Religion and Psychology

Religion and Psychology is a thorough and incisive survey of the current relationship between religion and psychology from the leading scholars in the field. This is an essential resource for students and researchers in the area of psychology of religion. Issues addressed are: * The Psychology-Theology Dialogue * The Psychology-Comparativist Dialogue * Psychology, Religion and Gender Studies * Psychology "as" Religion * Social Scientific Approaches to the Psychology of Religion * The Empirical Approach * International Perspectives

Diane Jonte-Pace teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Santa Clara, California, and is the editor of Religious Studies Review. William Parsons is teaches Religious Studies at Rice University, Texas.

Notes on contributors, Introduction: mapping religion and psychology, PART I: Psychology of religion, SECTION 1: Empirical and cultural approaches, 1. Psychology of religion: an overview, 2. Psychology of religion: empirical approaches, 3. The future is in the return: back to cultural psychology of religion, SECTION 2: Perspectives on modernity and post-modernity, 4. Does (the history of) religion and psychological studies have a subject?, 5. What is our present? An Antipodean perspective on the relationship between "psychology" and "religion", 6. Mapping religion psychologically: information theory as a corrective to modernism, 7. Post-structuralism and the psychology of religion: the challenge of critical psychology, SECTION 3: Psychology, religion, and gender studies, 8. Analysts, critics, and inclusivists: feminist voices in the psychology of religion, 9. Male melancholia: guilt, separation, and repressed rage, PART II: Religion in dialogue with psychology, SECTION 1: Theology and psychology in the West, 10. The past and possible future of religion and psychological studies, 11. Shaping the future of religion and psychology: feminist transformations in pastoral theology, 12. When is religion a mental disorder? The disease of ritual, SECTION 2: Comparative studies: psychological perspectives on non-Western religions, 13. Themes and debates in the psychology-comparativist dialogue, 14. Re-membering a presence of mythological proportions: psychoanalysis and Hinduism, 15. Experimental studies of meditation and consciousness, SECTION 3: Psychology "as" religion, 16. Diving into the depths: reflections on psychology as a religion, 17. The death awareness movement: psychology as religion?, Index