Poetic Attachment Page 1 of 16 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: null; date: 13 January 2015 Print Publication Date: Mar 2014 Subject: Religion, Literary and Textual Studies Online Publication Date: Jul 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199783335.013.027 Poetic Attachment: Psychology, Psycholinguistics, and the Psalms Brent A. Strawn The Oxford Handbook of the Psalms Edited by William P. Brown Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords The book of Psalms contains many themes that are psychological in nature, including human emotions such as anger, grief, despair, happiness, gratitude, trust, and confidence, as well as human practices ranging from disclosure to thanksgiving and religious activities. Each individual psalm has its own psychological elements and therefore must be subjected to its own (psycho)analysis. This article discusses the application of psychology and psycholinguistics to the Bible, with reference to the Psalms from the perspective of attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. It explores the parent-child relationship, the therapeutic process, and the psychology of God in the Psalms. Keywords: Psalms, psychology, psycholinguistics, Bible, attachment theory, relational psychoanalysis, parent–child relationship, therapeutic process, God PSYCHOLOGICAL study of the Psalms could pursue a seemingly endless number of possible routes for several reasons. One reason is the sheer range of subjects that might be investigated psychologically, including at least the following three: the authors of the Psalms, the Psalms themselves, and the readers of the Psalms. A second reason is the large array of psychological topics that bear on these poems. A very partial listing would include the full gamut of human emotions, including anger, grief, happiness, trust, confidence, despair, and gratitude, as well as a whole host of human practices such as disclosure, thanksgiving, religious activities of various sorts (including prayer, worship, praise, etc.), and so forth. Finally, the Psalms are a highly diverse corpus, which means, among other things, that a psychological probe of one psalm will not necessarily obtain for another psalm. Each individual psalm, each with its own psychological elements, must be subjected to its own (psycho)analysis. Complicating these three considerations is the fact that each overlaps and intersects with the others, thereby multiplying the studies that could be offered and the approaches that might be taken in any psychological study of the Psalms. So, for instance, one could apply the psychology of gratitude to the psalmic texts, to their (implied) authors, to their readers, or to all of the above in some combination. To make matters still more complex, psychology is a highly differentiated field. Studying the psychology of gratitude in the Psalms will look different in a psychoanalytic mode, then, than when it is seen through the lens of positive psychology (Brown 2012: 95–115). Given the superabundance that emerges from cross-fertilizing psychology and the Psalms, any such investigation requires focus. In what follows, I introduce psychology and psycholinguistics and their application to the Bible before focusing my attention on (p. 405) the Psalms as seen through attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis and what that interface means for the psychology of God in the Psalms. Introducing Psychology and Psycholinguistics (and the Psalms) Before Sigmund Freud (1956–1939), “biblical psychology” was largely a study of the biblical concept of the soul 1