God Is Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and Theology

Sailing into New York Harbor, Sigmund Freud stood on the deck and gazed upon a statue that was meant to symbolize someone else's vague notion of freedom. The embryonic field of psychology--so very interested to hear this theory, which excavated the depths of the psyche--anticipated his arrival in America with lamentably eager fanfare. Whether out of hubris or prescience Freud could only whisper, "They don't realize we are bringing them the plague" It was a theory that undercut our creative justifications for every action and belief, and it suggested our anxious identities are charted by a big Other--one we cannot begin to comprehend. As psychoanalysis undergoes a resurgence of interest within religious studies, political theory, and cultural criticism, its innovative and peculiar claims remain difficult to grasp without any guide for the perplexed. In God Is Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and Theology, Tad DeLay explores the provocative teaching of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and its implications for Christianity. Partly an introductory exposition of Freud, ZiZek, and Lacan, and partly an application of psychoanalysis to religion and politics, this book is organized as a theological meditation on an incendiary theory.

• The Cynic and the Fool: The Unconscious in Theology & Politics
• The Sickness unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition of Edification & Awakening by Anti-Climacus (Penguin Classics)
• Philosophic Classics: From Plato to Derrida (Philosophical Classics)
• The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction
• Insurrection: To Believe Is Human To Doubt, Divine
• The Naked Now: Learning To See As the Mystics See
• What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything
• The Orthodox Heretic: And Other Impossible Tales
• The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible
• The Divine Magician: The Disappearance of Religion and the Discovery of Faith