1st Edition
Elements of Faith: Psychoanalytic Phenomenon and Lived Experience
Chapter 1: Echoes of An Opening
Introductory Comments
Faith Fragments
Navigating the Landscape
Chapter 2: Dimensions of Faith
The Essence of Faith
The Role of Sacred Texts: Anchors of Faith
Faith & Reason: A Delicate Balance
Faith & Ethics: A Moral Framework
The Hebraic Mindset: A Necessary Counterbalance
Storms of Meaning
Chapter 3: Faith in a Pluralistic World
Contours of Disruption: Faith Amid the They
Faith as a Catalyst for Change
Storms of Meaning
Faith & the Empirical Gaze
Chapter 4: Once, There Was a Longing…
Navigating the Boundaries of Faith
Roots On Fire: Faith Between Tradition & Change
Personal Belief & Collective Identity
The Evolution of Faith
Embracing the Mystery of Faith
Faith, Sense, & Sensibility
Chapter 5: A Clinical Case Study in Faith
Orientation to the Case Study
Author’s Perspective & Bias
Sara: Patient Information Summary
- Background
- Mental Health & Concerns
- Family & Relationships
- Coping & Boundaries
- Diagnostic Evaluation
- Current Focus & Treatment Goals
Chapter 6: The Psychoanalytic Process
Psychoanalytic Process
Rapport Building
Faith & Doubt
Goodness & the Black ‘Blah’
Toward a Transformed Sense of Self
- Dream 1: Confrontation with the Shadow
- Dream 2: Living, Loving, Legacy
- Balance & Bodyhood
- Dream 3: Invisible Supports
Rupture & Repair
Survival Technique, Organizing Principle
Sara's Journey: Opening Up & Finding Rhythm
Voice & Vulnerability
Processing Betrayal & Despair
Note on Catharsis
Reorienting to World
Growth
- A Pattern of Functional Failures
- Discovering Play & Aloneness
- Improvements in Mental Health &
Self-Understanding
Termination
Chapter 7: Psychoanalysis and the Sacred
On the Horizon of Contemporary Psychoanalysis
The Early Formation of Psychoanalysts
Training for Depth in an Age of Shallowness
Psychoanalysis in the Age of Technological Reductionism
The Recovery of Philosophical Depth
Reawakening Mystery in Contemporary Psychoanalysis
On Ethical Resistance and the Analyst’s Responsibility
A Future Worth Building
Psychoanalysis as Recovering
Human Being-in-the-World
The Analyst as Ethical Witness
Toward a Deepening Ethic of Care In Contemporary
Psychoanalysis
The Next Chapter of Psychoanalysis?
Chapter 8: Holding the Tension of the Opposites, Making Room
Beyond the Couch: Evolving Psychoanalytic
Horizons
Dwelling with the Human: Psychoanalysis
Beyond Technique
Állos & the Alientist: Estrangement, Otherness
Healing
Estrangement as Symbol & Signal
From Alienation to Alterity
Analyst as Alienist
References
Biography
Brent Potter is a psychoanalyst and author known for his work at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and faith. With over three decades of clinical experience, his writing explores the depths of human suffering, healing, and meaning through accessible yet profound existential and psychoanalytic inquiry.
‘Brent's Christian faith has led him to make this profound, warmly readable book about psychoanalysis and its future. His study of faith, including a remarkably healing case study, takes us away from fallacious assumptions that suffering should be pathologized and salvation must be found merely through human cleverness and social engineering.’
John Gordon, Author of Healing Madness
‘This book comes alive with faith in many dimensions. It breathes, aches, suffers, cries and opens depths of joy and renewal. It speaks of a wound that lights and gives credit to much that is devalued, including creative aspects of madness and such pages that keep giving.’
Michael Eigen, PhD, Author of books including The Challenge of Being Human, The Psychotic Core, Contact with the Depths, Faith, and The Psychoanalytic Mystic.
'In the face of fracture and contentious uncertainty we are easily seduced by certitude, tempted to abandon our doubt in the chimeric fortress of knowledge. But at what cost? In his new book Elements of Faith, Brent Potter takes us into the psychoanalytic situation, not as a contender to faith, but as a handmaid in the service of fostering our capacities to embrace mystery, meaning, and courageous openness. Of course we need knowledge, but Potter’s invitation is to walk into the vitalizing tensions of knowing and not knowing, the already and the not yet, the world we inhabit and the world yet to be.'
Earl D. Bland, PsyD, Psy, Professor of Psychology, Licensed Psychologist/Psychoanalyst, Rosemead School of Psychology
'In a time when we are seeing a resurgence of religion and spirituality, especially among the youth of Gen Z, Brent Potter brings a depth and clarify to the question of faith and its implications for our lives.'
Brent Dean Robbins, Ph.D., Program Director, Department of Psychology, Point Park University and Author of The Medicalized Body and Anesthetic Culture: The Cadaver, the Memorial Body, and the Recovery of Lived Experience
