Mary Miles | Pennsylvania State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Mary Miles
During and after World War II, American Catholic intellectuals were fascinated by psychoanalysis.... more During and after World War II, American Catholic intellectuals were fascinated by psychoanalysis. Addressing many of the same concerns as their theology – the nature of free will, the origins and effects of sin and guilt, and the powers of evil and love-the theories represented a potential danger to their faith. Freud's assertions that religion was an obsession-neurosis or that Christ symbolized the return of the repressed were hurdles to Catholics who hoped to engage his theories. Closer attention to the relationship that developed between psychoanalysis and Catholicism can illuminate the ways that Catholics came to represent themselves and also the ways that Catholics influenced the realms of medicine, psychology, and popular spiritual culture. American Catholics found in psychoanalysis an opening through which to sacralize the fields of psychology and psychiatry that seemed, to them, to be increasingly routinized and dehumanizing.
This article is about the ways that discussions of Judaism, psychoanaly sis, and American identi... more This article is about the ways that discussions of Judaism, psychoanaly sis, and American identity intersected and shaped each other in the work of Rabbi Joshua Liebman, best-selling author. Anyone who believed in either a salvation-based religion or a rational psychology found his or her beliefs challenged by the momentous developments of the mid-twentieth century—World War II, genocide, atomic destruction, and the cold war. Liebman found psychological causes for these cata strophes and blamed repression, fear, and neuroses. In his view, just as Nazism and Stalinism had been fueled by psychological drives, democracy and liberty, to be maintained, had to be projected deeply within the souls and psyches of Americans. Liebman contributed to the project of developing psychologies that reflected exter nal commitments to freedom and democracy at a time when this effort moved to the forefront of both popular and professional psychotherapy. Discussions of psycho analysis also offered Liebman an opportunity to introduce the values that he associated with Judaism into the scientific worlds of psychology and psychiatry. Liebman's "democracy of the mind" emerges from interpretations of Judaism, psychology, and politics that he hoped would bolster democratic values. IN T R O D U C T IO N B y 1946, Friday night services at Temple Israel in Boston had become somewhat of a mob scene. When Rabbi Joshua Liebman delivered his sermons, his congregation, augmented by hundreds of non-Jews, stormed the doors in such numbers that the police were frequently called. Over a thousand people were regularly turned away from the overflowing synagogue. One evening, Liebman struggled through the throngs of people to reach his synagogue, only to be met at the door by a janitor who, failing to recognize him barked "Go away; no use hanging
During and after World War II, American Catholic intellectuals were fascinated by psychoanalysis.... more During and after World War II, American Catholic intellectuals were fascinated by psychoanalysis. Addressing many of the same concerns as their theology – the nature of free will, the origins and effects of sin and guilt, and the powers of evil and love-the theories represented a potential danger to their faith. Freud's assertions that religion was an obsession-neurosis or that Christ symbolized the return of the repressed were hurdles to Catholics who hoped to engage his theories. Closer attention to the relationship that developed between psychoanalysis and Catholicism can illuminate the ways that Catholics came to represent themselves and also the ways that Catholics influenced the realms of medicine, psychology, and popular spiritual culture. American Catholics found in psychoanalysis an opening through which to sacralize the fields of psychology and psychiatry that seemed, to them, to be increasingly routinized and dehumanizing.
This article is about the ways that discussions of Judaism, psychoanaly sis, and American identi... more This article is about the ways that discussions of Judaism, psychoanaly sis, and American identity intersected and shaped each other in the work of Rabbi Joshua Liebman, best-selling author. Anyone who believed in either a salvation-based religion or a rational psychology found his or her beliefs challenged by the momentous developments of the mid-twentieth century—World War II, genocide, atomic destruction, and the cold war. Liebman found psychological causes for these cata strophes and blamed repression, fear, and neuroses. In his view, just as Nazism and Stalinism had been fueled by psychological drives, democracy and liberty, to be maintained, had to be projected deeply within the souls and psyches of Americans. Liebman contributed to the project of developing psychologies that reflected exter nal commitments to freedom and democracy at a time when this effort moved to the forefront of both popular and professional psychotherapy. Discussions of psycho analysis also offered Liebman an opportunity to introduce the values that he associated with Judaism into the scientific worlds of psychology and psychiatry. Liebman's "democracy of the mind" emerges from interpretations of Judaism, psychology, and politics that he hoped would bolster democratic values. IN T R O D U C T IO N B y 1946, Friday night services at Temple Israel in Boston had become somewhat of a mob scene. When Rabbi Joshua Liebman delivered his sermons, his congregation, augmented by hundreds of non-Jews, stormed the doors in such numbers that the police were frequently called. Over a thousand people were regularly turned away from the overflowing synagogue. One evening, Liebman struggled through the throngs of people to reach his synagogue, only to be met at the door by a janitor who, failing to recognize him barked "Go away; no use hanging