Customer Reviews

A Dynamic Psychology of Religion

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I guess I must have gotten Dr. Pruyser's book as a gift, because it is signed by the author and I don't recall meeting him. My loss.

His name was familiar to me for a long time because he was at Meninger Clinic and I read about the brothers Menninger and their staff for many years. You just naturally think good things about that staff in that unlikely place in Kansas.

As I so often do, I read this book in bits and pieces, and marked the book, as I always do, and underlined passages. His section about "Awe" impressed me as the mark of a modest man, as did his acknowledgment that he was a churchgoer. No Humanist or agnostic but a deeply religious man.

Comparing religion to theologists brings to mind Anselm, Aquinas, Athanasius, and Augustine without resorting to the computer.

Further memory dredged up Barth & Barth plus Niebuhr & Niebuhr and finally Buber and, of course Tillich. It took Google to retrieve Pannenberg whom I did not know well at all.

But, as well as I DID know them (and Mann and Dewey, too) they simply lacked the luster and personality that Paul Pruyser displayed. He could have been Hawthorne writng "The Scarlet Letter", his clarity and simplicity was that good.

There are many underlined passages in my copy relating to purely psychological statements and many also relating to such religious themes as eschatology.

I especially loved the paragraphs in chapter 3 concerning the "loaded" (symbolic) phrases in a typical hymn with as many as 20 in a single song.

I cherish the book and though he gives credit to author James, ("Turning of Screw") I am sure that that author would give credit to him.

My hat is off to you, Paul, and to those of you who have read the part about the Dutch churchman and their hats, you will know ahat I mean.