On Mapping the Psychology and Religion Movement: Psychology as Religion and Modern Spirituality

This essay begins by providing a brief overview of the historical periods and central projects that constitute the field of psychology and religion. It then delves more deeply into one of those projects, psychology as religion, which is commensurate with the emerging phenomena of spirituality and its attendant ideal type, the inner-worldly mystic. It concludes by showing how a psychosocial concept of mourning underlies and unites those working in the numerous and apparently differing projects within the field of psychology and religion.