God Is Unconscious

Book excerpt: Sailing into New York Harbor, Sigmund Freud stood on the deck and gazed upon a statue that was meant to symbolize someone else's vague notion of freedom. The embryonic field of psychology--so very interested to hear this theory, which excavated the depths of the psyche--anticipated his arrival in America with lamentably eager fanfare. Whether out of hubris or prescience Freud could only whisper, "They don't realize we are bringing them the plague." It was a theory that undercut our creative justifications for every action and belief, and it suggested our anxious identities are charted by a big Other--one we cannot begin to comprehend. As psychoanalysis undergoes a resurgence of interest within religious studies, political theory, and cultural criticism, its innovative and peculiar claims remain difficult to grasp without any guide for the perplexed. In God Is Unconscious: Psychoanalysis and Theology, Tad DeLay explores the provocative teaching of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and its implications for Christianity. Partly an introductory exposition of Freud, Žižek, and Lacan, and partly an application of psychoanalysis to religion and politics, this book is organized as a theological meditation on an incendiary theory.