Augustine: The Scattered and Gathered Self

by Sandra Lee Dixon

In a psychobiographical investigation of one of Christianity's most enduring figures, Dixon explores the psychological and cultural forces that shaped Augustine's life and how those same forces impact faith in contemporary context.

278 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1999

About the author

Sandra Dixon (PhD, University of Chicago) is Associate Professor in the area of Psychology of Religion at the University of Denver.

She received the doctorate in the area of Religion and the Human Sciences. Her MA is from the University of Chicago, diploma in French from the Alliance Francaise (Paris), and BA from Bryn Mawr.

She has also been project director for a major study on "The Public World of Childhood" in Chicago and assisted in a cross-cultural study of moral reasoning among residents of Hyde Park, Chicago, and Hindus living in Bhubaneswar, Orissa. Moreover, since 1994 Dr. Dixon has chaired the Person, Culture, and Religion Group affiliated with the American Academy of Religion.

Reviews

[Trenton Cleveland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Admittedly, in beginning reading this volume, Dixon is rather forthcoming about her bias and where psychology and social science have gone before analyzing historical figures. We are inundated with a tremendous amount of knowledge about these previous studies, and the reader should come away with the impression that Dixon is trying to improve upon this work and depart from it in at least some way. However, I would say that Dixon does not depart significantly enough from those who have gone before her and ultimately falls into the same pits as past physco-historiographers. That is to say that there is little consideration within this work about the innate spirituality of such an endeavor. What is more, in reading this work, it seems that there is a form of reductionism going on so far that these very complex and spiritual matters of Augustine’s life are boiled down into Freudian psychobabble.

As Johnson points out in his review, this work does break new ground in specific ways; however, the thesis is so broad that it is nearly impossible to prove what exactly influenced each part of Augustine’s life. Add into that the great difficulty of reading modern psychology, and you have yourself a disjointed grab-bag of all sorts of theories that you will never be able to substantiate fully