The Making of a Mystic: Seasons in the Life of Teresa of Avila

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SUNY Press, Jan 1, 1993 - Religion - 285 pages
This is a passionate book about a gifted woman. It is written from a psychological viewpoint using the developmental point of view of a number of contemporary developmental psychologists, both men and women. It is a critique of contemporary American shallowness and is an apologia for a feminist ethic and a feminist sense of prayer in a world dominated by competition, abstraction, and unthinking labor.

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Contents

Childhood
3
Adolescence
13
Patterns of Emergence
33
Middle Adulthood
47
Old Age
87
HER BACKGROUND
111
Family
113
Her Country Spain and Spaniards in the Golden Age
123
The Journey to Her Own Voice
143
Morality
171
Psychology and Prayer
185
Teresas Prayer and Her Psychology of Prayer
201
Teresas Playfulness
211
Notes
229
Bibliography
265
Index
273

THEMES OF HER LIFE
141

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Page xx - For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven : a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance...

About the author (1993)

Francis L. Gross, Jr. is Professor of Religion at the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Michigan University and is the author of a number of books on developmental psychology and religion.

Toni Perior Gross is a psychotherapist in private practice.

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