Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief offers an exploration of faith not as dogma but as a psychoanalytic and existential phenomenon.
Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief and Being offers an exploration of faith not as dogma but as a psychoanalytic and existential phenomenon.
Drawing from existential phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and theology, Brent Potter examines how individuals navigate despair, loss, and meaning-making today. This book engages deeply with thinkers such as Freud, Jung, Heidegger, Winnicott, Bion, Eigen, Tolkien, and Michael Heiser, weaving together clinical insights and philosophical reflections to offer an integrative approach to faith and human existence. This book argues that faith is not a belief in propositions but a form of lived trust. It is an ethical and emotional disposition that endures in the face of ambiguity. This book also explores the meaning and experience of faith in a world marked by psychological fragmentation, cultural upheaval, and existential crises.
Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief and Being will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and pastoral counselors, as well as academics and scholars of theology, philosophy, existential psychology, and spirituality. It will also be relevant to anyone seeking to understand the complex interplay between psychological depth and spiritual meaning in the contemporary world.
1. The Ashes of Meaning
2. Fragmented Foundations
3. Introduction: The
Destructive Horizon of the Psyche
4. Bions Concept of Linking and Its Attack
5. The Collapse of the Modern Self
6. The Return of the Sacred in Ruin s
7.
Memory, Myth, and Mourning
8. Winnicott, the True Self, and the Sacred
Holding
9. Trauma and the Problem of the Psyche
10. Jung, the Shadow, and the
Recovery of Depth
11. Bion, Eigen, and the Language of the Unspeakable
12.
Tolkien and the Recovery of the Imaginal
13. The Path through Wreckage: Faith
as a Form of Knowing
14. The Ethical Horizon of Ruin: Love, Responsibility,
and the Other
15. The Silence between Worlds: When God, the Analyst, and the
Self Withdraw
16. Despair as Threshold: Suicidality, Refusal, and the Cry for
Meaning
17. The Return of the Symbol: Image, Memory, and the Recovery of the
Soul
18. A Vocation from the Ashes: Becoming in a Time without Direction
19.
Faith in Action: Toward a Ruined Ethics of Presence
20. The Way through the
Ruins: Living Faithfully without Arrival
21. On the Nature of Evil in the
Modern Soul
22. Trauma and the Eclipse of Meaning
23. The Lost Art of Lament
24. A Phenomenology of Anger
25. Healing through the Other: Levinas, Love,
and the Face
26. The Sacred in the Secular: Finding God beyond the Walls
27.
Language, Silence, and the Unspoken: The Limits of Speech and the Birth of
Meaning
28. Time, Eternity, and the Slow Work of the Soul
29. The Hidden
Wholeness: Fragmentation, Integration, and the Desire for Unity
30. Faith and
the Fractured World: Bearing Witness in the Age of Collapse
31. The Analyst
and the Altar: Toward a Theology of Depth
32. The Last Word Is Not the End:
Toward a Hope beyond the Frame
33. Case Study: Hopes Orphan
34.
Clinical-Theological Commentary: Hope in the Abyss
35. Theodicy and the
Shattered Psyche
36. The Human Condition: On Suffering, Meaning, and the
Refusal of Despair
37. Conclusion: Notes on Tenderness
38. Where We Might Go:
Themes and Hopes for Human Growth and Presence
Brent Potter is a psychoanalyst and author known for his work at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and faith. With over three decades of clinical experience, his writing explores the depths of human suffering, healing, and meaning through accessible yet profound existential and psychoanalytic inquiry. Potter is recognized for pioneering theological psychoanalysis, integrating existential-phenomenological inquiry with Christian and psychoanalytic traditions.
