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This article is a contribution to a review forum of Donald Capps's () creative contribution At Home in the World: A Study in Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Art. In his volume Capps expands on previous work in the development of aesthetic pastoral theology. Capps's portrayal of the religious sensibility in works of art follows his three-fold paradigm-a sense of honor, a sense of hope, and a sense of humor-to analyze how selected works of art are closely related to the early experiences of a son with his mother. The careful articulation of the movements of the melancholy self expand on Capps's previous work on Erik Erickson, Sigmund Freud, and William James. In particular, Capps explores how the paintings may reflect the guidance of the melancholy self and how the experience of viewing these paintings can be therapeutic to men's experiences of sadness, melancholy, and homelessness in the world. The article suggests that this new work by Capps represents a shift beyond 'theological reflection' in pastoral theology to 'theological perception.' The article also offers reflections on the importance of Capps's paradigm of the melancholy self for the exploration of grief experiences of men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my article (Capps in Pastoral Psychology, ) I focused on the professional and personal reasons for Erik H. Erikson's decision to write a book on Martin Luther (Erikson ) and his rationale for emphasizing Luther's resourcefulness in emancipating himself from outworn religious beliefs and practices. I also discussed the fact that this book has continued to be meaningful to me since the first time I read it in the early 1960s. In a previous article (Capps in Journal of Religion & Health, 50, 880-898, ) I made the case that Erikson developed a form of psychoanalytic discourse-the verbal portrait-which, although not unprecedented, became a focal feature of his work and the testing ground for the cogency of his major contribution to psychoanalysis (the concept of identity). In this article, I provide a chapter-by-chapter summary of the book as a means to bring into focus Erikson's 'verbal portrait' of Martin Luther. Although a summary of the major points of each of the chapters cannot take the place of reading the book itself, it can help first-time readers to get their bearings. It can also help to dispel their anxieties on the one hand and their prejudgments on the other so that they may engage the book for what it is, namely, 'a study in psychoanalysis and history.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The plan to translate Erik H. Erikson's Young Man Luther (Erikson ) into Chinese (see Chen et al., Pastoral Psychology 61:641-654, ) provides compelling evidence that this book is a classic in psychology of religion and related fields. In this article I focus on the professional circumstances that contributed to Erikson's decision to write a book on Martin Luther; his rationale, based on his particular psychoanalytic orientation, for emphasizing Luther's resourcefulness in emancipating himself from outworn religious beliefs and practices; and the fact that a new personal appreciation for religious expressions also played an important role in his decision to write the book. I also discuss the fact that I was initially attracted to the book because it drew attention to Luther's redefinition of work and did so in a way that was personally meaningful to me and in later years I have found the topics and themes of melancholy and inner peace to be personally meaningful to me as well. Based on my own experiences with Young Man Luther, I conclude that books become classics because they invite their potential readers to enter into the text in a way that is personally meaningful to them and that they remain classics because their readers discover new ways over the course of their own lives in which the book is personally meaningful to them. I conclude the article with the proposal that Young Man Luther is a religious biography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I explore the political significance of depression, particularly as a prominent form of resistance to conditions of life under contemporary global capitalism. After noting the political context of the second beatitude, which suggests a form of mourning that bears witness to public suffering, I assert that under the current dominance of the disease model, depression has lost its political voice. This loss is of grave concern given evidence that the culture of late capitalism (neoliberalism) has initiated a global epidemic of depression. I reframe depression as the final cry of souls diminished under these conditions. Finally, I denote the qualities of such souls, illustrating with a pastoral psychotherapy case summary. A dream presented during the termination phase not only provides a clinical presentation of the attributes of souls under neoliberal governance, but suggests how voice may ultimately be restored even when depression has become unconscious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article raises some questions about issues in the recently published volume Mourning religion, edited by Parsons et al. (). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, companion to my article, “Augustine’s Confessions: The Story of a Divided Self and the Process of Its Unification” (Capps, ), focuses on psychoanalytic studies of Augustine’s Confessions, giving particular attention to his tendency to engage in self-reproach. The psychodynamic meanings of such self-reproach are explored, and the proposal is made that his Confessions reveal both narcissistic personality trends (in which shame plays a major role) and a melancholy self (in which the mother-son relationship is central). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this third and final of three successive essays, the author argues that Thomas Merton suffered from narcissistic personality disorder in conjunction with his melancholic condition. The author argues that contemplative prayer disabled Merton from working through his melancholic condition. Finally, the author argues that Merton’s melancholia, coupled with his heightened identity conflicts lead him to kill himself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay builds on a previous one in this journal (Cole, 2005) that details how reading elegiac poetry, the poetry of mourning, may be a pastoral resource for complicated grief or what is classically termed melancholia. A study of elegies by poet Robert Lowell (1917–1977), which depict a progression from melancholia to more “typical” mourning, demonstrates how thinking and writing in elegiac terms may offer a similar resource, whether for one's own melancholia or that of persons in one's care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]