When science entered the soul: German psychology and religion, 1890-191

This dissertation examines the relationship between psychological and religious modes of thought in German-speaking lands in the decades around 1900. Using the methods of cultural history, it reconstructs the debate over whether psychology could be used to support or to attack religion. On the one hand, psychology was a new weapon in the nineteenth-century warfare between science and theology. It could diagnose, even ridicule, religious belief as an emotional phenomenon like any other. On the other hand, psychology offered a chance to put "spirit" back into materialist science. It accepted and confirmed the "facts" of religious experience.;Drawing upon a diverse literature associated with the German psychology of religion around the turn of the century, the dissertation explores a wide range of topics: spiritism and occultism as new versions of empirical science; sexual fantasies and fears associated with the use of hypnosis; the proliferation of psychobiographies of saints, of prophets, and of Jesus himself; Catholic confession and priestly celibacy as practices which damaged mental health and endangered public morals; the controversy over whether mental illness is a result of sickness or of sin; and finally, the attempts to combine psychiatry and pastoral care into new therapies of spiritual hygiene. Major figures appearing in the dissertation include Freud, Jung, Wilhelm Wundt, and the Swiss minister/analyst Oskar Pfister. Although collaboration between psychologists and religious figures did not last, the dissertation concludes that the dominant tone for the Germany psychology of religion between 1890 and 1914 was one of accommodation, not aggression.