Renowned psychologist Paul Vitz addresses the troubling fact that scientific progress is no longer making human beings happy. In fact, the reverse trend is taking hold: individuals are more distressed and struggle with overwhelming confusion regarding personal identity and the meaningfulness of life as technology makes daily life more 'manageable.' Vitz asserts there is a noteworthy connection between the sense of personal identity and flourishing, and the connection between well-being and...

In this updated, expanded edition, starting with Freud's "projection theory" of religion - that belief in God is merely a product of man's desire for security - Professor Vitz argues that psychoanalysis actually provides a more satisfying explanation for atheism. Disappointment in one's earthly father, whether through death, absence, or mistreatment, frequently leads to a rejection of God.A biographical survey of influential atheists of the past four centuries shows that this "defe...

Despite its name, “naturalism” as a world-view turns out to be rather unnatural in its strict and more consistent form of materialism and determinism. This is why a number of naturalists opt for a broadened version that includes objective moral values, intrinsic human dignity, consciousness, beauty, personal agency, and the like. But in doing so, broad naturalism begins to look more like theism. As many strict naturalists recognize, broad naturalism must borrow from the metaphysical resour...

Now available for the first time in audiobook format! Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship, has been hailed by many as a “modern classic” among both secular and Christian thinkers alike. This work is a trenchant analysis of modern psychology—an enterprise that Paul Vitz maintains has become a religion, a secular cult of self, now part of the problem of modern life rather than part of its resolution.This audiobook, which was created from the sec...

Radical Claims in Freudian Psychoanalysis: Point/Counterpoint, edited by M. Andrew Holowchak, features pro and con essays on some of the most extreme Freudian claims, including the Freudian unconscious and the Oedipus complex. Holowchak collects the writings of critical scholars in the fields of psychology and philosophy who have distinguished themselves in the area through prior publications.This edited collection comprises six parts that address the topics—the Oedipus complex, dr...

Rollo May draws on the insights of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and other great thinkers to offer a helpful roadmap of the ideas and techniques of existential psychotherapy.He pays particular attention to the causes of loneliness and isolation, and to our search for stability in an age of anxiety.

About this Book..."A major and long overdue addition to the America/English psychoanalytic literature. . . . All major concepts—among them the mirror stage, the Name-of-the-Father, metaphor and metonymy, the phallus, the foreclosure of the subject—are developed in depth."-Nicholas Kouretsas, Harvard Medical School

In this fully updated second edition, the author clearly introduces and assesses all of Freud's thought, focusing on those areas of philosophy on which Freud is acknowledged to have had a lasting impact. These include the philosophy of mind, free will and determinism, rationality, the nature of the self and subjectivity, and ethics and religion. He also considers some of the deeper issues and problems Freud engaged with, brilliantly illustrating their philosophical significance: human sexu...

This book presents the theories and observations of each major contributor to the discussion of psychoanalytic technique and reveals the particular advantages and disadvantages which fall to the various theoretical positions and orientations adopted by each contributor.

Bestselling author Max van Manen’s Researching Lived Experience introduces a human science approach to research methodology in education and related fields. The book takes as its starting point the "everyday lived experience" of human beings in educational situations. Rather than rely on abstract generalizations and theories in the traditional sense, the author offers an alternative that taps the unique nature of each human situation. First published in 1990, this book is a classic of soci...

Utilizing the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the ethics of Emmanuel Lévinas, The Suffering Stranger invigorates the conversation between psychoanalysis and philosophy, demonstrating how each is informed by the other and how both are strengthened in unison. Orange turns her critical (and clinical) eye toward five major psychoanalytic thinkers – Sándor Ferenczi, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, D. W. Winnicott, Heinz Kohut, and Bernard Brandchaft – investigating the hermeneutic appro...

Thinking for Clinicians provides analysts of all orientations with the tools and context for working critically within psychoanalytic theory and practice. It does this through detailed chapters on some of the philosophers whose work is especially relevant for contemporary theory and clinical writing: Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Hans-Georg Gadamer. Orange presents the historical background for their ideas, along with clinical vign...