No 4 (2015)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/80627

Consolation – literary and religious perspectives

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Browsing No 4 (2015) by Subject "Consolation"

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    Consolation and Psychoanalysis
    (LIR. journal, 2015) Johansson, Per Magnus
    Psychoanalysis has seldom concerned itself with the notion of consolation at the theoretical level. Consolation (or comfort or solace) is not a psychoanalytic concept. Freud only uses the word once in his general reflections on the human condition. Freud saw religion as an effect of man’s infantile need for consolation, and compared it with obsessional neuroses. His reflections on the matter led Freud to the conclusion that religion is an illusion. The more people who gain access to thinking influenced by science, the more people will abandon their belief in the religious message. In Freud’s scientific-ideological attempt at turning psychoanalysis into a scientific discipline, phenomena which are parts of the religious and literary fields are lost. The human need for consolation is such a phenomenon. Donald W. Winnicott’s concept of the transitional object must be considered in this context. According to Winnicott, the transitional object is on the border between psychic, subjective reality, and external, objective reality. It is usually used by the child of the age of four to twelve months. The transitional object is a compensation which has the function of consoling the individual. In Sweden, as in many other European countries, the psychodynamic tradition that arose was to a greater extent concerned with fulfilling man’s need for consolation, as compared with pursuing an ideal that was influenced by the natural sciences. The psychotherapists in this tradition attended to man’s need for consolation, and the treatment was called pastoral cure.
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    Consolation in Christian Heinrich Postel’s Biblical Opera Libretto
    (LIR. journal, 2015) Hedman, Dag
    This essay discusses the prominence of the consolation theme in Christian Heinrich Postel’s biblical opera libretto Cain und Abel Oder Der verzweifelnde Bruder=Mörder (Hamburg, 1689). It is shown that in this drama the theme is relevant not only to the persons in the drama, but to the audience as well. This result stands in contrast to earlier research, which incorrectly has pointed out different other subjects as the main themes of the opera.