ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the psychoanalytic approach to religion. It looks at the development of psychoanalysis and religion in later Freudian analysts and end by giving special consideration to the contribution of Erich Fromm. Psychoanalysis does inhabit and explicate precisely that place in the world that is relevant to present-day human living: the sphere of emotional action existing between people who live in intimacy with one another. The book considers the human condition that came to consciousness in the light of mature religions within civilization. It describes the spiritual function of psychoanalysis, and in particular demonstrates that it is a spirituality-in-the-world, shows that self-knowledge which is a declared aim of psychoanalysis is inseparable from emotional acts of virtue. The book explains a personal hypothesis which can be stated quite simply.
