Herman Westerink

Herman Westerink
  • Professor
  • Associate professor at Radboud University

About

61
Publications
11,440
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156
Citations
Current institution
Radboud University
Current position
  • Associate professor

Publications

Publications (61)
Article
Full-text available
Although Foucault presented History of Sexuality Vol. 4: Confessions of the Flesh as a crucial part in the study of the genealogy of the subject of desire, Foucault’s analyses of early Christian doctrine and pastoral technologies do not support the claim that an analytic of the subject of desire was established in early Christianity. This can be sh...
Book
Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of “reading a dark trace”, thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth on the problem of human guilt. The sense of guilt is indeed a trace that leads deep into the individual’s mental life, into his childhood life, and into the prehi...
Article
Although Freud's ‘Family Romances’ from 1909 is hardly ever discussed at length in secondary literature, this article highlights this short essay as an important and informative text about Freud's changing perspectives on sexuality in the period in which the text was written. Given the fact that Freud, in his 1905 Three Essays, develops a radical t...
Article
Full-text available
In this article, I argue that Freud’s interest in extraordinary cultural phenomena such as religion and art can be understood from the idea that psychoanalysis is fundamentally a pathoanalysis of human existence. In his earlier writings on hysteria and the theory of sexuality, Freud points out that the study of the psychopathologies is the best and...
Article
Full-text available
It has often been argued that Foucault’s turn to antique and early Christian care of the self, spiritual self-.practices and truth-telling (parrhesia) results from inquiries into the confession practices and pastoral power structures in the context of a genealogy of the desiring subject. This line of reasoning is in itself not incorrect, but – this...
Article
Full-text available
In this short introduction, the guest editors present the main themes of the special issue.
Article
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The emergence of a scholarly and popular interest in religious experience, spirituality and mysticism around 1900 plays a crucial role in the further transformations in religion in the twentieth century and in contemporary Western and non-Western societies. This volume contains philosophical reflections on the emergence of these new constellations,...
Article
Full-text available
This article focuses on some psychological aspects of Henri Bremond’s work, notably the development of a psychologie de la foi , the research into the sentiment réligieux and his reflections on the relation between what is traditionally called fides qua and fides quae . It is argued that in the center of the writings of Bremond, who is working in t...
Article
Full-text available
In contemporary debates on the so-called “return of religion” in new forms and practices of spirituality, the spiritual practices are often seen as emerging on the ruins of a fragmented and outdated religious tradition. In this article an attempt is made to conceptualize spirituality beyond the religion-secularization divide. An alternative perspec...
Chapter
In his new book, Jacob Belzen describes the institutional history of the IAPR in terms of discontinuities and conflicts. This article takes these discontinuities as a starting point for a brief, sketchy reconstruction of some of the fundamental tensions and debates concerning the theoretical approach and subject matter in the history of the psychol...
Article
In his 1905 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality Freud developed a very innovative and original theory of sexuality - a theory that became overlayed with new theoretical ideas and methodological perspectives in the later versions of the text. In this article the authors want to elaborate the original potential of the text in its relevance for co...
Article
The 1905 edition of Freud's Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie was only half as long as the 1924 edition that was published in the Standard Edition and it was never translated into any other language. In this article we examine the specificity of this first edition and we thematize its differences with the later editions. We do so in focusing on t...
Article
In his late writings, after having introduced the concept of the death drive, Freud states that he had mistakenly neglected the non-sexual forms of aggressivity in his earlier anthropological considerations. This late statement contradicts the fact that Freud in fact had developed a variety of perspectives on forms of aggressivity such as rage and...
Article
Full-text available
Contrary to the often-voiced opinion that the birth of modern psychiatry should be regarded as a victory of enlightened science and rationality over outdated religious beliefs and ecclesiastical authority, it is argued in this article that the emergence of medical and psychiatric approaches to pathology in modernity takes place in the context of in...
Article
In this response article to Isabelle Noth and Christoph Morgenthaler’s text on the correspondence between Sigmund Freud and Oskar Pfister, the author reflects on two issues: first, Freud’s theoretical ideas on friendship and, second, his essay The Future of an Illusion as a text in which Freud abandons his general theoretical starting point, namely...
Article
In this article a new reading of Totem and Taboo is presented: the emergence and further development of totemic and advanced religion is interpreted from the perspective of Freud's case study of Little Hans and his short essay on family romances, in which he elaborates the psychic dynamics involved in father substitution and father exaltation. Freu...
Article
In this volume renowned experts in psychoanalysis reflect on the relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, in particular presenting various controversial interpretations of the question if and to what extent monotheism semantically and structurally fits psychoanalytic insights.
Article
Can Luther’s writings inform us on the fundamental questions of Freudian psychoanalysis? Does an intellectual filiation between early Reformation thought and psychoanalysis exist? Does Lacanian psychoanalysis offer an instrument for analysing theological writings?
Article
The essay discusses Lacan's assertion in his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis that there is a filiation or cultural paternity relation between Luther and Freud or, more precisely, between Reformation theology and psychoanalysis as advocated by Freud and Lacan himself. In his analysis of the problems and topics addressed by Lacan, the author...
Article
Summary In this article it is argued that the apparent vagueness and broadness of the concept ‘spirituality’ and the difficulty in finding an agreeable definition for it are related to the different meanings of the concept within different intellectual and religious contexts and, subsequently, to different valuations of spirituality in relation to...
Article
In his seminar on ethics Jacques Lacan suggests there exists a "filiation or cultural paternity" between Freudian psychoanalysis and a "new direction of thought" that starts with Luther's conceptualization of God's eternal hate of man, and is then futher continued in Calvinism. In this article this thesis is explored. The author argues that there i...
Article
In his seminar on ethics Jacques Lacan suggests there exists a ‘filiation’ between Freudian psychoanalysis and a ‘new direction of thought’ that starts with Luther’s conceptualization of ‘a hatred that existed even before the world was created’, and is then further continued in Calvinism. In this article this thesis is explored. The author argues t...
Article
Psychology of religion in the Netherlands is rediscovering its historic entanglement with phenomenology of religion in the context of a current transition emancipating itself from the theological objective of re-establishing the relation between theology and faith practice (from the 1960s onwards), and developing into a discipline focusing on “live...
Article
The article proceeds on the persuasion that Freud's and Jung's writings on civilization and religion do not result solely from the application of psychoanalytic methods and theories to material taken from religious studies and ethnopsychology. Instead, the author contends, this source material also had a marked influence on individual religious wri...
Article
The author describes developments in Freud's writings concerning his views on the apostle Paul. This development shows that Freud more and more clearly regarded Paul as a key figure in understanding the complex relationship between Judaism and Christianity--and also as a man who essentially has no comfortable place in either of these religions. For...
Article
In this article it is argued that Freuds The Future of an Illusion is highly influenced by two of his followers, Theodor Reik and Oskar Pfister. Their views on religion reflect positions in theological debates within modern theology, debates about the formation of dogmas, the historical core of religion and the position of psychology of religion in...
Article
This thesis on the psychology of religion and the history of mentalities consists of research of the works of Willem Teellinck (1579-1629), minister of Middelburg and one of the main representatives of what is generally known as 'Nadere Reformatie' (Further Reformation). In his works Teellinck emphasizes self-examination as means of self-understand...

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