Religion: A Rorschachian Projection Theory

This paper offers a projection theory of religion based on an experiential analysis of Rorschach\u27s human movement response. An experiential analysis of the movement response reveals an understanding of projection particularly appropriate for the study of religion. The relevance of Rorschachian projection to religion is due to several reasons related primarily to the fact that projection and religion share epistemological concerns. First, because of its epistemological optimism regarding the knowledge of otherness, projection provides a legitimate means of understanding (radical) otherness. Second, in projection, knowledge of the other occurs through knowledge of the self, encompassing the same epistemological processes emphasized in contemporary theological interpretations of divine otherness. Third, Rorschachian projection can accommodate both theistic and non-theistic traditions in its understanding of religion since projection and religion are both attempts to formulate the nature of selfhood, otherness, and their relationship. Finally, a discussion of the origins of the human movement response and religious experience establishes a further link between the two. It is due to their common origin in early object relations that Rorschachian projection (the movement response) is most applicable to the understanding of religion. Both projection and religion emerge from a transitional or transcendent realm between self and other. Object relations theory enables us to extrapolate toward both culture and epistemology from Rorschach\u27s movement response

Do the laws of physics prohibit counterfactual communication?

It has been conjectured that counterfactual communication is impossible, even for post-selected quantum particles. We strongly challenge this by proposing exactly such a counterfactual scheme where---unambiguously---none of Alice's photons that make it has been to Bob. We demonstrate counterfactuality theoretically and experimentally by means of weak measurements, as well as conceptually using consistent histories. Importantly, the accuracy of Alice learning Bob's bit can be made arbitrarily close to unity with no trace left by Bob on Alice's photon.Comment: Experiment conducted in the lab, showing no weak trace from Bob at either D0 or D1. 5 pages, 5 figure

The Psychoanalyst and the Exorcist: Perspectives on Psychology and Religion

A century ago psychology declared war on religion. Describing religion as nothing but psychology projected into the external world, Sigmund Freud, the first psychoanalyst, mounted a campaign to expose religion as something far worse than a comforting illusion. He tried to show that religious belief and practice were harmful to both psyche and culture. In his view religion distorted and deformed the mind by demanding that we refrain from thinking deeply or from asking serious questions. Religion forces us, he claimed, to accept the authority of others, and it promotes excessive guilt and shame for transgressions of its mandates. In addition, he argued, it dissuades us from working toward social justice and equality: religion demands that we tolerate suffering and injustice in this life with the expectation of a blissful afterlife as a reward for our obedience

Introduction - Misogyny and Religion under Analysis Masterplot and Counterthesis in Tension

In this work, I expose the shadowy presence of this non-Oedipal counterthesis in the cultural texts on religion. My sources are not only Freud\u27s four major cultural texts, Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Moses and Monotheism, but also some of his shorter writings related to religion and mythology ( Medusa\u27s Head and The Theme of the Three Caskets, for example), and some of his writings which address religious themes and issues only indirectly (such as Thoughts for the Times on War and Death and The Interpretation of Dreams). All of these are cultural texts in a larger sense (Homans \u271989: 196). They are not only about intrapsychic or interpersonal dynamics, but also about the intersections of body, psyche, and society. They address the sources and meanings of the fragile achievements of our civilization (SE 14: 307) embodied in art, literature, philosophy, ethics, religion, science, and education. Within these cultural texts, broadly defined, the counterthesis is apparent at several sites: it is particularly evident in Freud\u27s writings on the maternal body, death and the afterlife, Judaism and anti-Semitism, and in his writings on mourning and melancholia

The Swami and the Rorschach: Spiritual Practice, Religious Experience, and Perception

I propose that the Rorschach test might serve well as such a method for investigating religion, spirituality, psychological structure, and cognition. In addition, it might bring some clarity to the debate between the decontextualists and the constructivists. In this essay I discuss three unique Rorschach studies that, in my view, represent an important step toward such a psychology of religious experience and examine their implications for Forman\u27s decontextualist thesis

Teaching Freud in the Language of Our Students: The Case of a Religiously Affiliated Undergraduate Institution

If the psychoanalyst must speak in the language of the patient, we, the teachers of Freud and religion, surely must teach in the language of our students. Who is Freud-and what is religion-in this language? The answer depends in part on academic context: Freud is taught in religious studies departments at public universities, private unaffiliated colleges, and religiously affiliated seminaries, colleges, and universities. This essay describes a course on Religion in the Theories of Freud and Jung at a religiously affiliated West Coast university with approximately four thousand undergraduate students

Foreword: Notes on a Friendship

Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, reissued here more than 17 year after its initial publication, changed the fra1nework for understanding the nature and function of ritual. Catherine M. Bell\u27s profound insight was that ritual, long understood as thoughtless action stripped of context, is more interestingly understood as strategy: a culturally strategic way of acting in the world. Ritual is a form of social activity. This argument is meticulously established and beautifully presented in the chapters that follow. Unfolding like a commanding lecture, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice remains Catherine\u27s greatest contribution to the study of religion

Walking Different Pathways: Coming to Know our Own Journey Better

Santa Clara\u27s new Core Curriculum, scheduled for launch in Fall 2009, resonates powerfully with the vision of General Congregation Thirty- Five

Quest for the Religious Freud: Faith, Morality, and Gender in Psychoanalysis

The recent scholarship on Freud is guilty of the same kind of ideological projection as that uncovered by Albert Schweitzer in his 1906 exposé of the assumptions underlying the historical Jesus scholarship: the search for the religious Freud evinces a search for an atheist, Christian, or Jew who mirrors the personal and intellectual assumptions of the seeker. Ironically, of the three issues emerging as central concerns in recent literature on Freud-Jewishness, ethics, and gender-Jewishness and ethics were also the focus of heated debate among nineteenth-century Biblical scholars

El modelo didáctico de la formación de un cuadro químico del mundo en los estudiantes : una vía para el cambio conceptual

In this paper we develop a general definition of the study of Chemistry that responds to the need to form in the students a chemical picture of the world in accordance with the didactic model developed by the authors to systematize the contents in Chemistry teaching. The concept of chemical reaction is defined in a general way, pursuing the central aim of the didactic idea, and also in an operational way, in search of a practica1 guide to study the chemical bond. The concepts of bond, bonding energy, and others are given a systematic treatment within these ideas