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Guilt and Desire: Religious Attitudes and their Pathological Derivatives. By Antoine Vergote. Translated by M. H. Wood. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1988. Pp. 254+x.
In the Image of God: A Psychoanalyst's View. By Stanley Leavy. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1988. Pp. 112+xv.
Vergote (1988, p. 75) is correct that 'in comparison with other data, religion is seldom mentioned in the scientific publications of psychoanalytical associations'. In my experience, as in Leavy's (1988, pp. 70–88), psychoanalysts and psychiatrists give short shrift to the religious aspects of patients' histories, phenomenology, and ongoing existence.
Such points should not, however, be overstated. For example, there is now a large theoretical and investigative literature on the psychoanalytic study of religion and on the intersections between psychoanalysis and the great Western faiths. Periodicals and published essays on these topics are too numerous to mention. Suffice it to list, from the English-language literature, books on religion by the following psychoanalysts: Ostow & Scharfstein, 1952; Loomis, 1960; Zilboorg, 1962; Knight, 1964; Pruyser, 1968, 1974, 1976; Menninger, 1973; Wolman, 1976; Rizzuto, 1979; Meissner, 1984; and Smith & Handelman, 1990. The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (G.A.P.), in the United States, has included a Committee on Psychiatry and Religion since 1956. Composed largely of psychoanalysts and dynamically oriented psychiatrists throughout its history, it has produced several important monographs on religion (1958), (1960), (1968), (1976), (1990).
Finally, there are significant works on the interface from the theological and pastoral side: e.g. Boisen, 1936, 1945, 1960; Niebuhr, 1941, 1957; Hiltner, 1943, 1956, 1971; Roberts, 1950; Tillich, 1957; Küng, 1979; Spero, 1980; Oates, 1970, 1973; and Browning, 1987.
These resources are now augmented by two distinguished psychoanalytic works: M. H. Wood's (1988) translation of Antoine Verg