Probing the Mind to Free the Soul

Christian theology presents an overly simplistic portrayal of the mind and nature of man, his needs, his longings, his beliefs and his aspirations for God. A psychoanalytic protest theology aims at bringing psychoanalytic complexity regarding the mind to theology. Organized Christianity has failed to account for how the unconscious influences interpretations of Scripture and also how application of Scripture to lived life can be damaging if complex unconscious factors are not considered in theology. This book attempts to employ psychoanalytic insights in the exploration of critically important themes addressed by theology. Among them: morality and conscience, autonomy and destiny, and relationship and sexuality, including the sexuality of God, suffering, and law, along with its correlation with death. This is intended to serve an integrative constructive purpose. Both classical psychoanalysis and Christian Scriptures conceptualize sexuality in its large sense as residing at the core of the mind of mankind. Christianity has tended to cope with sexuality by adopting a notion of attainable sexual purity, a myth that this work seeks to expose and dismantle, with a view to enabling the church to more effectively and compassionately engage with real people whose sexuality is characteristically complicated and troublesome.

Stephen G. Fowler, MD, FIPA is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. He has a strong inquisitiveness for the interfaces between psychoanalysis (clinical, theoretical, and philosophical as it applies to it) and Christianity. He is on the faculty of Brookhaven Institute for Psychoanalysis and Christian Theology. Among his interests are cycling, kayaking, painting, skiing, and the active relationships he and his wife maintain with their four children and seven grandchildren.