Psychology, Symbolism, and the Sacred

Psychology, Symbolism, and the Sacred
Author: S. T. Manning
Publisher: PageFree Publishing, Inc.
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2004
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9781589612785

One in a very long while a book like this comes along, offering startling insights into the very nature of being. Innovative and provocative, Manning presents a courageous and penetrating inside look into the convoluted religious world and offers some truly original formulas for dealing with society s current religious problems. This stirringly original book draws upon colorful and dramatic proofs in history, mythology, science, and psychology to candidly confront religious fundamentalism - probably the greatest menace facing our world today.

Exploring Sacred Landscapes

Exploring Sacred Landscapes
Author: Mary Lou Randour
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1993
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780231070003

TABLE OF CONTENTS: 1. Exploring sacred landscapes 2. Countertransference and transference aspects of religious material in psychotherapy: The isolation or integration of religious material 3. Ministry or therapy: The role of transference and countertransference in a religious therapist 4. The use of religiou simagery for psychological structuralization 5. Myth and symbol as expressions of the religious 6. Religious imagery in the clinical context: Access to compassion toward the self - illusion or truth 7. The transcendent moment and the analytic hour 8. Concluding clinical postscript: On developing a psychotheological perspective 9. Psychology and spirituality: Forgoing a new relationship.

Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts

Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts
Author: Mircea Eliade
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1992-04-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780826406187

Major work is distinguished by an intensity of inspiration and an overwhelming sense of personal vision. This merging of inspiration and vision permits the creation of a classic oeuvre whose creator is deemed to be a 'master of his craft, ' or perhaps better, 'a seminal mind.' Such is the work of the historian of religious, Mirceas Eliade. In his lifelong quest to understand the presence of the Sacred throughout human history, Eliade has been fascinated by two central themes: Creation and Time.

The Curve of the Sacred

The Curve of the Sacred
Author: Constantin V. Ponomareff
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401203202

This interdisciplinary book examines the nature of spirituality and the role it plays in the search for meaning. Spirituality is a loving tendency towards the sacred. In a secular environment, the sacred is taken to be a power greater than self. In a religious environment, the Sacred refers to God, or Higher Power. The book examines the developments of the s/Sacred in great works of art and literature, as well as in medicine, theology, psychology, philosophy, and religion. Spirituality also functions as an unloving tendency towards disunity, or a force for evil. The first part of the book examines the ways of the spiritual as a force for good and evil. We have just witnessed one of the bloodiest centuries in human history. The experience of two World Wars leaves a legacy of brokenness: “Where Nossack’s reminiscences bore poetic, compassionate, and personal witness to the disaster, Eliot’s poetry reads more like a sacred and religious poem taking contemporary Western European civilization to task—much like the biblical prophets of old—for its spiritual bankruptcy.” Albert Einstein, Edvard Munch’s Madonna, and Carl Jung’s ‘unconscious’ touch the curve of the Sacred in more promising places. The second part examines how the search for meaning works. The distinction between being human and being a person plays a central role in the life of the spiritual; “...the spiritual is manifest in the activities taking place in the central self. The central self is the locus of all thoughts, feelings, acts of reason and judgment, conscious and unconscious processes alike. The central self is the place where social relationships and environmental relationships are processed. The essential feature of the central self is that it does not exist outside these processes.” The same spiritual energies that light up great works of art also light up our destructive side, only the associations’ change.

The Psychology of Religion and Place

The Psychology of Religion and Place
Author: Victor Counted
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 303028848X

This book examines the role of religious and spiritual experiences in people’s understanding of their environment. The contributors consider how understandings and experiences of religious and place connections are motivated by the need to seek and maintain contact with perceptual objects, so as to form meaningful relationship experiences. The volume is one of the first scholarly attempts to discuss the psychological links between place and religious experiences.The chapters within provide insights for understanding how people’s experiences with geographical places and the sacred serve as agencies for meaning-making, pro-social behaviour, and psychological adjustment in everyday life.

The Sacred Heritage

The Sacred Heritage
Author: Donald F. Sandner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135236232

The contributors to this volume describe the many facets shamanism and depth psychology have in common: animal symbolism; recognition of the reality of the collective unconscious; and healing rituals that put therapist and patient in touch with transpersonal powers. By reintroducing the core of shamanism in contemporary form, these essays shape a powerful means of healing that combines the direct contact with the inner psyche one finds in shamanism with the self-reflection and critical awareness of modern consciousness. The contributors' draw from experiences both inside and outside the consulting room, and with cultures that include the Lakota Sioux, and those of the Peruvian Andes and the Hawaiian Islands. The focus is on those aspects of shamanism most useful and relevant to the modern practice of depth psychology. These explorations bring the young practice of analytical psychology into perspective as part of a much more ancient heritage of shamanistic healing.

Images and Symbols

Images and Symbols
Author: Mircea Eliade
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0691238340

Mircea Eliade--one of the most renowned expositors of the psychology of religion, mythology, and magic--shows that myth and symbol constitute a mode of thought that not only came before that of discursive and logical reasoning, but is still an essential function of human consciousness. He describes and analyzes some of the most powerful and ubiquitous symbols that have ruled the mythological thinking of East and West in many times and at many levels of cultural development.

The Religious Function of the Psyche

The Religious Function of the Psyche
Author: Lionel Corbett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2002-01-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 113476247X

Traditional concepts of God are no longer tenable for many people who nevertheless experience a strong sense of the sacred in their lives. The Religious Function of the Psyche offers a psychological model for the understanding of such experience, using the language and interpretive methods of depth psychology, particularly those of C.G. Jung and psychoanalytic self psychology. The problems of evil and suffering, and the notion of human development as an incarnation of spirit are dealt with by means of a religious approach to the psyche that can be brought easily into psychotherapeutic practice and applied by the individual in everyday life. The book offers an alternative approach to spirituality as well as providing an introduction to Jung and religion.

Sacred Chaos

Sacred Chaos
Author: Françoise O'Kane
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 1994
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

God's shadow, or the dark Self, is connected to death, destruction and madness. Paradoxically, it is also indispensable to life. At a time when our highest values are turning against us, the psychological message of this book is a beacon of hope.