In this provocative book, W. W. Meissner, a Jesuit and psychoanalyst, attempts to bring about a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and religious thinking. Utilizing the resources of modern psychoanalytic insight, he examines Freud's views on religion, explores the dialectical relationship between psychoanalysis and religion, and applies more contemporary concepts in psychoanalysis to the understanding of religious experience. Dr. Meissner has written a book which is consistently interesting, often challenging, and impressive for its wide range of scholarship in two fields not often combined in the same work...Dr. Meissner has done us a service in this scholarly work by demonstrating how two perspectives of the human condition have over the course of the last several decades come to similar conclusions.-Otto F. Thaler, M.D., Journal of the American Academy of Religion A rich and stimulating book addressing important issues that lie at the intersection of psychoanalysis and religion.-Paul C. Vitz, Contemporary Psychology Meissner has made a challenging useful contribution that will be pondered, applied, and debated.It will undoubtedly also achieve the goal of bringing about more understanding between analysts and theologians.-Lowell Rubin, M.D., Newsletter, Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute

Originally published in 1959, this book is primarily concerned with the question of psychiatric factors in religion, and, conversely, with that of religious factors in psychiatry. It rejects the Freudian theory that religion is a form of obsessional neurosis. Though this latter hypothesis may explain many of the phenomena of religious observance, it cannot explain the reality of religious experience. Dr Guirdham believes that orthodox Christianity is a perversion of the psychologically irrefutable teaching of Christ and that its conception of God as a supreme being endowed with supreme power, its teaching on the resurrection, and its contamination with a sense of guilt, are especially conducive to psychiatric disorder. He shows how theology may actually be inimical to religious experience and how faith differs from belief and is a response of the whole man. The book explains also the psychological origins of clericalism and demonstrates the role played by the latter in stifling religious experience.

Presents the latest psychoanalytic "theories" and their relevance for religious studies. The author, a clinical psychologist and professor of religion, builds on more recent theories in which the self is constued as a matrix of interalized relationships, investigates ways in which religious beliefs, practices, and experiences reflect the structure of the relational self.

What can be gained from a dialogue between psychoanalysis and religion? Freud described religion as the universal obsessional neurosis, and uncompromisingly rejected it in favour of "science." Ever since, there has been the assumption that psychoanalysts are hostile to religion. Yet, from the beginning, individual analysts have questioned Freud's blanket rejection of religion. In this book, David Black brings together contributors from a wide range of schools and movements to discuss the issues. They bring a fresh perspective to the subject of religion and psychoanalysis, answering vital questions such as: How do religious stories carry (or distort) psychological truth? How do religions 'work', psychologically? What is the nature of religious experience? Are there parallels between psychoanalysis and particular religious traditions? Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century will be of great interest to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic therapists, psychodynamic counsellors, and anyone interested in the issues surrounding psychoanalysis, religion, theology and spirituality.

Preeminent psychoanalyst Mortimer Ostow believes that early childhood emotional attachments form the cognitive underpinnings of spiritual experience and religious motivation. His hypothesis, which is verifiable, relies on psychological and neurobiological evidence but is respectful of the human need for spiritual value. Ostow begins by classifying the three parts of the spiritual experience: awe, Spirituality proper, and mysticism. After he pinpoints the psychological origins of these feelings in infancy, he discusses the foundations of religious sentiment and practice and the brain processes associated with spiritual experience. He then focuses on spirituality's relationship to mood regulation, and the role of negative spirituality in fostering religious fundamentalism and demonic possession. Ostow concludes with an analysis of an essay by the psychoanalyst Donald M. Marcus, who recounts his own spiritual experience during a Native American-style "vision quest" in the woods. Marcus's account demonstrates the constructive potential of spirituality and the way in which spirituality retrieves and recapitulates feelings of attachment to the mother. Persuasively and brilliantly argued, Spirit, Mind, and Brain brings the disciplines of religion, behavorial neuroscience, and philosophy to bear on a groundbreaking new method for understanding religious ritual and belief.

This study combines perspectives from psychoanalysis and academic psychology, from nomothetic and idiothetic research, for more depth of vision. Options for the study of lived “religion” are discussed, taking into consideration North American and European cultural contexts of religious experience.

Faced with the contemporary proliferation of a “religion of emotional communities” and the multiplication of gurus, spiritual directors and masters, the psychologist of religion should question the impact of the paternal function on the structuring of religious experience. This question is examined here within the context of ancient monasticism and on the basis of ascetic sources (mainly the Ladder of John Climacus, 7th c.), as well as by means of the analysis of rituals such as baptism and monastic profession. The author demonstrates that the spiritual father refers to paternity as function, and that this function is both structural and structuring with respect to religious experience. It is also examined how this crossroads-concept of fatherhood is linked to other psychic realities such as the maternal dimension of religious desire and the role of the community, the relations between the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic, the paternal uncertainty, the articulation of the mystical desire with the Law, and the control of sexuality. This study shows the importance of this function for bringing together structure and development in the religious experience and indicates the risks of this paternity for a religious pathology.

Early Psychoanalytic Religious Writings presents, in one edited volume, many of the foundational writings in the psychoanalytic study of religion. These translated works by Abraham, Fromm, Pfister, and others, complement Freud’s seminal contributions and provide a unique window into the origins of psychoanalytic thinking.

Belief after Freud confronts the psychoanalytic experience and the experience of faith. A purified vision of faith, so many times disfigured by infantile or neurotic dynamics, can emerge through the crucible of psychoanalysis. The work contributes to the dialogue between psychoanalysis and faith, based on the respective lived experiences, rather than from theoretical positions only. The book is divided into three parts: Part I centres on Freud’s position on religion. After an introductory chapter assessing Freud’s present validity, the following chapters critically examine Freud’s position and interpretation of religion. Part II examines how people of faith experience psychoanalysis, including the role played by unconscious feelings of guilt, and the ideas of sin and salvation. Part III explores ideas of sexuality, power, and obedience, including the unconscious and pathological roots of the relation with money, and the sense of evangelical poverty. Now in its fifth edition in Spain, Belief after Freud has also been published in Argentina and Brazil. Many readers say the book has opened a new form of belief for them. The book has also been of great interest to non-believing psychologists.