cannot fail to have had something to do with the experiences of the first Jewish analysts in their position of marginality and oppression in Habsburg-Catholic Vienna of the 20th century. The book concludes with some parallels between the decades leading to the Holocaust and the current political situation in the U.S. and Europe, and their implications for psychoanalytic practice today. Covering Pfister, Reik, Rank, and Spielrein as well as Freud, Cooper-White sets out how the first analysts’ position as Europe’s religious and racial "Other" shaped the development of psychoanalysis, and how these tensions continue to affect psychoanalysis today. Old and Dirty Gods will be of great interest to psychoanalysts as well as religious studies scholars.
This is a book about seeing the ultimate mystery as represented by the figure of God. It is not about religion per se, although it makes reference to many of the great religious traditions of the world and their gods. Rather, it is about the presence of the spiritual world and its inhabitants. The author's aim is to attempt to answer the question, How do we see God? through engaging with the images created by a group of children from a number of different cultures and spiritual backgrounds. Through a two-year period, the author travelled the world interviewing more than 500 children, asking them to draw a picture of God, to act and speak as God, and to tell a story about God. This text is a documentation of that journey into the lives and spiritual beliefs of children. Throughout the book, a broad selection of pictures and stories by the children is reproduced and paraphrased. The author offers his own commentaries, not as an analyst in a psychological sense or critic in a literary one, but as a God-seeker trusting in the power of the image to reveal meaning. This unique book will be of primary interest to professionals in the field of psychology, especially child and family therapists, as well as art and drama therapy, sociology, and theology. The book will also have appeal to parents and children who are looking for ways to understand their belief systems in relationship to others.