Religion and Mental Health: A Case Study of the Finnish-Swedish Popular Writer Joel Pettersson

Abstract

This study is based on a large amount of manuscript material left behind by Joel Pettersson, the popular writer from Finland. In the light of the psychology of religion, this material is extremely interesting, and the present study combines approaches from social psychology and depth psychology to interpret it. A religious training was relatively normal among writers at the turn of this century, but the psychosocial development of Joel Pettersson has particularly interesting links with his religiosity: in his teens he became religious, above all to escape problems of a sexual nature connected with his approaching manhood; and during the third decade of his life, he protested strongly against religious and paternal authority, before returning a little later to a madonna-like piety. His life ended (in 1937) in a mental asylum at the age of 44.