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To cite this article: Mario Aletti (1992) The Psychology of Religion in Italy, The
International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2:3, 171-189, DOI: 10.1207/
s15327582ijpr0203_4
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, 2(3), 171-189
Copyright O 1992, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
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PERSPECTIVE
Mario Aletti
Theology Faculty of Northern Italy-Milan
Requests for reprints should be sent to Mario Aletti, Viale XXV Aprile, 46, 21 100 Varese,
Italy.
172 ALETTI
of the past rather than as a valid expression of the human psyche. On the
other hand, Italy's religious institutions and community-almost exclu-
sively Catholic in a country whose capital, Rome, is also the seat of the
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'An English translation, The Religious Man, was also published in 1969 by Gill and Mac-
millan, Dublin.
174 ALETTI
number of Italian academics studied under him, and many more became
disciples after reading his books.
In the meantime, Father Roberto Zavalloni's Psicologia Pastorale [Pasto-
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ral Psychology] had appeared in 1965. Intended mainly for religious and
sacerdotal training institutions, this wide-ranging, well-documented survey
examined religious experience in the context of related disciplines like psy-
chology, psychopedagogy, psychopathology, and psychosociology. As in
later publications, Zavalloni (1981, 1987) took a humanistic view of psy-
chology and saw religious experience as an integral part of the human per-
sonality. His book also indicated a new openness within the Catholic
church itself and represented a real effort to make psychology an essential
part of a priest's training. Zavalloni's recognition that psychology is impor-
tant in the selection, training, and mental health of priests and religious
professionals led, not surprisingly, to a wave of publications in a country so
rich in vocations as Italy was until twenty years ago (Aletti & Mologni,
1987; Filippi, 1972, 1973; Gemelli, 1957; Giordani, 1964; Riva, 1969; Stick-
ler, 1987).
Luigi M. Rulla and his colleagues at the Institute of Psychology of the
Gregorian University in Rome have made some of the most detailed and
significant studies of vocations. Their studies of the psychodynamics of en-
try, perseverance, and effectiveness in the vocations of priests and religious
professionals (Rulla, 1971; Rulla & Maddi, 1972; Rulla, Ridick, & Imoda,
1976) are based on earlier formulations of a Christian anthropology in
which theological and philosophical approaches converge and interact with
psychology and the Christianity-based human sciences in general. In this
perspective, the priestly vocation is seen as the expression of a more univer-
sal Christian vocation in which the limitations and possibilities of human
nature, the calling to self-transcendence through God, and the operation of
divine grace intermingle and combine (Rulla, 1985; Rulla, Imoda, & Ri-
dick, 1986).
Another highly influential publication was Giorgio Zunini's Homo Reli-
giosus (1966).2Zunini was one of Gemelli's closest colleagues and head of
the Institute of Psychology at the Catholic University of Milan. Zunini ex-
posed with considerable acuteness and exemplary scholarly detachment the
reductionist tendencies implied by many previous psychological interpreta-
tions of religious experience. He criticized the tendency, for example, to
concentrate on emotional rather than on rational and intellectual content
or to see religion exclusively either in terms of biological or utilitarian func-
tions, as the outcome of determinism in the individual or collective uncon-
scious, or in terms of the influence of social factors. Adopting what was
essentially G. W. Allport's (1950) theory of personality, Zunini reasserted
2Published in English in 1969 as Man and His Religion: Aspects of Religious Psychology
by Geoffrey Chapman Ltd., London.
PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION IN ITALY 175
determined.
The most important event of this period was undoubtedly the introduc-
tion of the first university course in the psychology of religion at the Ponti-
ficio Ateneo Salesiano (Salesian Pontifical University) in Rome. The course
director, Professor Pier Giovanni Grasso, was interested in both the psy-
chology and sociology of religion, and his publications had been as con-
cerned with the theory and epistemology of religion (Grasso, 1958, 1963) as
with empirical research in the field (1954). Grasso was succeeded at the Sa-
lesian University in 1965 by his pupil Giancarlo Milanesi, who has been
more instrumental than any other scholar in establishing the psychology of
religion as a university discipline in Italy. He has made significant contribu-
tions in at least three major ways: (a) through his definition of the episte-
mological scope of the discipline, (b) through the quality of his empirical
research, and (c) through his commitment to teaching, from which count-
less pupils have benefited (some now being lecturers in the psychology of
religion). Basing his approach on critical and historical assessments of the
works of philosophers, phenomenologists, psychologists, and sociologists
who have concerned themselves with religion, Milanesi delineated an episte-
mological field able to accommodate the special requirements of the psy-
chology of religion (Milanesi, 1966b).
Milanesi's many research publications have been notable for their meth-
odological rigor, detailed documentation, and topical interest. They range
from studies of magical thinking in the religious behavior of preadoles-
cents, which studies have entered the international cross-cultural debate on
the subject (Milanesi, 1967a), through links between shortcomings in reli-
gious education and religious doubt in adolescents (Milanesi, 1965), to the
social conscience, moral values, and ideals of young Italians (Milanesi,
1968; Milanesi & Fiori, 1967). His studies of the religion of young people
have dealt with atheism, the difficulties of faith in a secularized society, the
strains of openly belonging to the Catholic church, and their expectations
from religious teaching (Milanesi, 1967b, 197la, 1971b, 1972). With his
enormous scholarship and detailed knowledge of the international litera-
ture (as summarized in two critical reviews, 1966a, 1981a), Milanesi has
been an active member of many international organizations, and he has
been instrumental in broadening the hitherto narrowly Italian outlook on
the psychology of religion in Italy.
Milanesi's work as a scholar culminated in the publication of a collec-
tion of research papers (1970a) and two major books, Psicologia della Reli-
gione [The Psychology of Religion] (Milanesi & Aletti, 1973) and
Sociologia Religiosa [The Sociology of Religion] (Milanesi, 1970b). These
are both widely reprinted and translated and have become essential reading
176 ALETTI
for all students and scholars. Psicologia della Religione is in two parts, the
first being a critical survey of the theories of psychologists who have con-
cerned themselves with religion: James, Allport, Freud, Jung, and Fromm.
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God (Aletti, 1971). I then worked with Milanesi at the Salesian University
before becoming a professor of the psychology of religion at the Facolta
Teologica dell'Italia Settentrionale [Theology Faculty of Northern Italy],
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Vianello has shown that an ability to understand divine attributes like crea-
tor, omnipotence, omnipresence, spirit, and eternity develops through the
entire period of childhood (Vianello, 1976, 1980). Using Piaget's models of
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CONCLUDING COMMENTS
I now take stock of the situation as a whole in order to assess the shortcom-
ings of what has been done so far and to identify what the main theoretical
and research trends, opportunities, and prospects seem to be.
A number of basic epistemological and methodological questions still re-
180 ALETTI
main open, and although they have rarely been dealt with explicitly, their
unsolved presence has pervaded much of the Italian literature on the psy-
chology of religion up to the present. Of prime concern is the degree to
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tify their own theoretical positions, but it is possible to identify two main
trends in Italy, one based on humanistic approaches (Allport, Frankl,
Maslow, Thomae), the other on psychoanalytic approaches.
Most empirical research has stressed the conscious, cognitive, and moti-
vational aspects of personality. Less attention has been paid to conscious
and unconscious emotional aspects, and religion has been seen as a re-
sponse to a search for meaning in which transcendence is taken as the prin-
cipal focus and reason for religious interest and devotion.
General studies and interpretations of religion have been mainly based
on depth psychology, usually Freudian rather than Jungian (Fiori, 1989) or
Adlerian (Grandi, 1986, 1991), or they have been based on forms of image
analysis (Dominici, 1989; Sartori Modena, 1991). Relations between psy-
choanalysis and official religion have improved considerably, and a highly
productive debate is now in progress. A number of Catholics are now prac-
ticing psychotherapists, and many nonpracticing academics adopt a psy-
choanalytical approach to the psychology of religion. A number of
associations and groups in Italy are concerned with the relations between
psychoanalysis and religion, including the Association for the Study of
Psychoanalysis and Religion, which, since its foundation 10 years ago, has
organized numerous conferences and published several volumes of papers
by psychoanalysts of various schools (Associazione di Studio Psieoanalisi e
Religione [ASPER], 1985; see also Spaccapelo, 1986; Morandi, 1984).
These papers often seem to be a result of attempts to confirm, refute, or go
beyond the fundamental approaches of Freud by concentrating on episte-
mology, examining the internal consistency of Freud's texts, and taking
stock of wider speculative issues. They have, however, been less often con-
cerned with clinical practice and case studies (although this is evident in
Freud's own writings on religion), and psychoanalysts have tended to ignore
or exclude the religious experience of their patients in their clinical work
(see Aletti, 1991c; Grandi, 1986, 1989). Within the epistemological debate
mentioned earlier, there is a growing conviction that psychoanalysis should
now refrain from commenting on the origins, aims, and value of religion
and limit its enquiry to the functional relationship that emerges between
analyst and patient within a clinical setting (Aletti, 1977, 1984b, 1985;
Fosgi, 1990; Magnani, 1984, 1986). The only religion a psychoanalyst has
access to and can comment on is religiosity, the psychic experience of a sub-
ject who "speaks his life" to the analyst. For the analyst, then, "religious
faith is a psychic experienceyy(Fossi, 1990, p. 210). If this is true, the belief
of some psychoanalysts (Ancona, 1986b; Matte Blanco, 1984, 1986) that
the unconscious mind may in some way be naturally disposed or inclined
towards religious experience will have to be examined in some detail.
182 ALETTI
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