1st Edition

Nervous Disorders and Religion A Study of Souls in the Making

By John G. McKenzie Copyright 1951
    186 Pages
    by Routledge

    186 Pages
    by Routledge

    Originally published in 1951, this title is a study in developmental psychology with special reference to the effect of various types of religion on mental health and religious experience. With instinct as a ‘disappearing category’ in the psychology of human nature, a new approach to the realization of a harmonious interior life has been made using a doctrine of biological and personality needs as a starting point. Human nature is acquired and is not a static datum. The interior conflicts, the development of conscience and the origin of guilt feeling, the morbid complexes and the character-trends resulting from these conflicts with their sense of guilt are all studied. A long chapter on the various methods of mental healing through the doctrines of psycho-somatic medicine, with a new approach to Spiritual Healing in particular, prepares the way for the final chapter on the types of religion which originate or accentuate psychological conflicts, and the kind of religion which leads to a basic sense of security and harmonious personality. The illustrations are nearly all taken from Dr McKenzie’s own thirty years’ experience of dealing with neurotic disorders.

    This volume contains the substance (greatly expanded) of the Tate lectures delivered in Manchester College, Oxford, in 1947, and repeated at the St Andrews Summer School of Theology in1948 and at Iona Community.

    Preface.  1. What is Original Human Nature?  2. What is Original Human Nature? (Contd.)  3. Our Inner Conflicts and Character-Structures  4. The Origin and Dissipation of Guilt  5. Spiritual Healing  6. Religion and Nervous Disorders.

    Biography

    John G. McKenzie