RT Review
T1 At Home in the World: Summary and Commentary from a Partly Emersonian Perspective
JF Pastoral psychology
VO 64
IS 4
SP 523
OP 529
A1 Nørager, Troels
A2 Capps, Donald 1939-
LA English
PB Springer Science Business Media B. V.
YR 2015
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/168979190X
AB This article is a review of Donald Capps's At Home in the World: A Study in Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Art (Capps 2013). After a summary of the book and its connection to other works by Capps on male melancholy, I address its subject matter from three perspectives: (1) a methodological perspective where my concern is whether psychoanalysis alone is a sufficient tool for interpreting works of art; (2) a broader cultural perspective where I attempt to situate melancholy in the broader context of modernity and a concomitant loss of faith; (3) finally, I comment on the ghost of Ralph Waldo Emerson who is at the same time very present and strangely absent in At Home in the World. It is argued that Emerson would probably have been more relevant to the thematic of the book than is William James. Despite these questions and reservations put forward in the spirit of critical debate, At Home in the World is not only a must for students of art, but is also a major contribution to psychology of religion and an illustration of the continued viability of psychoanalysis.
K1 Art
K1 Melancholy
K1 Modernity
K1 Psychoanalysis
K1 Ralph Waldo Emerson
K1 Religion
K1 Self-reliance
K1 William James
K1 Rezension
DO 10.1007/s11089-013-0585-x