Religion, Psychiatry, and Problems of Everyday Life

Bibliographic Data

ID4264898
AuthorsAndrew Abbott (0000-0001-9320-1685, Rutgers Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, corresponding author)
Year1980
Volume41
Issue2
Pages164
Publication date1980-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Analysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0210 • E-ISSN: 2325-7873
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3709909
PMID11633209
OpenAlexW2297897078
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited11

A common assertion holds that psychiatrists inherited from the clergy the interpretation and control of individual problems with everyday life. This paper questions that view on several grounds, drawing on American evidence from the period 1875–1935. First, such problems were extensively handled by non-clergy professionals in the nineteenth century. Second, psychiatry remained numerically miniscule until after the Second World War. Third, early clergy pastoral theory saw everyday life problems instrumentally, as aids to salvation. While later pastoral theories did propose direct interpretation and control of everyday life problems, these theories were in fact psychiatrically inspired. Thus, while the “inheritor theory” may hold at some deep functional level, it should not be hypostatized to define an actual historical process of displacement

Aesthetics · Assertion · Control (management) · Epistemology · Everyday life · Interpretation (philosophy) · Linguistics · Period (music) · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology

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