The Origins of Religion

The psychologist approaches this matter somewhat differently from the theologian, the historian or the anthropologist, although he cannot proceed very far without borrowing substantially from all of them. The psychologist is not concerned solely with religious events, customs and artefacts, but with religion as the expression of human needs and experiences. Experience shows that religions are in no sense conscious constructions but that they arise from the natural life of the unconscious psyche and somehow give adequate expression to it. This explains their universal distribution and their enormous influence on humanity throughout history which would be incomprehensible if religious symbols were not at the very least truths of man’s psychological nature. . . . Religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest sense of the word ... they express the whole range of the psychic problem in powerful images. 1