Psychoanalytic theory has been criticized for decontextualizing individual development. While recognizing the historical neglect of sociocultural context in psychoanalytic theory, this article raises attention to psychoanalytic contributions to the exploration of sociocultural issues in psychotherapy and calls for a systematic inclusion of cultural competence as a core area of emphasis of psych...

The question about fantasy and fiction in religion is probably as old the first interrogation critique of revealed religion. However, relation between a two-way street. Underlying both imagination which brings into play psychological dimension but this turn always based on body. Fantasy dreamily imagines perfect body precisely to try fill gap left by imperfection. As an example from religious f...

The papers in this issue arose from a conference on the Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity that took place at Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia) in August, 2003.1 This conference brought together scholars from ten nations and six disciplines (psychology, anthropology, religious studies, biology, philosophy, and cognitive science) to explore new developments at the interface...

THE WIDENING SCOPE OF PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT HAS initiated a controversy in psychoanalytic theory and technique. Central to this controversy is the issue of the place of the self in psychoanalytic theory. Two broad and apparently antithetical positions have been taken. The first position is that radical revision of psychoanalytic theory is necessary to account for new data relating to the sel...

In the following reflections on the understanding of truth in regard to Christian faith (or even in regard to religious faith, experience, and language in general), I advocate a relational interpretation of truth. Truth in that sense is understood not primarily as an intellectual assertion but as a qualification of a dynamic, existential, personal relation. Truth is the trustworthiness of that ...

The ideas that are commonly associated with Esther Bick, such as primal skin function, defensive second skin phenomena and adhesive identity, are traditionally seen as affiliated to the larger body of work that constitutes the Kleinian school. I shall argue, however, that Bick's thinking owes a largely communally unrecognised debt to the work of her training analyst, Michael Balint. Beginning w...

Narcissism has been a perennial topic for psychoanalytic papers since Freud's 'On narcissism: An introduction' (1914). The understanding of this field has recently been greatly furthered by the analytical writings of Kernberg and Kohut despite, or perhaps because of, their glaring disagreements. Despite such theoretical advances, clinical theory has far outpaced clinical practice. This paper pr...

Although object relations theories are increasingly prominent in the psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic literature, efforts to study these phenomena empirically remain in their infancy. Researchers interested in studying intrapsychic processes have nonetheless attempted to assess levels of object relatedness, and several reports have documented both construct and predictive validity. This lit...

Both psychoanalytic views of attachment and evolutionary theories of imprinting suggest that mates may be preferentially chosen to resemble one’s parents. Using data from a large Dutch study of twins and their families, we tested these hypotheses with regard to personality traits from the Five-Factor Model. Little evidence of parent/spouse similarity was found, although women did tend to select...