ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how recent psychological theories may pave the way for theologically fruitful understandings of the self. The shift in the approach to the self from the one represented by Sigmund Freud and his adherents, to those who today advocate various relational theories that understand religion's role as regards the self from a psychological perspective, has a theological dimension as well. Accordingly, object-relational theories imply the option of relating an account of the self that is oriented toward a postmodern philosophy of religion and theology to a more updated and less individualistic account of the psychology of the self. However, in Ana Maria Rizzuto's case, the psychological significance of the contrast is that the primordial, experiential way of relating to God and the more conceptual one may collide and create conflict. The psychological limitations, and the power of God, derive from these characteristics in the original objects as well as from the believer's creative power of fantasy.
