Paul W. Pruyser

Freud on Femininity and Faith

Poker Faces The Life and Work of Professional Card Players David M. Hayano Because it is mathematically possible to win consistently at poker, this gameunlike many others-can be a profession and, for the gambler, a life as impenetrable to the outsider as a foreign culture. Hayano, a sometime professional poker player himself, reveals what it is like to live this life. His close descripton of the survivors in this unforgiving profession will fascinate social scientists and laymengamblers and non-gamblers alike.

The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion

17.95

Lessons from Art Theory for the Psychology of Religion

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

Where Do We Go from Here? Scenarios for the Psychology of Religion

Certain concepts in the theory of art might be applicable to the psychology of religion, particularly when one realizes that in ontogenesis the individual tends to be introduced at once to art and religion. This paper describes first the reciprocal reinforcement between art and religion in childhood and subsequent cultural experience. It goes on to suggest that significant understanding of religion can be gained from a systematic application of the art-theoretical constructs of craft, imagination, and illusion. The dubious status of satisfaction (or pleasure and pain experiences) in art and religion is surveyed, leading to the proposal that the numinous satisfaction of religion has a unique, irreducible quality. L ike most other people, I was introduced to religious ideas and attitudes through stories told to me by adults. These stories were either spontaneously narrated by my parents, or read from illustrated and nicely bound books which were held reverentially on the narrators lap; when not in use, these books stood in a special place outside the regular bookcase. Some of the stories were highly dramatic, having to do with the spurious origins of mankind in a peculiar, naked man who had to lose a rib to gain a wife before they could jointly beget children; a global flood from which only one family and a shipload of animals survived; an oppressed, enslaved, and then wandering people who after much hunger and thirst slowly got established in a land of milk and honey; an endless series of wicked kings; encounters between true and false prophets; violent wars and disasters; a child growing up in the precinct of a temple; the birth of a divine child coupled with a story of the mass murder of many ordinary babies and the appearance of surrealistic beings worthy of Gabriel Garcia Marquezs imagination; miraculous interventions by a strange man in the natural course of events; this mans cruel and untimely death, followed by his unexpected and uncanny reappearance; and the sea voyages of another man, once blinded, with a sense of mission, exposed to the perils of shipwreck and deportation. Whatever literature may be, I certainly was exposed from babyhood to many of its forms, without knowing their names: drama, epos, myth, short story, and poetry-all in the course of being taught religion.

Psychological Examination: Augustine

As the discipline of psychology has become enormously diversified in this century, a great diversity of psychologies of religion has become possible and up to a point been demonstrated. Even more importantly, one can now see marked differences in the apparent motives and aims whereby psychologies of religion have been produced, with the result that partial, competing, and parochial views abound and a comprehensive psychology of religion is still a long way off. In this situation it is crucial to agree on criteria that guarantee perspectival integrity in the discipline of psychology of religion. Some basic guidelines are offered. In addition, some suggestions are made for needed new studies and approaches, including the developing of heuristically rich typologies, and a concentration on religion in aging persons and the dying, in some of whom dogmatic or ritualistic religiosity may have given way to a non-conflictual atheistic ethical and existential concern.

Erikson's Young Man Luther: A New Chapter in the Psychology of Religion

Augustine impresses me as a lively, active and quite garrulous person who relates himself easily to many people, especially intelligent inquirers. A born teacher, he likes to draw others into the streams and windings of his thought, leading his readers on with probing questions, while freely expressing his own doubts and uncertainties. He is unquestionably a leader, whose language and ideas are imposing, if not commanding, so that others are likely to look up to him for guidance. He is quite self-assertive, at times somewhat ponderous and overwhelming. As a North African Numidian (possibly of Roman descent) he speaks vivaciously in a colorful idiom2 does not shy away from colloquialisms, loves to hear his own voice, and underlines his utterances with brisk gestures. The examiner had sometimes the impression that Augustine was not so much talking with him as dictating to him, when, pacing the floor and restlessly moving about, he stated his strong opinions (with no uncertain self-references) on almost any imaginable subject, even with considerable push of ideas. His feelings seemed most of the time appropriate to his thought content, but with an occasional streak of histrionic exaggeration, beyond the norms for his subculture.

The play of the imagination : toward a psychoanalysis of culture

The Journals second Bibliographical Focus has been centered upon Erik Eriksons Young Man Luther. Dr. Paul Pruyser, on the staff of the Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas, was asked to edit this Focus. He secured the articles by his colleague, Dr. Woollcott and by Professor LeFevre, and contributed his own interpretation. The Journal is deeply indebted to Dr. Pruyser and the other authors for their discerning analyses of a book extremely significant to the scientific study of religion. THE EDITOR.