Religious Experience through the Prism of Psychoanalysis: F. I. Lowtzky Psychological and Religious Studies Project

The article is devoted to one of the early attempts of the psychoanalytic (Freudian) psychology of religion, presented by Fanny I. Lowtzky (1873-1965). A brief description of the historical and scientific context in which they were formed precedes a meaningful consideration of F.I. Lowtsky's ideas: a general description of the first psychoanalytic studies of religious experience is given, among which two groups are distinguished: the first one focuses on the study of documents and biographies of mystics (E. Hitschman, A. Keilholz et al.), the second one - on the analysis of contemporaries, participants in various occult practices, people who experienced sudden conversion, etc. (H. Freimark, M. Petersen, T. Reik et al.). Next, the main stages of F. I. Lowtzky's research path and the circumstances under which in the mid-1920s she turned to the study of the personality of A. N. Schmidt, a Russian woman mystic and religious thinker of the Silver Age, are presented. A detailed analysis of the views of A. N. Schmidt, conducted by F. I. Lowtzky, reveals the most significant features of psychoanalytic interpretation: attention to the details of biography, especially to childhood, when internal traumas and conflicts arise, forming the basis for religious insights, and the consistent deduction of specific features of religiosity from them. Religious experience in the coverage of psychoanalysis appears as a special part of human experience, subject to scientific and psychological study. In this sense, F. I. Lowtzky's research correlates, in particular, with the pioneering work of O. Pfister. At the end of the work, a generalized view of religious experience in classical (Freudian) psychoanalysis is given.