| The question of why individuals leave a community of faith and what motivates their return has earned a fair amount of attention in the literature, particularly from sociological and cognitive psychological points of view. The present study takes this research in a markedly affective direction, and turns to psychoanalytic theory and process as an interpretive framework to understand the life of faith. Asserting that those who have "fallen away" from corporate faith have suffered trauma and a loss that must be healed, a premise evidenced by biographical accounts, the psychoanalytic theory of mourning is explored in detail. Uncanny resemblances exist between Freud's description of the patterns of pathological mourning, or melancholia, and the person struggling with a loss of faith. Repetition of thoughts and feelings of paralysis, self-recrimination, and duplicity are indicative of both pathological mourning and loss of religious identity. The way out of these patterns is suggested by subsequent psychoanalysts, particularly Melanie Klein and her dynamics of the depressive position, and D. W. Winnicott and his insights on transitional phenomena, play, and creativity. Key indicators of a healthy mourning of faith objects are identified as constructive anger, pining or feelings of hope amidst sadness, and a recovery of initiative and play. These dynamics of mourning religion are explored in five spiritual memoirs from contemporary literature. It is further hypothesized that loss of religion is embedded in widespread socio-historical factors of loss of common culture, and that by discovering a way to mourn the individual loss of religion, thereby regaining and reclaiming it, the individual devises solutions that have a creative influence on sacred community and corporate faith. Such a study contributes to a pastoral psychology that is both sensitive to individuals suffering from disillusionment with religion, and provides clues to the way they return to and reshape a community of faith. |
