Psychoanalysis, religious experience, and the study of religion: Not "religious studies''

Psychoanalytic critical theory explores the dynamics of individual identity formation within specific cultural contexts. Freud understood that psychoanalysis is a critical social theory as well as a therapeutic practice. His studies on religion illustrate the depths of society and culture within the mind. Freud was thus able to respond to Romain Rolland's experience of an "oceanic'' or mystical feeling in thoroughly explanatory psychoanalytic terms that led him to speculate about pre-Oedipal memories of maternal care. Freud made an important contribution to the psychoanalytic study of religion that remains relevant to contemporary academic studies of religion.