Tamas Pataki's Books

Against Religion

By: Tamas Pataki

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Shortly before his death, Anton Chekov wrote to Diaghilev: 'I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious.' Tamas Pataki shares that bewilderment.The idea that the world's main religions - particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - have been fatally undermined since the Enlightenment has been proved spectacularly wrong. Statistics show that traditional faith retains strong support: in the USA, 85 per cent of people claim to believe in God; in Nigeria, 98 per cent; in Indonesia, at least 90 per cent; in Ireland, 87 per cent. The revival of Orthodoxy in Russia and Eastern Europe, religious stirrings in atheistic China, the growth of extreme Hindu nationalism in India, and the appeal of Islamic fundamentalism all show that there is still a vital hankering for religion.The religious have become more influential in world affairs than they have been for centuries. This is especially true in the United States, where white Evangelical Christians are having a conspicuous social and political impact. George W. Bush, Osama bin Laden, and many of their associates believe themselves to be doing God's will but, according to reports, only the first of these mass-murderers thinks that he is receiving instructions directly from the Almighty. And, while there is general agreement that certain fundamentalisms are a menace to civil society, they are usually seen as transient perversions to be cured by a re-assertion of a more wholesome tradition.Tamas Pataki does not agree. Against Religion is a brave and controversial book which argues that extremist religions are branches of the same noxious tree, and that (nearly) all religion is a disease born of fear and a source of untold misery. He argues that we need to seriously consider the possibility that, for many people, their religiosity is founded on something akin to mental illness or infantilism.

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145

Publisher

Scribe Publications

Published Date

ISBN 10

1921215186

ISBN 13

9781921215186

Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

The tyranny of desire

By: Tamas Pataki

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Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

The tyranny of desire

By: Tamas Pataki

Wish-fulfilment as a singular means of satisfying ineluctable desire is a pivotal concept in classical psychoanalysis. Freud argued that it was the thread that united dreams, daydreams, phantasy, omnipotent thinking, neurotic and some psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions, art, myth, and religious illusions. The concept's theoretical exploration has been largely neglected within psychoanalysis since, but contemporary philosophers have recognised it as providing an explanatory model for much of the kind of irrational behaviour so problematic for psychiatry, social psychology and the philosophy of mind. Although critically neglected in contemporary psychological and psychoanalytic thought, the concept remains clinically fundamental, under different labels: it encompasses the processes of omnipotent phantasy, symbolic or substitutive satisfaction, actualisation in transference and acting out, symptom formation and defenses such as projective identification. Wish-fulfilment can be shown to be a specifically psychoanalytic compartment of a common-sense psychological theory of action that illuminates not just clinical material but also the paradoxes of irrationality – such as weakness of will and self-deception – that preoccupy philosophers. The first half of this book develops a comprehensive and novel theory of wish-fulfilment, explores its radical implications for the structure of mind, and locates it against the backdrop of both contemporary psychoanalytic and philosophical thought. In the second half, the book applies the theory to illuminate important features of self-deception and delusion, religion, insanity defences, creative writing and the exclusion of mind and intention in the biological drift of modern psychiatry. The book will be essential to philosophers of mind, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychologists, social theorists, and students in these disciplines; as well as readers interested in understanding how the mind works in mental illness, self-deception, religion, and creative writing.

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Page Count

229

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1135903689

ISBN 13

9781135903688

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

The Arrogance of Gods

By: Tamas Pataki

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Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

The Arrogance of Gods

By: Tamas Pataki

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism traces the historical and psychosocial development of religiosity and applies anthropological and psychoanalytic perspectives to the understanding of religions, particularly their fanatical and fundamentalist expressions. Religious ideology, practices and institutions satisfy many human needs, including those arising from our hysterical, obsessional, and narcissistic dispositions: the need to segregate the good and bad aspects of our personalities; to belong to an idealized group; and to feel secure and special by identifying with, or living in the orbit of, a supposedly omnipotent figure. But these needs and their modes of satisfaction are distorted by religions which may then nurture and accommodate malign characteristics, especially in the case of the monotheisms, narcissistic inflation or grandiosity. The book shows how interactions between religious ideology and personal development become intricated in the narcissistic pathology which underlies much of the violence and religious aggression in the world today. It presents both a new account of the historical and psychosocial development of religiosity and a powerful polemic against the religions which delusorily satisfy some of the very needs they create. The book will appeal to psychoanalysts, anthropologists, philosophers, sociologists, and all those interested in the place of religion in the modern world.

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176

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1315519798

ISBN 13

9781315519791

Proper Peasants

Social Relations in a Hungarian Village

By: Tamas Hofer

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Proper Peasants

Social Relations in a Hungarian Village

By: Tamas Hofer

Based on an intensive fourteen-year study of a Hungarian peasant village, Proper Peasants greatly expands our knowledge of Eastern European social organizations with its accurate portrayal of a rapidly vanishing peasant way of life. Centering on the village of Átány in central Hungary, the study presents a dramatic account of peasant life through the turbulent centuries. It is based largely upon evidence given by villagers themselves and is a moving human story of a community with a tragic historical background and a complex, demanding present.Edit Fél and Tamás Hofer begin by locating Átány within the historical, geographical, and cultural context of Hungary as a whole. The following chapters describe units of social organization and the human relationships within and among these units. There is a special analysis of stratification and mobility within the changing structural situations of the past hundred years. Objective information about all the dimensions of village life is obtained from a comparison of Átány with nearby villages and from the use of local records. The book portrays the attempts of the community to classify, organize, and understand the universe within which lives and to control the unexpected and varied demands that have been made upon it by changing circumstances.This work makes excellent use of the strong 150-year tradition of ethnographic research in Hungary. The discussion of the warm personal relationships among the Átány people is supplemented with extensive statistical material on demographic processes, economic structure, and stratification. The picture that results is rich and fruitful, particularly so in a post-communist nation.

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607

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351496298

ISBN 13

9781351496292

Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

The tyranny of desire

By: Tamas Pataki

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Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

The tyranny of desire

By: Tamas Pataki

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Page Count

279

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Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1135903751

ISBN 13

9781135903756

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

The Arrogance of Gods

By: Tamas Pataki

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Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

The Arrogance of Gods

By: Tamas Pataki

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176

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

1315519798

ISBN 13

9781315519791

Book's by Tamas Pataki

Against Religion

Against Religion

Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

Proper Peasants

Proper Peasants

Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Wish-fulfilment in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

Religion, Narcissism and Fanaticism

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