A Psychological Approach to Religion

AN ATTEMPT at a psychological approach to religion is open to misunderstandings both from the side of religion and from that of psychology. Both the religious thinker and the psychologist may regard religion and psychology as incompatible, though for diametrically opposite reasons. To the religious thinker it may appear almost sacrilegious to approach the highest content of religion—God—with the “dissecting knife” of psychology. To anyone who holds this view it must, however, be pointed out that religion is most certainly a phenomenon of the human psyche, and as such open to psychological enquiry. It would indeed be a sacrilege if, in the course of its investigation, psychology claimed to be able to make any statement about the absolute existence or non-existence of God, or about any other reality of religious faith. It is not the task of psychology to make such statements, and if it did so it would clearly transcend its competence and possibilities: the realities of faith are, as such, not accessible to psychology. What is, however, the legitimate concern of psychology is the phenomenon of religious experience as an activity of the human psyche and as an expression of its inner processes. Psychology is thus not concerned with the question of the reality of God, but with a psychic experience which is understood to be and formulated as God. This experience may or may not correspond to the existence of an absolute Deity; but in any case it is a psychic reality of the greatest importance. On this understanding, psychology does not touch the conceptions of religion and theology which are based on faith in the absolute reality of God. It is only concerned with the appearance that this religious reality takes on in the human mind. In other words, psychology is concerned with ideas as they manifest themselves in the human psyche. It is thus a “misunderstanding that the psychological treatment or explanation reduced God to nothing but psychology. It is, however, not a matter of God but of ideas of God…. It is man who has such ideas and creates for himself images, and these things belong to psychology.” ¹ Psychology accepts these ideas and images of God as psychic realities, but cannot go into the question of the absolute reality behind them, which is the concern of religion.