Professor Capps has spun a fascinating web of speculation, weaving together the threads of depression in the life histories of four major contributors to the study of the psychology of religious experience and advancing the thesis that these depressive trends are the fons et origo of their respective religious ideas. Capps brings to his task a rich background of theological learning and, I gather, teaching experience, which make his writing easy to take and his manner of presentation stimulating.

He approaches his subject, or subjects, from a psychoanalytic perspective, particularly drawing his insights from Freud, especially the essays on “Mourning and Melancholia” and “The Uncanny.” Capps tends to be overly apologetic for his use of a life-history approach and for the lack of scientific rigor such an approach entails. But he is quite correct in his contention that we have no other or better way to approach these topics which flow from