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Freud instituted a long-standing tendency among many psychoanalysts to pathologize religion. Irrational, wish-bedraggled religious ideas had no place in a psychoanalysis directed towards the reality principle. However, even in the early days of psychoanalysis, there arose a counter-trend
with the likes of Rank and Jung, who recognized both pathological and wholesome aspects of religion. That counter-trend continues today in such contemporary examples such as Fauteaux's (1994) study, from the view of ego psychology, of pathological and adaptive regressions in religion, and Jones's (2002) investigation, from the perspectives of self psychology and relational psychoanalysis, of religion's potential for both terror and transformation. Rather than rejecting religion categorically as regressive and pathological, these theorists have devised nuanced criteria by which to determine when religious belief or practice is indeed pathological and when it is not. From this stance, there is nothing inherently beneficial or pathological about religion. Any religion can be used, on one hand, to foster growth, integration, and transformation, but it can also be used defensively and may indeed be an indication of psychopathology.
Haartman's study is part of this counter-trend. His focus is on the potential of the method developed by Wesley, the founder of British Methodism, to transform archaic personality disorders. He presents Wesley as a gifted healer with an intuitive grasp of what is needed to transform entrenched childhood trauma and to heal psychic conflict. He probes the techniques Wesley devised to achieve spiritual transformation and assesses the effectiveness of his method in psychoanalytic terms. While utilizing several psychological approaches to religion, including humanistic and transpersonal psychology, Haartman largely relies on Kleinian theory and ego psychology for his skilful analysis of this eighteenth-century religious practice and transcription of its theologica