practices to achieve the same end. Churches use confession, absolution, and
forgiveness to symbolically help followers reconcile the evil side of their selveswith the good.
Erich Fromm was another neo-Freudian psychologist fascinated by the
seemingly universal human need for religion (Fromm, 1950, 1966). He arguedthat people turn to the powerful authority of the church to escape a sense of
powerlessness and loneliness. “People return to religion …not as an act of
faith but in order to escape an intolerable doubt,” Fromm wrote. “They
make this decision not out of devotion but in search of security ”(1950,
p. 4). Awareness that we are individuals, responsible for ourselves and for
finding our own meaning in life, is frightening to many people. Religion pro-vides an escape from these fears.
However, Fromm also drew a distinction between authoritarian religions
and humanistic religions . The former emphasize that we are under the control
of a powerful God, whereas in the latter God is seen as a symbol of our own
power. Fromm argued that authoritarian religions deny people their personal
identity, but humanistic religions provide an opportunity for personal growth.Thus, while condemning some religions, Fromm recognized the potential for
individuation and finding happiness within others.
Today, the writings of Freud, Jung, Fromm, and other psychoanalytic
theorists are studied and debated by theology students around the world.Some scholars have even looked into these theorists ’backgrounds to under-
stand what in their childhoods might have generated such hostility toward
modern religion (Meissner, 1984). Although most theologians reject psycho-
analytic interpretations of religious behavior, few are able to ignore them.
ASSESSMENT: PERSONAL NARRATIVES
Imagine that your life story were being made into a movie. Forget for the mo-
ment which actor will play you, but instead ask yourself what scenes wouldbe needed for the audience to fully appreciate your character. What themes
would run throughout the movie? What are the turning points, the lessons
learned, the hardships overcome? In short, what experiences have shaped or
illustrate the kind of person you are?
Researchers sometimes use a variation of this procedure to study person-
ality (Singer, 2004). They ask people to tell their life stories, or some of thecritical scenes in it. When people tell stories about themselves, particularly
those that supposedly shaped them into the kind of person they are today,
they reveal their personality in a very telling way. They ’re saying, “This is
the kind of person I am, and this is how I got to be that person. ”These de-
scriptions provide personality researchers with a rich source of informationnot easily captured with other assessment procedures (Torges, Stewart, &Duncan, 2009).
Measuring Personality with Personal Narratives
Researchers who examine personal narratives typically interview participants,
although sometimes participants respond to questions in writing (McAdams,Assessment: Personal Narratives 117