Psychiatric Implications of Religious Conversion

Abstract

Some of the literature concerning religious phenomena and conversion experience is reviewed. Three cases have been described in which there are several common factors leading to religious conversion — a specific unconscious conflict, a conscious conflict with which the individual is actively struggling, adolescence, and a fundamentalist religious belief. The cases presented are examples of each of three possible solutions to the patient's conflictual dilemma. A central feature of the psychodynamics in these cases is the resolution of an Œdipal conflict through delayed identification with the parent of the opposite sex.