Religion and Psychology in Transition: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Theology by James W. Jones New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 1996,  xii +164 pp., $22.50

In Religion and Psychology in Transition: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Theology, James Jones calls for a dialogue between religion and psychology in which the analyst “might help the theologian see the unconscious themes at work in the theologian's image of ultimate reality” and the theologian might help the analyst see the theological implications of a psychology of religion (p. 83). But Jones, who, as both a clinical psychologist and a professor of religion, can speak from both poles of this debate, succeeds better in one role than in the other: the analyst is more convincing than the theologian. Having made a good case that religion should be considered a certain kind of relational experience, Jones then errs in claiming a propositional truth value for that experience.

Jones's book combines a feminist-influenced, object relational view of religion with a far-reaching postmodern critique of empiricism. In this way, Jones seeks to rescue religion from Freud's depreciation of it as a regressive, narcissistic illusion, a gigantic projection of the Oedipus complex, with God “at bottom nothing more than an exalted father” (p. 14). “Within the interpersonal