The Making of a Mystic

Seasons in the Life of Teresa of Avila

By Francis L. Gross Jr.
With Toni Perior Gross

Subjects: Women In Religion
Paperback : 9780791414125, 285 pages, July 1993
Hardcover : 9780791414118, 285 pages, July 1993

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Chronology

Abbreviations

Introduction

PART ONE--THE STORY

1. Childhood

2. Adolescence

3. Patterns of Emergence

4. Middle Adulthood

5. Old Age

PART TWO--HER BACKGROUND

6. Family

7. Her Country: Spain and Spaniards in the Golden Age

PART THREE--THEMES OF HER LIFE

8. The Journey to Her Own Voice

9. Morality

10. Psychology and Prayer

11. Teresa's Prayer and Her Psychology of Prayer

12. Teresa's Playfulness

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Description

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.

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.

Reviews

"I like the authors' clear insights into Teresa from a psychological point of view. The authors not only know about Teresa but, more significantly, 'know' her in an empathetic mode. Thus the writing is smooth, never strained, as they call upon the examples of other spiritual men and women whose lives shed light on Teresa's. Their familiarity with psychology translates into eminently readable prose." — Mary E. Giles, California State University, Sacramento