title: Good God?!? Lamentations as a model for mourning the loss of the good God.
abstract: This article will address the devastating psychological and social effects due to the loss of one's primary love-object, namely God in the case of faith communities and religious individuals. By using Melanie Klein's Object Relations Theory (Klein in Envy and gratitude and other works 1946/1963. The Free Press, New York, 1975a) as a way to enter the text of Lamentations, I will articulate an alternative reading that can serve as a model for Pastors and Educators to use when walking with individuals and communities through unspeakable losses. I will argue that Lamentations may be used as a tool for naming confounding depression and anxiety that stems from a damaged introjected object (one's personal God). This tool may provide individuals and communities a framework for placing anger and contempt upon God in order to re-assimilate this loved yet hated object, eventually leading toward healing and restoration of the self.
authors.affiliation: Union Theological Seminary, New York, NY, USA. houckloomis@gmail.com
authors.forename: Tiffany
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Houck-Loomis
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D001317:Austria; D001633:Bible; D006117:Grief; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D009769:Object Attachment; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D006113:United Kingdom; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*