The recovery of self : regression and redemption in religious experience

Sigmund Freud believed that regression to primitive behavior was a pathological escape from reality. However all religions, in some manner or another, have urged their adherents to return to a simple way of being. Some have declared child-like behavior to be a high form of holiness. So is religion pathological or not? Or better yet, how and when does religious regression support psychological growth, and when does it not? The Recovery of Self is a pioneering study of regression in religious experience. It maintains that certain kinds of regression offer opportunities to confront unresolved childhood processes and repair them. Just as an artist may be put in touch with his or her primal self during the creative process, so a religious seeker can journey backward into primitive modes of being and recover there a sense of original unity which, when carried into the present, can be redemptive and transforming.… (more)