Affect, Religion, and Unconscious Processes

Bibliographic Data

ID19280964
AuthorsPeter C Hill (0000-0002-3423-5719, Grove City College), Ralph W Hood (0000-0002-5165-6830, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), Jr Ralph W Hood
Year1999
Volume67
Issue6
Pages1015-1046
Publication date1999-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3506 • E-ISSN: 1467-6494
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-6494.00081
OpenAlexW2002661531
LanguageEN
Citations received22

After a brief review of the central and organizing role of affect in both personality and religion, the bridge between psychoanalytic and contemporary cognitive perspectives of the unconscious is investigated, with a special focus on an affectively based experiential component as outlined in Epstein’s (1973, 1993, 1994) Cognitive‐Experiential Self‐Theory (CEST) model. Four basic needs postulated by CEST are applied to religious experience: the need to manage pleasure and pain, the need for a coherent conceptual system, the need for self‐esteem, and the need for relatedness. The last of these four needs is explored in detail from an object relations perspective that expands Freud’s religion‐as‐illusion concept. It is maintained that an object relations approach contributes much to an understanding of a process‐oriented spirituality, though it cannot appropriately speak to religious truth claims

Affect (linguistics) · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Epistemology · Experiential learning · Focus (optics) · Illusion · Object (grammar) · Object relations theory · Personality · Perspective (graphical) · Pleasure · Psychoanalysis · Psychoanalytic theory · Psychotherapist · Unconscious mind · Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychotherapy Techniques and Applications · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology

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