Despair - Sickness or Sin?

"Despair: Sickness or Sin? is a book likely to prove both timely and timeless.  Bringle did not write with an eye to capitalizing upon the current discussions in our society of the many patterns of pain centering on a sense of personal emptiness or lack of self worth.  Nonetheless, her astute analysis of despair has profound implications both for understanding and for treating eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual obsessiveness, and various types of withdrawing or...
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"Despair: Sickness or Sin? is a book likely to prove both timely and timeless.  Bringle did not write with an eye to capitalizing upon the current discussions in our society of the many patterns of pain centering on a sense of personal emptiness or lack of self worth.  Nonetheless, her astute analysis of despair has profound implications both for understanding and for treating eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual obsessiveness, and various types of withdrawing or compulsive behaviors.  These features make hers a timely book in our present context."

"On the other hand, Bringle's study traces the history of a discussion regarding the dynamics and etiology of despair which draws on the rich language of psychologies that long antedate the post-Freudian and humanistic psychological categories in which these matters are chiefly discussed today.  She makes us recall that psyche is the Greek term for soul, and that psychology, as the logos or seasoned science of the soul, properly deals with the spiritual and faith dimensions of alienation, isolation, and feelings of resigned impotence.  In retrieving the thinking of theologians and spiritual interpreters from the third through the twentieth centuries, she offers a timeless contribution to our understanding of a universal dynamic of the soul as interpreted in dialogue with Christian traditions."  --excerpts from the Foreword by James W. Fowler