Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief and Being

Faith Amidst Ruins

Brent Potter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040817346
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief and Being offers an exploration of faith not as dogma but as a psychoanalytic and existential phenomenon.

Drawing from existential phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and theology, Brent Potter examines how individuals navigate despair, loss, and meaning-making today. This book engages deeply with thinkers such as Freud, Jung, Heidegger, Winnicott, Bion, Eigen, Tolkien, and Michael Heiser, weaving together clinical insights and philosophical reflections to offer an integrative approach to faith and human existence. This book argues that faith is not a belief in propositions but a form of lived trust. It is an ethical and emotional disposition that endures in the face of ambiguity. This book also explores the meaning and experience of faith in a world marked by psychological fragmentation, cultural upheaval, and existential crises.

Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief and Being will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and pastoral counselors, as well as academics and scholars of theology, philosophy, existential psychology, and spirituality. It will also be relevant to anyone seeking to understand the complex interplay between psychological depth and spiritual meaning in the contemporary world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The Ashes of Meaning
• 2 Fragmented Foundations
• 3 Introduction: The Destructive Horizon of the Psyche
• 4 Bion’s Concept of Linking and Its Attack
• 5 The Collapse of the Modern Self
• 6 The Return of the Sacred in Ruins
• 7 Memory, Myth, and Mourning
• 8 Winnicott, the True Self, and the Sacred Holding
• 9 Trauma and the Problem of the Psyche
• 10 Jung, the Shadow, and the Recovery of Depth
• 11 Bion, Eigen, and the Language of the Unspeakable
• 12 Tolkien and the Recovery of the Imaginal
• 13 The Path through Wreckage: Faith as a Form of Knowing
• 14 The Ethical Horizon of Ruin: Love, Responsibility, and the Other
• 15 The Silence between Worlds: When God, the Analyst, and the Self Withdraw
• 16 Despair as Threshold: Suicidality, Refusal, and the Cry for Meaning
• 17 The Return of the Symbol: Image, Memory, and the Recovery of the Soul
• 18 A Vocation from the Ashes: Becoming in a Time without Direction
• 19 Faith in Action: Toward a Ruined Ethics of Presence
• 20 The Way through the Ruins: Living Faithfully without Arrival
• 21 On the Nature of Evil in the Modern Soul
• 22 Trauma and the Eclipse of Meaning
• 23 The Lost Art of Lament
• 24 A Phenomenology of Anger
• 25 Healing through the Other: Levinas, Love, and the Face
• 26 The Sacred in the Secular: Finding God beyond the Walls
• 27 Language, Silence, and the Unspoken: The Limits of Speech and the Birth of Meaning
• 28 Time, Eternity, and the Slow Work of the Soul
• 29 The Hidden Wholeness: Fragmentation, Integration, and the Desire for Unity
• 30 Faith and the Fractured World: Bearing Witness in the Age of Collapse
• 31 The Analyst and the Altar: Toward a Theology of Depth
• 32 The Last Word Is Not the End: Toward a Hope beyond the Frame
• 33 Case Study: Hope’s Orphan
• 34 Clinical-Theological Commentary: Hope in the Abyss
• 35 Theodicy and the Shattered Psyche
• 36 The Human Condition: On Suffering, Meaning, and the Refusal of Despair
• 37 Conclusion: Notes on Tenderness
• 38 Where We Might Go: Themes and Hopes for Human Growth and Presence
• References and Influences
• Index