Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology (Black Religion/Womanist Thought/Social Justice)

To illustrate the complexities of black women's experiences of self-identification and racial embodiment, Phillis Isabella Sheppard provides an account that engages both psychoanalytic theory and the role of religion and cultural objects in self-understanding. Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology argues for a critical engagement between womanist theology and psychoanalytic Self Psychology. Sheppard's position is that a psychoanalytically informed womanist practical theology will more fully account for the complexities of black women's experiences of self and black embodiment as well as the role of religion and cultural objects in self understanding. This psychoanalytic turn allows us not only to examine practices of care in relation to black women but also to direct a psychoanalytic lens toward womanist theological anthropology, embodiment, pedagogy, psychology of religion, as well as psychoanalytic reader response to engagement with scripture. In the end, her work challenges and advances both psychoanalysis and womanist thought Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Black As You See Me....Pages 1-20 Front Matter....Pages 21-21 Black Women’s Experience of Religion, Race, and Gender....Pages 23-39 The Current Shape of Womanist Practical Theology....Pages 41-60 Suffering and Pain, Longing and Love: The Embedded Psychology in Womanist Perspectives....Pages 61-77 Front Matter....Pages 79-79 Black Psychoanalysis and Black Feminist Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism: Resources toward a Critical Appropriation of Psychoanalysis....Pages 81-110 Black Women and Self Psychology: Toward a Usable Dialogue....Pages 111-125 Black Embodiment and Religious Experience after Trauma: A Womanist Self Psychological Perspective on Mourning the Loss of Cultural Selfobjects....Pages 127-141 A Dark Body of Goodness Created in the Image of God: Navigating Sexuality, Race, and Gender, Alone and Together....Pages 143-170 Front Matter....Pages 171-171 Black and Beautiful: Reading the “Song of Songs”....Pages 173-186 Final Thoughts....Pages 187-195 Back Matter....Pages 197-226