Negative Parental Influences on Religious Conversion: Implications for Pastoral Care

Abstract

This essay discusses the contribution that psychoanalytic psychology has made to research on religious conversion and asks what implications it might have for pastoral practice. Some of conversion’s most dramatic manifestations occur amid familial instability, or negative parental influences, that stand to be misinterpreted by religious leaders if their full psycho-spiritual context is not understood. The Freudian tradition has provided some context as to why people with rocky upbringings might undergo dramatic change. The data supports the conclusion that these radical conversions are much less a sign of direct supernatural influence than they are of a need for the converts to receive pastoral care in working through a “crisis stage” of faith development.