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As my starting-point, I approach religion as a psychological phenomenon from the point of view that religion has arisen as the result of internal and external human needs, and can thus be examined as a cognitive and experiential system of the human being. Religious needs are inspected in this paper from three separate points of view: (1) religion as an extension of family ties; (2) religion as a defence against anxiety; (3) religion as creativity. These aspects do not cover everything religion means but nevertheless, I feel that the most important psychological reasons for the birth and progress of religion will be charted.
The sentence “ What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?” (I Corinthians, Chap. 6:19) contains an essential observation regardless of what theological or psychological interpretation it might be given. It speaks of a direct relationship between the body and the Holy Ghost - or psychologically - between the body and the psyche. “ The first ego is the body ego” (Freud 1923, p. 26), and the development of the emotional and experiential world is closely bound to experiencing one' s own body, its surface, its mass and inner spaces (Hägglund & Piha 1980). The image of its own body (relation to the flesh) and its later changes, the infant envisions in communication with his own family. Although the body image is a deeply personal matter, its emergence and transformations are above all influenced by the attitudes, wishes and endeavours of the parents and the immediate surroundings. The notion of perceiving emotions, fantasies and thought processes either as physical, psychic or spiritual, comes to the child from what his parents and those caring for him have told him. As an example, one could take the