This article builds on earlier research, which concludes that societies cannot sustain themselves without cultures of optimism. These cultures are reproduced by a complex of ‘optimism promoters’, all of which can be seen to be engaged in a kind of unstated or ‘implicit’ cultural policy, with the production of optimism as one of its goals. The institution of religion is part of this complex. Its...

A n advantage of believing that observations are the foundation of scientific method is that the conditions in which they are made can be stated and then produced. The simplicity of this has its appeal for the psychoanalyst: an analytic situation is presumed to exist and interpretations of the observations made in that situation are then reported. It is possible to believe that the analysis has...

In the early twentieth-century psychoanalytic case history, Jewish psychoanalysts faced discursive challenges in the presentation of Jewish patients. Under the supervision and guidance of Freud, the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel (1868–1940), authored case histories of a rabbi and a priest, both of whom he diagnosed with ‘‘occupational neuroses.’’ In this article, the author compares the case his...

since both science and religion, two different aspects of human understanding, make comment on truth, inevitably we should deal with their relationship. each of the following approaches: differentiation, conflict of confluence, confirm and completion pay special attention on one of the main concerns of science and religion, i.e. relationship between them and its modes. at the same time each of ...

Although the psychoanalytic theories of Heinz Kohut and Otto F. Kernberg have not explicitly focused on loneliness, they potential to offer a rich conceptualization this experience in severe personality pathology. In study, we attempt illustrate discuss various qualities loneliness narcissistic, borderline, other pathology, as implied these theories. Kohut’s views selfobjects are presented link...

The period predating and overlapping with World War II saw psychoanalytic authors respond to the authoritarian fascist developments in Europe through scholarly analytical writings. These authors, sometimes referenced as ‘political Freudians’, were interested bringing psychoanalysis a dialogue progressive social pedagogical movements of their times, focusing critique on persecutory, eliminatory ...

Economic growth has not led to a decline in religion despite past predictions that it would. Using a formal model of religious competition, I show how economic growth produces counteracting effects on religious activity in an open religious market, and that it has little effect in a religious market that is already secularized due to regulations that prohibit religious competition or in a highl...