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In spite of many indications to the contrary, not least the tenor of the times which includes both the remnant left after the "death of God" as well as the rise of New Age religiosity, this thesis proposes, using feminist and feminine archetypal thinking, that the theory of culture that Christianity, and specifically Catholicism, formulates, is more relevant than ever for the culture it had a part in creating. Within the frame of Christian value reality, a "religion of relatedness" is centred on the Great Commandment which orders loving relatedness to God, then to oneself, and finally to others. What this has to mean in practice is that our relatedness to others depends on our relatedness with ourselves which depends on our relatedness to a beneficent God. Our relatedness to ourselves and to God can be appreciated and evaluated through the lens of Jungian thought - in particular Jung's theory of individuation. Our relatedness to others and the success of that as expressed in the health of our cultural milieu can be appreciated and evaluated through the lens of Lacanian discourse theory. Both individual and cultural growth are part of a developmental and maturation process leading to the "paradox, depth and intergenerational responsibility" that Fowler (1981) describes as characteristic of a Stage 5 level of faith in his Stages of Faith model. That complexity in Stage 5 understanding is seen as essential for growing out of the social and environmental problems that beset human life at this point in its history.

This thesis considers how desire might be theorised in the twenty first century against the backdrop of New Zealand society, culture and film. Methodologically, this exploration is addressed with reference to Žižek’s return to a critique of ideology, whose conceptual basis is drawn from Marx, Althusser and Lacan, and which is significant in its analysis of contemporary desire as emanating from social conditions and constellations of power. Žižek’s challenge to call for a new Master is one that this thesis responds to enthusiastically. Such a response is posited from a location which intersects Lacanian psychoanalysis and sociological theories. The method this exploration employed focus groups and individual interviews from which talk of desire is constructed and critically explored. Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted following a viewing of the New Zealand film, Heavenly Creatures, which enabled an exploration of how participants offer competing ideological locations which can reveal the hidden and not so hidden mechanisms regulating social relations and ambiguities. The participant profiles of the focus groups were designed around key themes relating to the film: fathers of teenage daughters; those working or heavily involved within the creative industries; young women aged between 18-25; and those who grew up in Christchurch during the 1950’s. Heavenly Creatures is a film interpretation of the actual murder of Christchurch resident Honora Rieper in 1954 by her teenage daughter and this daughter’s friend. In exploring both the themes of friendship and the figure of the mother, Heavenly Creatures deliberately conflates fantasy with ideology, so that it is from this intersection that possibilities of subjective desire are confronted. When addressing desire set against this particular film, participants confront deadlocks and misrecognitions, in particular the disintegration of those ideological conditions with which they are identifying. These include the limitations of modern capitalism, concerns about the ‘environment’, the pervasive engagement with cynicism, and frustrations with the inability to intimately and socially self-express. In order to understand and articulate desire various locations are posited in the guise of subjective truth. These points of fixation are structured by the conditions of dominant social and cultural ideologies, which the participant seeks to symbolise in returning to the ambiguity of the promise of the Master’s discourse as proposed by Lacan. This thesis critically explores three of the modalities through which Lacan’s construct of the Master is revealed in participants’ talk about desire: these are the precarious position of belief, the fragmented body, and love as an ideological act. It is argued that these modalities work within discourse in such a way as to offer participants ideological personification as well as a complexity of circumstances from which they can designate the objet a (the truth of one’s desire in psychoanalytic terms) insisted by the superego. In this way these three modalities are configured as enabling a speaking, or a saying, from a position of knowledge. This position in turn insists that the subject does not have to abandon the problem of desire but rather engage with knowledge attained through confronting and developing a literacy of desire. Desire read alongside the modalities of belief, the body and love posit a contemporary ontology in which the gaze commands an ethical and somewhat moral dimension from which the subject can construct a Master which not only seeks to recognise and speak about desire, but also manage it within daily life.

Thesis (MA(Filosofie)--Universiteit van Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-148)

Diss.--Gesamthochschule Kassel, 1988.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 284-302). Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Vita. This is an electronic reproduction of TREN, #033-0622. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [183]-203).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 289-297). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Leaf iv does not have the abstract. Abstract is missing from this dissertation. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves -179-193). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala universitet, 1997. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement and English abstract inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-406) and index.