Augustine's Confessions: The story of a divided self and the process of its unification

Abstract

This article takes up William James' observation that Saint Augustine is "a classic example" of the discordant personality or divided self, and employs E. R. Dodd's equally classic (1927-28) article on Augustine's "spiritual maladjustment" to explore the psychological bases, especially parental, for Augustine's discordant personality, and to evaluate the effectiveness of Augustine's efforts to overcome the discordancy through a personal religious conversion. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007.