Perspectives on Psychic Conversion

Central to empirical consciousness and the primary basis of human knowledge is the psyche: the nexus between body and mind and the basis for what Robert Doran termed psychic conversion. Perspectives on Psychic Conversion brings together seventeen essays that explore the nature, development, and appropriation of psychic conversion as an extension of Bernard Lonergan's articulation of a threefold process of intellectual, moral and religious conversion.

Contributors to the volume examine psychic conversion in relation to a range of interdisciplinary fields, including trauma studies, psychopathology, and colonial and post-colonial studies. Chapters also explore its application to twenty-first century needs, including the healing of wounds engendered by oppression, racism, and dehumanization, and the reinvention of the self to counteract the impact of biases that inhibit the appropriation of authentic selfhood.

Situating psychic conversion in relation both to theology (including Lonergan's three conversions and the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises) and to the science of neuroplasticity, Perspectives on Psychic Conversion gathers more than a dozen leading scholars and practitioners to advance understanding of psychic conversion and explore its many applications to contemporary theological issues.