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The Sword of Laban: Joseph Smith, Jr., and the Dissociated Mind
"A whole life can be shaped by an old trauma, remembered or not."--Lenore Terr, Child Psychiatrist
What behavioral patterns could one expect from an adult whose brutal childhood traumas held themes of dismemberment, punishment, and worse? For Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, a religious superstructure of narcissism may have evolved, with sexual and ritualistic features that flowed directly from traumatic events.
Joseph suffered unspeakable pain as a seven-year-old child from a leg bone infection and its surgical treatments without anesthesia. He survived as the crippled middle child of an impoverished migrant family, retreating into a fantasy world of violence, persecution, and revenge from which he never completely emerged. As an adolescent, the sudden death of his beloved older brother contributed bizarre bereavement fantasies to an already traumatized psyche.
The Sword of Laban examines the Mormon prophet's enigmatic life in light of current understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder and the dissociation that accompanies it. Dr. Morain traces the repetitive patterns of behavior and fantasies of Smith's adult life. He demonstrates how the horrifying real events of the surgeries combined with the developmental phase-specific fantasies of a seven-year-old boy resulted in permanent pathological distortion of Smith's entire early psychological growth and development--with significant consequences for his subsequent adult psychological functioning.
Dr. Morain's remarkable psychological study of Joseph Smith, Jr. will be of interest to a wide spectrum of readers--as a social history, religious biography, an account of the dissociative elements in poetic and spiritual genius, or simply a gripping portrait of an ill-fated and tragic man. This text also has a special relevance for clinicians who are changing their theoretical and practical approaches to psychiatric illness.
What behavioral patterns could one expect from an adult whose brutal childhood traumas held themes of dismemberment, punishment, and worse? For Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, a religious superstructure of narcissism may have evolved, with sexual and ritualistic features that flowed directly from traumatic events.
Joseph suffered unspeakable pain as a seven-year-old child from a leg bone infection and its surgical treatments without anesthesia. He survived as the crippled middle child of an impoverished migrant family, retreating into a fantasy world of violence, persecution, and revenge from which he never completely emerged. As an adolescent, the sudden death of his beloved older brother contributed bizarre bereavement fantasies to an already traumatized psyche.
The Sword of Laban examines the Mormon prophet's enigmatic life in light of current understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder and the dissociation that accompanies it. Dr. Morain traces the repetitive patterns of behavior and fantasies of Smith's adult life. He demonstrates how the horrifying real events of the surgeries combined with the developmental phase-specific fantasies of a seven-year-old boy resulted in permanent pathological distortion of Smith's entire early psychological growth and development--with significant consequences for his subsequent adult psychological functioning.
Dr. Morain's remarkable psychological study of Joseph Smith, Jr. will be of interest to a wide spectrum of readers--as a social history, religious biography, an account of the dissociative elements in poetic and spiritual genius, or simply a gripping portrait of an ill-fated and tragic man. This text also has a special relevance for clinicians who are changing their theoretical and practical approaches to psychiatric illness.
246 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 17, 2023
Interesting read. A little extreme on the Freudian approach at times, but still important ideas to consider. Believers look to the story of Joseph’s surgery as miraculous without exploring the ways such trauma might have affected his young developing mind. To overlook such ideas keeps us from understanding the complexity of Joseph’s nature and behaviors. This sheds interesting light and even allows some grace when considering Joseph’s tragic flaws.
September 15, 2017
I'm going to try and be fair about this book. It gets a lot of 1-star ratings by devout Mormons simply because of its approach.
I have never been a bug fan of psychoanalysis being applied to history. It's just too messy. How can w possibly hope to apply such a study on somebody who had been deaf for over 100 years? Having said that, I will say that this book does present at least one aspect of Joseph Smith's life that has never been fully appreciated, that being the loss of his brother, Alvin. I have long contended that the death of Alvin marked the birth of Mormonism's founding prophet, so on this issue I am in complete agreement with the author's assessment. Where he loses me is when he tries to connect dots that I don't believe exist. The book choses to place more emphasis on modern psychoanalysis than on actual histoey, which isn't a fair approach when we are looking at the founding of Mormonism or the life of its first prophet. The book would have benefited from a more rigorous historiographical approach that could then link some aspects of Joseph's psychology with what we know about his past, but even that approach would leave some gaping holes.
Like I said at the beginning, I am not big on psychoanalysis of historical figures. This book reminds me why that is the case.
I have never been a bug fan of psychoanalysis being applied to history. It's just too messy. How can w possibly hope to apply such a study on somebody who had been deaf for over 100 years? Having said that, I will say that this book does present at least one aspect of Joseph Smith's life that has never been fully appreciated, that being the loss of his brother, Alvin. I have long contended that the death of Alvin marked the birth of Mormonism's founding prophet, so on this issue I am in complete agreement with the author's assessment. Where he loses me is when he tries to connect dots that I don't believe exist. The book choses to place more emphasis on modern psychoanalysis than on actual histoey, which isn't a fair approach when we are looking at the founding of Mormonism or the life of its first prophet. The book would have benefited from a more rigorous historiographical approach that could then link some aspects of Joseph's psychology with what we know about his past, but even that approach would leave some gaping holes.
Like I said at the beginning, I am not big on psychoanalysis of historical figures. This book reminds me why that is the case.
April 23, 2018
Psychological study of Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism. Freudian analyses of dead historical figures leave a lot to be desired, but this book does provide a needed examination into Smith's medical problems, both physical and mental
December 4, 2020
Was repetitive and made tenuous connections. It had some interesting ideas.
February 26, 2008
This is a psychological study of Joseph Smith, and two events which may have caused him to create the Mormon faith. A death in the family and a series of painful leg surgeries seem to have influenced the violent images which pepper The Book of Mormon. Very interesting stuff.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews