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Dan Merkur

2 papers in the library · 7 citations · publishing 1996-2006

Papers

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Interpreting Numinous Experiences

Social Analysis 2006 Dan Merkur 6 citations

Drawing on phenomenology and his clinical practice, the author explores religious experience and the dynamics of the numinous. The article opens with the argument that psychoanalysts, like religious healers, should be able to work with religious phenomena as part of psychoanalytic therapy. The origin of the term 'numinous' is explained, and two types of human religious experience, mysterium...

Psychoanalytic methods in the history of religion: A personal statement1

Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 1996 Dan Merkur 1 citation

Abstract For the Scandinavian tradition of the history of religions, in which I was trained, not the numinous, but the experience of the numinous is the sui generis subject matter of the discipline; and historians routinely emphasize the experiential aspects of religions. The better to understand religious experience, I work interdisciplinarily with psychoanalysis. Freud's treatment of group...