Shame, Desire And Marginality

How do elements from Christian doctrine help or hinder people when interpreting their lives? In what ways does such doctrine contribute to the shaping of personal and socially embedded phenomena vital for human development? What might empirical material contribute to in terms of providing a critical challenge to traditional doctrines relevant for such matters? These are questions that the present article wants to explore. As an empirical point of departure, it looks into material from a larger study on religious elements in people’s life-stories. By looking at how phenomena like shame and desire can be detected in discourses on the informants’ religious framework and their experiences, the material provides a basis for understanding the nuances of the pragmatic context in which doctrinal elements function. The picture emerging from these explorations is multifaceted, and suggests that the ways in which religious communities – by means of doctrine – relate to phenomena embedding shame and desire might have a strong impact on how people see their future relation to church life

Psychoanalysis · Shame · Sociology · Gender Studies · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development · Social Psychology · Theological Perspectives and Practices

• Shame

  Open Access•Stephen Pattison•Shame•2000

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• The Therapy of Desire

  Martha C Nussbaum, Martha Nussbaum•Therapy of Desire•2009

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