Finding God after Atheism and the failure of the American dream: The first female president of American College of Psychoanalysts and groundbreaking PMS researcher -- Sally K. Severino, MD -- shares her journey of faith and redemption in becoming fire, a new book.
RHINEBECK, New York -- "It is practically unheard of for a Freudian to embrace faith, since Freud himself was a notorious atheist," says prominent Freudian psychoanalyst Dr. Sally Severino.
"In my case, it took a very bad year to open my heart to God. My mother died, my second marriage fell apart, and my sons left home, all in the space of a few months, but that's what it took to bring me to my knees." Dr. Severino means this literally: when the material trappings of her affluent life failed to comfort her, the doctor began to pray.
"I'm a stubborn person," she says, "and the idea that I needed a spiritual transformation wasn't even on my radar screen. I was a scientist, first and foremost, and had been an atheist for years. But when crisis hits, the answers science offers aren't enough. And material success becomes meaningless."
Her success was hard earned, but Dr. Severino's childhood of hardscrabble poverty in Depression-era Kansas, and the strong role models of her mother and maternal grandmother, taught her the value of hard work and can-do motivation. "I achieved great success in what was traditionally a male-centric profession," she says. "I had a position of wealth and influence as a New York psychoanalyst. I was the first woman President of the American College of Psychoanalysts, and received a lot of media attention for my groundbreaking research on PMS.
Einstein and Tagore -- maybe they're not so different after all.
But all my power and prosperity felt empty. It took God to fill that emptiness." In fact, Dr. Severino's spiritual journey could be seen as an epilogue to a classic American rags-to-riches story, and an answer to the conundrum of our era: When the American Dream goes south -- when material abundance isn't enough to ease spiritual poverty or the pain of loss -- what's left?
What can we do? "I had all the perks of the American Dream -- big house, expensive car, designer clothes. It didn't help. But when my life broke apart, I broke open. I realized something was missing -- and the something was...." More>>
- Text: PRWEB
