Article Title：Abandonment, religion, and male melancholia: A psychoanalytic study of archpriest Avvakum's religious autobiography
Abstract：
The present study is a psychoanalytic reading of Archpriest Avvakum's autobiography and takes its cue from some observations made by Russian and Ukrainian historian Edward Keenan, who offered a tentative diagnosis of manic-depression to describe Avvakum's personality. In my view, Donald Capps's analysis of religious male melancholia supports Keenan's observations, and I argue that Avvakum carried his childhood experiences and conflicts over into his later religious life. His religious life manifested a series of transferences and displacements, with Mary the Mother of God, God the Father, and the Church functioning as his loving or positive relationships with his family; and Patriarch Nikon and his followers embodying everything he feared and resented about his own childhood-change and abandonment.
Keywords: psychoanalysis; male melancholia; transference; displacement; abandonment
DOI: 10.1023/A:1024891618734
Source：JOURNAL OF RELIGION & HEALTH
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