You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This volume contains an extremely varied array of essays which in one way or another justify its title. Taking into account their subject matter, their theoretical orientations (psychoanalytic or otherwise), and the disciplines represented, that is about where their commonality ends. However, there does seem to be a shared agenda for the volume as a whole: to save religion from "classical," or "traditional," psychoanalysis—the latter perceived as critical, even inimical, to religion. The editors are explicit on this point. For they refer to most of the "articles [as] all bound together in ecumenical resistance to Freudian reductionistic interpretation of all religion" (p. xv). This pervasive animosity toward classical psychoanalysis makes little distinction between the person of "Godless" Sigmund Freud, the current practicing classical psychoanalyst, and the theory of classical psychoanalysis.
This attitude is dramatically exemplified by Joseph H. Smith, one of the two editors. His theoretical position automatically disqualifies traditional psychoanalysis, with its central concern about conflict