The Psychology of Religion in Italy

Abstract

Although the psychology of religion appeared relatively early in the history of psychology in Italy, it remained only a marginal academic concern for many years owing to suspicion and disagreement between Catholic religious institutions on the one hand and academics, psychologists, and practicing psychoanalysts on the other. It emerged as an independent discipline in ecclesiastical universities in the 1960s and has since produced a substantial corpus of empirical research on Catholic religious behavior as well as numerous theoretical studies, mainly reassessments of Freud's view of religion. The psychology of religion is still relatively unimportant in state universities in Italy, but numerous conferences and publications on a range of epistemological, methodological, and empirical research topics testify to a steady growth of interest in the subject. © 1992, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved.