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To an analyst who does his work on the assumption that the human psyche exists as a natural datum related to the body, [in other words] the psychological vertex, God, as a supernatural being, is redundant. All that any analyst can and ought to do is to study man's experience of himself and his social setting. He will take note of experiences of God, but must consider them as representing psychic activity. A theologian starts from a vertex that may be stated as follows. What to a psychologist is a special kind of illusion is to him no illusion but a perception of transcendent Being. He does not need to explain it in psychological terms nor to consider the role it plays in the system made up of psychic structures, but if his discipline is not to become unbearably abstract, he must use all that psychology can provide in understanding human nature. If man is made in God's image, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain, for the study of man must reveal the nature of God as far as it can be understood by man (FORDHAM 2, p. 184).
Michael Fordham has for many years been interested in religious phenomena and from time to time has made contributions to the study of the psychological processes therein involved. An early paper, published in 1945 under the title of ‘An analytical approach to mysticism’ in the Revue Suisse de Psychologic et de Psychologie appliquée (Vol. IV, 3 & 4) contained material sufficiently important to be republished in a revised form as ‘The dark night of the soul’ in The Objective Psyche in 1958 (FORDHAM 1), and yet again in 1986, albeit extensively revised and significantly expanded in the chapter entitled ‘Notes on the mysticism of St John of the Cross’ in Explorations into Self (FORDHAM 2). That expression of the mature development of his