The birth of the living God : a psychoanalytic study

Part 1. 1 Introduction. 2 Freud. 3 Beyond Freud. 4 The representation of objects and human psychic functioning. Part 2. 5 Introduction to the clinical research. 6 A god without whiskers. 7 A god in the mirror. 8 God, the enigma. 9 God, my enemy. Part 3. 10 Conclusions

'...challenges much of Freud's thinking on the psychology of religious belief and object representation. Freud postulated that belief in God is based on a child's idea of his father and that, in the normal course of maturation, the individual should recognize God as an illusion made up of infantile responses to paternal protection and retribution. Rizzuto argues that the God representation is more than an "exalted" father, and that it draws its components from other early objects as well -- mother, grandparents, or even an early aggrandized self-representation.'

Hardcover