51. Psychic Conversion & Theological Foundations, by Robert M. Doran, S.J. ISBN 978-0-87462-728-2. ©2006. 276 pages. Index. Paperbound. $27.
“In the Epilogue to his monumental book Insight, Bernard Lonergan writes, ‘... theologians have to take a professional interest in the human sciences and make a positive contribution to their methodology.’ Psychic Conversion and Theological Foundations is the work of a theologian taking a professional interest in the science of depth psychology and its methods. But it also discloses the contribution that a reoriented depth psychology makes to theology itself. For depth psychology could contribute to dimensions of theology’s foundations that, while acknowledged by Lonergan, were not developed by him: the aesthetic and dramatic components of human living. These can be subjected to a self-appropriation similar to that which Lonergan aids in the realm of cognitional operations.
As Hans Urs von Balthasar emphasizes, it is in the aesthetic and dramatic spheres that theology will find many of its proper categories. “This work follows upon Subject and Psyche, also published by Marquette University Press, and anticipates the later work Theology and the Dialectics of History (University of Toronto Press). In many ways its presentation of the notion of psychic conversion is more complete than what is found in either of those works.”
Robert Doran, S.J., formerly Professor of Systematic Theology, Regis College, University of Toronto, is Director of the Lonergan Research Institute, Toronto, & Professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University.
Marquette University Press
