HEARING VISIONS AND SEEING VOICES

Excerpt

The chapters in this book are based on papers presented in 2002 at an international conference, Psychological Aspects of Biblical Concepts and Persons, in Amsterdam. Three of the editors, Glas, Verhagen and van Praag, organized the conference through their board membership on the Dutch Foundation for Psychiatry and Religion, which supports interdisciplinary research and post-graduate education in the fields of mental health and religion. While several contributors come solely from a theological background, others, notably the editors, reveal joint credentials in psychiatry, psychology or psychoanalysis and theology or philosophy. While there has been a resurgence of interest in religion and spirituality in both psychiatry and psychology in the past 15 years, the editors suggest in the Preface that theologians have had less to say about psychology. Wayne Rollins, a pioneer of ‘psychological biblical criticism’, is an obvious exception to this observation, as exhibited in his paper in this volume, an abridged version of his 1999 book, Soul and Psyche. …