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This collective effort by 13 contributors in 12 chapters, some previously published, and several based on delivered papers, represents the disciplines of psychology (1 chapter), psychiatry (4 chapters), philosophy ((4 chapters), and religious studies (3 chapters).
The intended and potential audiences include both sophisticated clinicians and scholars in the humanities. The connection to the humanities is very much evident in the style, which is articulate and literate, and in the scholarship, meticulous and enlightening. This review attempts to summarize the majority view reflected in 10 of the chapters and the two dissenting opinions.
The title of the book, we should remember, is Psychoanalysis and Religion, not psychoanalysis of religion, and this indeed reflects its dominant spirit: a vision of rapprochement between the two traditions. The book clearly shows that a new generation of religionists is making apologetics more sophisticated, scholarly, and up to the minute with the latest intellectual fashions. It remains doubtful whether all these gymnastics contribute anything to our understanding of religious phenomena.
The scholarly analyses have little bearing on the lives and faith of normal religious believers. They only reflect the conscious conflicts of intellectuals who keep seeking, in vain, intellectual respectability for their religious beliefs. The psychoanalytic approach to religion has dealt not only with its functions, but very