Peter Capretto – författare

Trauma theory has become a burgeoning site of research in recent decades, often demanding interdisciplinary reflections on trauma as a phenomenon that defies disciplinary ownership. While this research has always been challenged by the temporal, affective, and corporeal dimensions of trauma itself, trauma theory now faces theoretical and methodological obstacles given its growing interdisciplinarity. Trauma and Transcendence gathers scholars in philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and social theory to engage the limits and prospects of trauma's transcendence. This volume draws attention to the increasing challenge of deciding whether trauma's unassimilable quality can be wielded as a defense of traumatic experience against reductionism, or whether it succumbs to a form of obscurantism.Contributors: Eric Boynton, Peter Capretto, Tina Chanter, Vincenzo Di Nicola, Ronald Eyerman, Donna Orange, Shelly Rambo, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Hilary Jerome Scarsella, Eric Severson, Marcia Mount Shoop, Robert D. Stolorow, George Yancy.

Trauma theory has become a burgeoning site of research in recent decades, often demanding interdisciplinary reflections on trauma as a phenomenon that defies disciplinary ownership. While this research has always been challenged by the temporal, affective, and corporeal dimensions of trauma itself, trauma theory now faces theoretical and methodological obstacles given its growing interdisciplinarity. Trauma and Transcendence gathers scholars in philosophy, theology, psychoanalysis, and social theory to engage the limits and prospects of trauma's transcendence. This volume draws attention to the increasing challenge of deciding whether trauma's unassimilable quality can be wielded as a defense of traumatic experience against reductionism, or whether it succumbs to a form of obscurantism.Contributors: Eric Boynton, Peter Capretto, Tina Chanter, Vincenzo Di Nicola, Ronald Eyerman, Donna Orange, Shelly Rambo, Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Hilary Jerome Scarsella, Eric Severson, Marcia Mount Shoop, Robert D. Stolorow, George Yancy.

Spiritual Direction and the Other offers the first interdisciplinary exploration of how ancient traditions of spiritual accompaniment can restore openness to mystery and cultural sensitivity in our psychotherapeutic helping professions.As therapeutic culture has grown to dominate the landscape of helping professions in recent decades, humanistic caregivers have increasingly struggled to identify methods and traditions that remain open to the Other. Though often neglected by mainstream psychology, spiritual direction not only provides an alternative mode of accompanying others in a world of growing instability, but also draws from an intellectual history that predates the earliest Western medical and psychological theories by centuries. This edited collection is the first to explore the history of spiritual direction as a resource for both accompanying others with cultural sensitivity and resisting the hegemony of reductionism in psychotherapy. Its authors invite readers into sacred, and sometimes unsettling, conversations about how we accompany others through crises of meaning-making, trauma, and pluralistic longing. Whether engaging Desert Fathers and Mothers, Spanish mystics, Afro-Caribbean humanism, Buddhist pedagogy, contemporary psychoanalysis, or Italian literary arts, its contributors offer distinct encounters with what it means to listen for the sacred in the strange, the suffering, and the soul.Bringing together interdisciplinary contributors from clinical psychology, theology, philosophy, chaplaincy and history, this volume provides not only a rich analysis of the identity of spiritual direction in the 21st century, but models of how spiritual direction can inform caregiving, advocacy and education in countless contexts.

Spiritual Direction and the Other offers the first interdisciplinary exploration of how ancient traditions of spiritual accompaniment can restore openness to mystery and cultural sensitivity in our psychotherapeutic helping professions.As therapeutic culture has grown to dominate the landscape of helping professions in recent decades, humanistic caregivers have increasingly struggled to identify methods and traditions that remain open to the Other. Though often neglected by mainstream psychology, spiritual direction not only provides an alternative mode of accompanying others in a world of growing instability, but also draws from an intellectual history that predates the earliest Western medical and psychological theories by centuries. This edited collection is the first to explore the history of spiritual direction as a resource for both accompanying others with cultural sensitivity and resisting the hegemony of reductionism in psychotherapy. Its authors invite readers into sacred, and sometimes unsettling, conversations about how we accompany others through crises of meaning-making, trauma, and pluralistic longing. Whether engaging Desert Fathers and Mothers, Spanish mystics, Afro-Caribbean humanism, Buddhist pedagogy, contemporary psychoanalysis, or Italian literary arts, its contributors offer distinct encounters with what it means to listen for the sacred in the strange, the suffering, and the soul.Bringing together interdisciplinary contributors from clinical psychology, theology, philosophy, chaplaincy and history, this volume provides not only a rich analysis of the identity of spiritual direction in the 21st century, but models of how spiritual direction can inform caregiving, advocacy and education in countless contexts.

A radical rethinking of empathy’s role in light of its weaponizationJustice-motivated caregivers have long viewed empathy as a central tool for addressing political division, intergenerational trauma, racism, sexism, and even evil itself. However, social theorists and scholars of religion who study the political behavior of evangelical and protestant Christians are noting new and unexpected limits for the ethics of empathy. How does one empathize with those who explicitly refuse to reciprocate empathy, who weaponize power imbalances for harmful political ends, and who dismiss all invitations to accountability as acts of intolerance? If working toward justice is what matters most, then these efforts to empathize may actually backfire against practices of political solidarity. There must a better way to work through these potential traps and work more effectively toward justice and healing.Beyond the Empathy Trap explains why empathy limits interpersonal ethics and how justice-motivated caregivers can better prioritize their psychological investments within their work. Drawing deeply from psychoanalysis, phenomenology, philosophy of religion, and pastoral theology, Peter Capretto argues that while empathy remains an essential resource for many forms of social healing, empathy also reaches unavoidable impasses when social injustice targets identity itself. By translating insights from the psychology of religion into high-stakes conflict settings, Capretto’s analysis offers the practical payoff of unmasking how political actors with asymmetric power relations frequently exploit the idea of empathic reciprocity as a trap to disarm caregivers and activists in their practices of solidarity.