Overview

Many debate whether religion is good for our health. Starting with this question, Janet Sayers, author of Mothering Psychoanalysis and Freudian Tales, provides a fascinating account of today's psychotherapy. Divine Therapy is told through love stories. They highlight the risks and healing transformations of what some call 'at-one-ment' with another in love, mysticism, art and psychoanalysis. Sayers movingly explores this by drawing on the philosophical and psychological writings of William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Sabina Spielrein, Simone Weil, Erich Fromm, Paul Tillich, Viktor Frankl, Melanie Klein, Adrian Stokes, Marion Milner and Donald Winnicott. She ends with one of the major figures of current psychoanalysis, Wilfred Bion, and with the insights of his followers, notably Christopher Bollas, Neville Symington and Julia Kristeva. Illustrated with love letters, pictures, biographical details and case histories, Divine Therapy tells an intriguing chronicle of science, religion and therapy that also constitutes an engaging overview for students, specialists and general readers alike.

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9780198509813

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Reviews

In writing Divine Therapy Sayers does a great service for psychoanalytic scholarship. Putting her focus on love, mysticism and religion, she requires us to look beyond the political battlefield that we call psychoanalytic theory and technique. She asks us to think about the ways in which passions can be transformative and enlivening in an individual's professional life, regardless of one's psychoanaltic allegiance. In the 1980's, singer Tina Turner soulfully belted out: What's love got to do with it? After reading Diving Therapy, I believe the answer to this question is: everything; at least when it comes to the work and well being of a psychoanalyst. Contemporary Psychoanalysis In this enthralling book Sayers intertwines psychoanalytic theory, biography and theology to describe the strange terrain in which love, therapy and religion meet. Chapters on key figures in the history of psychological therapy - Freud, Jung, William James and Melanie Klein among them, offer a lucid, acute summary and critique of a complex body of theory, with the whole held together by a focus on the power of relationships, including what believers call faith, to transform and renew life ... This literate and scholarly book is a good introduction to these complex issues. Mental Health Today

In writing Divine Therapy Sayers does a great service for psychoanalytic scholarship. Putting her focus on love, mysticism and religion, she requires us to look beyond the political battlefield that we call psychoanalytic theory and technique. She asks us to think about the ways in which passions can be transformative and enlivening in an individual's professional life, regardless of one's psychoanaltic allegiance. In the 1980's, singer Tina Turner soulfully belted out: What's love got to do with it? After reading Diving Therapy, I believe the answer to this question is: everything; at least when it comes to the work and well being of a psychoanalyst. Contemporary Psychoanalysis In this enthralling book Sayers intertwines psychoanalytic theory, biography and theology to describe the strange terrain in which love, therapy and religion meet. Chapters on key figures in the history of psychological therapy - Freud, Jung, William James and Melanie Klein among them, offer a lucid, acute summary and critique of a complex body of theory, with the whole held together by a focus on the power of relationships, including what believers call faith, to transform and renew life ... This literate and scholarly book is a good introduction to these complex issues. Mental Health Today

Author Information

After graduating from Cambridge, Janet Sayers qualified as a Clinical Psychologists from the Tavistock Clinic. She is now Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the University of Kent, where she gained a PhD in Psychology, and also works as a therapist. Sayers is the author of six books, editor of three, and has contributed numerous essays and articles to the psychotherapeutic literature.

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