Ann Ulanov – författare

Views dissenting from the status quo in psychoanalysis are presented in four areas: Psychoanalysis and Early Dissidents, The Psychoanalytic Process, Psychoanalysis and Culture, and Psychoanalysis and Religion. Authors introduce ideas on the analyst's freedom and imagination, the use of humor and play, and the importance of small talk, as well as new perspectives on understanding and working with trauma. The section on psychoanalysis and culture addresses an area rarely considered in psychoanalysis today, regardless of theoretical model. As the global culture becomes more salient, clinicians can ignore the issues of culture with a diversity of patients only to their detriment. The volume's final attention to psychoanalysis and religion frames a new paradigm for understanding mysticism and the relationship to psychopathology to spiritual disciplines and experiences.

Why should Christians bother to read Carl Jung? He may be one of the most famous psychologists of the twentieth century, but are his views and ideas really compatible with Christian faith? While acknowledging some Christian suspicion of Jung, Ann Belford Ulanov and Alvin Dueck maintain that Jung's psychology can indeed enhance the life of faith.

Ann Ulanov submits that we have all painted our own pictures of God. Most of them were formed in early childhood and now lie buried in our unconscious selves. Even though we may be unaware of our images of God, they play an active, sometimes harmful role in our spiritual development. Picturing God demonstrates the importance of confronting our unconscious selves and allowing our images of God, both positive and negative, to surface. Such inner exploration reveals not only important insights about ourselves, but also pulls us beyond our private pictures of God toward a truer view of the living God. Picturing God shows us how to explore our unconscious selves and how this spiritual exercise can change the whole of our lives: how we pray, how we respond to God, how we relate to others and how we view ourselves. Ann Ulanov is Professor of Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, and a faculty member of the Jung Institute. She is author of Receiving Women and The Feminine in Christian Theology. With her husband Barry Ulanov she is co-author of Primary Speech and The Witch & the Clown: Two Archetypes of Human Sexuality.