ABSTRACT
Although for most people religious faith is meaningful and rewarding, for some it may be an enslaving and guilt-producing experience. It may inhibit rather than enhance family relationships and create barriers that prevent intimacy. A religious experience that interferes with the development of healthy relationships and is characterized by compulsive rituals, avoidance of reality, dependency on supernatural powers, magical thinking, and rigid compliance to a set of principles can be described or labeled as addictive (Armor, Polich, and Stambul, 1978).
