Psychology and Christianity

Abstract

Abstract The relationship between Christianity and psychology is a complicated one, not least because of the challenge in securing consensus on definitions for the terms involved. Psychology commonly refers to a relatively recent discipline, experimental or scientific psychology. Psychology by this reckoning began with, among others, Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), who offered a course in psychology in 1862 and opened a psychological laboratory in 1879, and William James (1842–1910), whose Principles of Psychology was published in 1890. Modern psychology has, at times, taken a critical view of religion generally. So J. H. Leuba (1868–1946), in Psychology of Religious Mysticism (1925), concludes that the mystical experiences of Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) and Saint Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) were hysterical attacks, and he advocates progress through the advancement of medical knowledge and procedures rather than Christian reflection and practice. With a similar spirit, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an atheist who founded the psychoanalytic school in psychology, saw a connection between psychological problems and the repression of sexual desire demanded by religion. Freud also wrote a book, titled Moses and Monotheism (1939), which contradicts the biblical account of Moses and explains the history of the Jewish people through Freudian psychology.

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