A review of Donald Capps’s At Home in the World

Abstract

This article is a contribution to a review forum of Donald Capps’s (2013) creative contribution At Home in the World: A Study in Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Art. In his volume Capps expands on previous work in the development of aesthetic pastoral theology. Capps’s portrayal of the religious sensibility in works of art follows his three-fold paradigm—a sense of honor, a sense of hope, and a sense of humor—to analyze how selected works of art are closely related to the early experiences of a son with his mother. The careful articulation of the movements of the melancholy self expand on Capps’s previous work on Erik Erickson, Sigmund Freud, and William James. In particular, Capps explores how the paintings may reflect the guidance of the melancholy self and how the experience of viewing these paintings can be therapeutic to men’s experiences of sadness, melancholy, and homelessness in the world. The article suggests that this new work by Capps represents a shift beyond ‘theological reflection’ in pastoral theology to ‘theological perception.’ The article also offers reflections on the importance of Capps’s paradigm of the melancholy self for the exploration of grief experiences of men.