INVITED ESSAY On the Relation Between Secular and Divine Relationships: An Emerging Attachment Perspective and a Critique of the “Depth” Approaches

The psychology of religion has existed as a neglected subdiscipline in general psychology, but a trend toward integration is currently present, partly due to applications of well-corroborated theories from mainstream psychology. The article has two aims. First, the most influential psychodynamic “depth” approaches (those of Erikson, 1958, 1959, 1963; Freud, 1913/1919, 1927/1964a, 1939/1964b; Jones, 1991; Rizzuto, 1979, 1991) to the study of relations between secular and divine relationships are criticized. The critique encompasses theoretical, methodological, and empirical reservations, including natural science and falsifiability concerns; reservations concerning the relation to the biological sciences and the theory of evolution by natural selection; and concerns with broad stages of development, the content of mental representations, and the parsimony of the analyses. Methodological points of critique are offered for the sole use of nonoperationalizable constructs, clinical case study designs, and post hoc reconstructions of past relationships. It is suggested that the problems with the depth approaches are serious enough to warrant a different point of departure for the study of relations between secular and divine relationships. Second, for the sake of further integration of the psychology of religion with general psychology, attachment theory is proposed as an emerging alternative to the traditional depth approaches, and some of the convergences and divergences between the two are highlighted. It is argued that besides passing the test in relation to the above THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, 16(1), 1–18 Copyright © 2006, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.