From metanoia to megalomania: A psychoanalysis of Christianity’s birth pangs

This article examines the social-psychological dynamics of Christianity’s labored birth. It first briefly addresses the methodological false starts of fundamental theology and Christocentric psychoanalysis in their attempts to grasp this religion’s nature and foundations. The article then offers a symptomatological prosopography of the apostles, focusing on their intense investment in Jesus, their traumatic response to his crucifixion, and the subsequent creation of myths such as the resurrection to cope with their shared and unresolved distress. It ultimately argues that the apostles suffered from a pathological narcissism that regressed, via psychosis, to a preoperational level of development, a characterization that explains and elucidates nascent Christianity’s foundations and pharmakonic nature.