Freud (1905/1953) anchored his theories of unconscious psychological functioning in observations and inferences about childhood sexuality. These ideas remain influential among psychoanalysts today. Much progress subsequently occurred in extra-psychoanalytic research in human sexuality. This included the discovery in 1959 of an entirely new area of psychology: the sexual differentiation of behav...

Evolutionary theories of religion are essential for understanding current trends in terrorist activity. We outline recent theoretical developments that focus on four cross-culturally recurrent features of religion: communal participation in costly ritual, belief in supernatural agents and counterintuitive concepts, separation of the sacred and the profane, and adolescence as the critical life p...

Understanding the developmental roots of narcissism has inspired much theorizing but little systematic inquiry. In this light, the longitudinal study by Brummelman et al. (1), which found that early socialization experiences in the form of parental overvaluation predicts the development of childhood narcissism, is a notable contribution to the empirical literature. Establishing a link between c...

Psychoanalysis is in crisis. Its prestige with the public has plummeted, as well as its economic viability and even its population. There are fewer analytic candidates and fewer patients, less insurance coverage, less presence in departments of psychiatry, and less prestige among the traditional academic disciplines. Analysts are getting older, and there are fewer and fewer young ones to replac...

This paper investigates whether conspiracy theories arising during the COVID-19 pandemic are linked to early trauma or a specific organization of mind. Using Reptilian theory as an example, proposes that belief in can activate unresolved memories and serve mediator between psyche intrusive content. Classic psychoanalytic concepts, well more modern ideas from Britton Steiner, explored understand...

This journey started in 1950 at Antioch College when I wrote a required Life Aims paper to make a comparative study of East and West in philosophy, religion, art, literature, and the social sciences. In 1977 I went to India on a grant for clinical psychoanalytic research to assess the psychological effects of Westernization on Indians, to ascertain differences in configurations of the self from...

Attachment theory and psychoanalysis are enjoying a reconciliation. After decades of mutual antagonism, clinicians and researchers alike have renewed interest in examining common underpinnings of attachment theory and psychoanalytic theories of development, evaluating overlapping concepts to determine how these theories can be mutually enhancing. This reconciliatory work appears to be primarily...

This paper sets out to explore if standard psychoanalytic thinking based on clinical experience can illuminate instability in financial markets and its widespread human consequences. Buying, holding or selling financial assets in conditions of inherent uncertainty and ambiguity, it is argued, necessarily implies an ambivalent emotional and phantasy relationship to them. Based on the evidence of...

Although religion deals with humankind’s ultimate concerns, such as universal compassion or the quest for divine peace and perfection, to some people the psychological study of religion and spirituality may seem only marginally relevant to positive psychology. In part, this could be because of the negative stances that many theorists have taken toward religion. For instance, Freud (1927/1953) c...