ABSTRACT

FREQUENT allusions to mental pathology have been made in the foregoing chapters. The reader will recollect that senility and infirmity were considered as causes of conversion, and that mention was made of repressions, of pathological complexes, of anxiety conflicts and anxiety neuroses, of erotic mysticism, of illusions and hallucinations, of morbid projections, of ‘transitivism’, of rationalized affective identifications, and so forth. Since such phenomena are met with on the borderline of religion and pathology they lead to a question which must be touched on, however briefly, in order to anticipate one of the most common criticisms.