Kierkegaard's Psychology Book

Translator's Note ix

Bibliographical Note and Abbreviations xi

Introduction xvii

I Kierkegaard as a Psychologist 1

1 Kierkegaard's Method 1

1:1 Autopsy and Engagement 1

1:2 "Unum noris, Omnes" 2

1:3 Observation of Others 7

1:4 The Formation of Theories 10

2 "The Idea of Representation" 11

2:1 The Psychological Experiment 11

2:2 Psychology and "The Stages on Life's Way" 13

II "When the Child is to be Weaned..." 16

1 Separation 16

2 Anthropological Anxiety and Original Sin 17

3 "The Child's 'Me' 19

3:1 Adam and the Erotic Stages of Immediacy 19

3:2 The Theme of the Essay on Mozart 23

3:3 The First Stage 25

4 Individuation and Anxiety 30

4:1 The Second Stage 30

4:2 The Third Stage 33

4:3 Cordelia's Anxiety 34

4:4 Don Giovanni and the Commendatore 40

4:5 Adam 45

III The Individual and "The Race" 51

1 The Historical and Biological Concretion 51

2 Sexuality 53

2:1 The Exclusion of Sensuality 53

2:2 Integrated Sensuality 55

2:3 Sin Makes Sexuality Into Sin 56

2:4 "Love's Victory" 60

2:5 Sexuality and the Development of Consciousness 61

2:6 Sensuality and its Selfish Form 62

3 The Child and his Environment 65

3:1 "The Sins of the Fathers" 65

3:2 Anxiety about Sin Produces Sin 66

3:3 Upbringing 69

IV The Anthropological Model 73

1 From Child to Adult 73

2 Anthropology and Psychology 74

2:1 The Idea of Creation 74

2:2 Ethics, Christianity, Psychology 77

3 The Self 81

3:1 Consciousness and Concern 81

3:2 Dependence and Freedom 89

3:3 Development 91

3:4 Becoming 94

4 "To Acquire One's Soul inPatience" 98

4:1 The Doctrine of Anamnesis and Maieutics 98

4:2 To Own and to Acquire 103

4:3 Anthropological Model and Conflict Model 107

V The Conflict Model 110

1 The Vicious Circle 110

2 Revision of the Socratic Definition of Sin 114

2:1 Cognition, the Will, and the Lower Nature 114

2:2 Sin is Produced Ignorance 118

2:3 Original Sin 120

2:4 "... in order to bring about obscurity" 123

3 "The Hysteria of the Spirit" 124

4 Time 129

5 Ambiguousness and Unambiguousness 135

5:1 The Position of Ambiguousness 135

5:2 Unambiguousness and Double-Mindedness 137

5:3 Simplicity and Unambiguousness 138

6 Escape and Revenge 142

6:1 Freud and Kierkegaard 142

6:2 Freud's Theories of Anxiety 144

6:3 Escape Revenges Itself 151

6:4 Freud's Conflict Model 156

6:5 Retrospective or Functional Analysis 160

6:6 Defense and Symptom 163

7 Sin is a Condition 165

7:1 Science and its Limits 165

7:2 Guilt, Sin, and the Qualitative Leap 168

7:3 The Possibility of Offense 175

8 "The Formula for all Despair" 178

8:1 "Anxiety about the Good" 178

8:2 "Despair about the Eternal" 181

8:3 The Applicability of the Formulae 184

9 "The Self the Individual Knows" 187

9:1 "The Self is the Relationship to Itself" 187

9:2 The Genesis of Self-perception: the Standard of Measure and Fantasy 189

9:3 The Representation and the Represented 191

9:4 The Unconscious Choice 194

9:5 To Despair "Over Oneself" 197

VI "The Continuity of Sin" 200

1 The Formulae 200

2 "The Degrees of Consciousness about the Self" 202

3 "Activity-Passivity or Passivity-Activity" 209

4 "The Consistency of Evil" 214

4:1 Oblivion 214

4:2 The Impotence of the Demonic 217

4:3 The Power of Evil 219

5 Encapsulation 223

5:1 The Methods of Defense 223

5:2 "Everything is Self-Defense for Him" 226

5:3 Anxiety about Communication 227

5:4 "Pseudo-Continuity" 230

6 Madness 233

VII "The Forms of Despair" 240

1 Spiritlessness: The Social Complex 240

2 The Antigone Complex 256

2:1 Aggression Directed Inward 256

2:2 Reflected Sorrow 259

2:3 Sorrow and Grief 266

2:4 Antigone's Secret 269

3 The Problem of Guilt 273

3:1 Guilt-feeling and Guilt 273

3:2 Ritualism 275

3:3 The "Suppressed Consciousness of Sin" 279

3:4 Excursus on Freud 281

3:5 Insane Remorse 283

3:6 "Anxiety about the Evil" and "Anxiety about the Good" 286

4 The Richard III Complex 290

4:1 Hypocrisy 290

4:2 "Against Cowardice" 292

4:3 The Fear of Being Found Out 295

4:4 Melancholia's Self-Understanding 299

4:5 Universal Aggression 301

4:6 Moral Reaction-Formation 304

5 "What is a Poet?" 307

5:1 The Poet-Existence 307

5:2 Ways of Viewing Suffering 308

5:3 Sickness and Sublimation 311

5:4 "Poet-Existence with a Religious Tendency" 314

5:5 "But Now God Wants Things Otherwise" 318

VIII "Fundamental Recovery" 323

1 Kierkegaard's Problem and the Problem of Kierkegaard 323

2 Settling-Up With Kierkegaard? 325

2:1 Reductionism 325

2:2 Expertise and Contempt 327

3 Possibility, Actuality, and Communication 331

3:1 The Problem of Knowledge 331

3:2 Conclusion, Decision, "Belief" 337

3:3 The Incommunicable-and the Effect of Communication 340

3:4 Indirect Communication 344

4 Maieutics and Anthropology 347

4:1 Maieutics 347

4:2 Therapy 349

4:3 The Deception 354

4:4 The Analogy to Socrates 358

4:5 The Significance of Psychology 360

4:6 The Anthropological Question 362

4:7 "Works of Love" 365

4:8 "... the Consistency of the Good" 368

4:9 Many Sorts of Love 371

4:10 Love is Maieutics 374

4:11 "... Like the Sprout in the Grain" 376

Notes 387

Index 407