Martin Luther on the Couch: The Enduring Thrill of Erik Erikson’s Young Man Luther (audio)

Posted on June 14, 2023 by PLT Staff

In Carlos Eire’s recent lecture in PLT Director Charles Marsh’s class, Anxiety: Religious and Theological Perspectives, Eire brings new meaning and modern considerations to Martin Luther’s ideas about anxiety and the devil. Eire begins by discussing Martin Luther’s life and modern attempts at his psychoanalyzation. From here, Eire describes the tension between Luther’s spirituality and what he calls “dogmatic materialism,” or the belief that all we can know comes from what we can physically observe. Luther’s take on anxiety- namely, that it comes from the devil- introduces a spiritual component to anxiety that the notion of dogmatic materialism denies. Finally, Eire discusses his upcoming book on the miracles that frequently occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

-Write-up by Emily Miller, fourth-year undergraduate at UVA who is double-majoring in religious studies and statistics

  • Audio Information
  • Date Recorded:October 19, 2022
  • Location Recorded:Charlottesville, Virginia
  • Audio File:Download File »
This audio is published by the Project on Lived Theology (PLT). For any questions related to its use, please contact PLT (https://www.livedtheology.org//contact/). Copy available for use subject to Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution required, Non-Commercial use, No Derivatives, 3.0, Unported).