Volney P. Gay
Professor & Chair of Religious Studies
Professor of Psychiatry
Professor of Anthropology
Director, Center for the Study of Religion and Culture

B.A. (Reed 1970)
M.A., Ph.D. (Chicago 1973, 1976)

volney.p.gay@vanderbilt.edu
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Volney P. Gay is Professor of Religion, Professor of Psychiatry, and Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and Director, Center for the Study of Religion and Culture. He is also on the Editorial Board of The Journal of Ritual Studies, Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, and Journal of the American Academy of Religion. He is a faculty member of the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute, from which he graduated in 1990. He was certified in Adult Psychoanalysis in 1990 by the American Psychoanalytic Association and was made a Training and Supervising Analyst in December, 1994. His book, Freud on Sublimation: Reconsiderations, published in 1992, won the Heinz Hartmann Award from the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.

His most recent book, Joy and the Objects of Psychoanalysis, was published in 2001. Professor Gay's research interests include psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the psychodynamic study of culture, the comparative history of religions, and the psychology of religion.