The phenomenology of religious psychopathology

Patients with firmly established belief systems frequently enter analysis. The analyst must determine the extent to which neurotic and therefore analyzable components are involved in the patient's beliefs as such, as opposed to how the beliefs are embraced and adhered to as expressions of personal neurotic symptom formation or character pathology. The author discusses typical patterns of neurotic religious involvement as they are expressed clinically in hysterical, obsessional, depressive-masochistic, narcissistic, and paranoid modes and styles. He illustrates the manifestations of these patterns with clinical examples drawn from psychoanalytic experience.