The purpose of this essay is to work constructively with Michael S. Hogue's groundbreaking American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World to demonstrate how psychodynamic analyses of religion are essential theoretical allies in the fight for resilient democracy. The “revolution in mind”1 that psychodynamic approaches contribute, especially in their analyses of religion, both complements and complicates socio-political theory as a whole. In the improvisational spirit of “yes-and,” the goal here is not to identify and decry the failures and shortcomings of Hogue's theopolitical vision but rather to inspire the recovery of a sibling discourse—a kind of “rebirth of a forgotten alternative”2—that also draws deeply from the American immanental tradition in order to add psychodynamic depth to Hogue's timely and important analysis. Psychodynamic theories of religion shed light on how symbolic identifications, including and especially ultimate concerns, structure personal and collective experience. By engaging religion and theology sympathetically,...
A Bridge From Analysis to Action: Psychodynamic Analyses of Religion and Michael S. Hogue's American Immanence
AJ Turner is a PhD candidate at Drew University working primarily with Catherine Keller and Robert Corrington. His work focuses mostly on the sociopolitical necessity of interdisciplinary and anti-hierarchical approaches to theory. In this he develops a framework of ontological pluralism, based on William James's radical empiricism, to reconstruct critical social theories that takes religious experience and theology as inescapable interlocutors for agonistic democratic organizing. AJ is also building a small, co-owned community in Northern New Mexico.
AJ Turner; A Bridge From Analysis to Action: Psychodynamic Analyses of Religion and Michael S. Hogue's American Immanence. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 1 September 2023; 44 (3): 44–64. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/21564795.44.3.03
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