Psychology and Religion in Historical Context

From Sigmund Freud's denunciation of the Judeo-Christian god as an infantile delusion to Dr. Herbert Benson's discovery that meditation can make us healthier, psychology and religion have had a long and complicated relationship. This course examines how psychologists and psychiatrists from the mid-nineteenth century to the present have tried to explain—and sometimes explain away—religious and spiritual experiences, practices, and phenomena. Is faith in the supernatural an essential human trait—a channel to the "superconscious," as William James argued? Or is it a form of madness? Is religion responsible for humans' longevity as a species, as evolutionary psychologists claim? Or are religious differences now tearing us apart? If religious phenomena become increasingly subject to to psychological explanation, is there still a place for god in a secular world? We ponder our own answers to these questions as we read those offered by such major scientific thinkers as Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, William James, Gordon Allport, Aldous Huxley, Lois Murphy, and E.O. Wilson, and by religious, spiritual, and mystical thinkers from a range of traditions—Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist.