Miracles of Healing: Psychotherapy and Religion in Twentieth-Century Scotland

✍ Scribed by Gavin Miller

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 184
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

A rigorous historical investigation of the relationship between religion and psychotherapy in twentieth-century Scotland

• Explores the alliance between psychoanalytic psychotherapy and Scottish Christianity.
• Exposes the continuity running from Christian discourses, practices and organizations to New Age spirituality in Scotland.
• Discusses the work of figures such as radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing, pioneering psychoanalyst W. R. D. Fairbairn, psychotherapist Winifred Rushforth and organizations such as The Davidson Clinic
Although a tide of secularization swept over the post-war United Kingdom, Christianity in Scotland found one way to survive by drawing on alliances that it had built earlier in the century with psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis was seen as a way to purify Christianity, and to propel it in a scientifically rational and socially progressive direction. This book draws upon a wealth of archival research to uncover the complex interaction between religion and psychotherapy in twentieth-century Scotland. It explores the practical and intellectual alliance created between the Scottish churches and Scottish psychotherapy that found expression in the work of celebrated figures such as the radical psychiatrist R. D. Laing and the pioneering psychoanalyst W. R. D. Fairbairn, as well as the careers of less well-known individuals such as the psychotherapist Winifred Rushforth.