Lacan for the Faithful

This book confronts the enduring tension between psychoanalysis and religion. Taking as its point of departure Lacan’s provocative late claim about the “triumph of religion,” it probes why psychoanalysis has struggled to counteract the nihilistic drift of contemporary culture. Partly agreeing with Freud’s view of religion as a defense against existential and psychic suffering, the book also considers the limits of psychoanalytic discourse to speak on religious matters and especially faith. Through a personal and philosophical review of childhood encounters with infinite regress and uncontained void, the book traces Descartes’ cogito , its Lacanian reworking as the unconscious, the Borromean knot, and the sinthome , ultimately revealing the subject’s irreducible incompleteness and fundamental lack where religion makes a home. In a twilight modern age, the ambivalent nonbeliever Simon of Cyrene emerges as a striking religious exemplar compelled to adopt a burden beyond his comprehension. The book closes by asking whether psychoanalysis can still equip individuals to resist the denaturing, dehumanizing forces of our New Dark Age—and what future, if any, it may have in the landscape it helped to shape. Blending rigorous psychoanalytic insight with theological reflection, this work speaks urgently to readers in psychoanalysis, religious studies, philosophy, and cultural theory who seek to understand the perseverance of faith amid the unraveling certainties of secularism.