ABSTRACT
The impact of Rizzuto's work cannot be attributed solely to her development of a particular research methodology, however. It must also be related to what the publication of her study represents in the history of the psychoanalytic movement's waxing and waning culture war with Western religion. A study of the roots of Ana-Maria Rizzuto's research program in her own clinical and theological formation illustrates a general and perhaps unremarkable truism: that one's respective life experiences and philosophy shape the way in which one approaches psychoanalytic thinking as a resource for understanding religion. Ana-Maria Rizzuto entered university in the mid-1950s, completing her medical degree at the National University of Cordoba with a specialization in internal medicine and hematology. A functional approach to the study of the people's images of God is not new in the history of the psychology of religion.
