Religious struggle — the experience of conflict, doubt, perceived abandonment, or alienation within or toward one's faith — occupies a distinctive and under-theorized position in the depth-psychology corpus. Where the tradition has long privileged religion's consolatory and integrative functions, a counter-current of scholarship, most systematically articulated by Kenneth Pargament, insists that religious involvement may generate negative as well as positive psychological consequences. Pargament's empirical program demonstrates that struggle with divine abandonment, theological doubt, and demonic attribution is measurably associated with heightened emotional distress across populations ranging from cancer patients to survivors of mass disaster. The Orthodox ascetic literature represented in the Philokalia frames this same territory in entirely different terms: spiritual combat against logismoi and demonic influence is not a pathological aberration but a necessary developmental ordeal, the very condition for maturation in faith. William James and the Varieties tradition occupy a mediating position, attending to the phenomenology of inner conflict as data for understanding conversion and transformation. The tension between these registers — clinical-empirical, hagiographic-ascetic, and phenomenological — is productive and unresolved. Whether religious struggle is primarily a risk factor to be assessed and mitigated, a crucible of spiritual deepening, or a hermeneutical category that reveals the dialectical structure of religious life itself remains an open question across the corpus.
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religious struggle has been tied to greater emotional di[stress] in diverse studies involving multiple myeloma patients, elderly medical patients, and healthy individuals coping with the aftermath of a community tragedy
This passage establishes the core empirical finding that religious struggle — encompassing perceived abandonment, doubt, and alienation — correlates with heightened emotional distress across multiple clinical and community populations, centering Pargament's research program as the field's primary reference point.
Benda, Brent B., Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006thesis
experienced little sense of religious or spiritual struggle. Relative to the general US population, one might anticipate that religious expression might be higher in a sample of Southern economically-disadvantaged women
This passage illustrates the measurement of religious struggle as a variable within a substance-dependent population, noting its relative absence despite high psychosocial adversity and thereby foregrounding the complex relationship between disadvantage and spiritual distress.
Benda, Brent B., Spirituality and Religiousness and Alcohol/Other Drug Problems: Treatment and Recovery Perspectives, 2006supporting
trials and afflictions are laid upon a man in the way that is best for him, so as to make his soul stronger and more mature; and if the soul endures them to the end with hope in the Lord it cannot fail to attain the promised reward
The Philokalia reframes religious struggle as divinely ordered affliction that, when endured with hope, produces spiritual maturation and intimacy with God, inverting the clinical reading of struggle as pathological outcome.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places
Drawing on Pauline and Patristic sources, this passage presents religious struggle as cosmic warfare against demonic powers, a cosmological framework that organizes ascetic discipline as perpetual spiritual combat.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
If the serpent enters, the struggle will be much more laborious. Strike the serpent on the head before he enters the cell.
This passage from the desert tradition articulates the ascetic logic of preemptive vigilance in spiritual struggle, depicting the soul as a site of perpetual contest requiring watchful discernment of intrusive thoughts.
Coniaris, Anthony M., Philokalia: The Bible of Orthodox Spirituality, 1998supporting
those still under obedience to a spiritual father must struggle with the spirits that are subordinate. Both St Makarios and Abba Kronios say that there are ruling demons and demons that are subordinate.
The Philokalia taxonomizes the objects of religious struggle — ruling versus subordinate demonic spirits — situating the practitioner's progress on a developmental continuum from initial combat to dispassionate mastery.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
the challenge of religious assessment then is to understand religion in the full context of coping. Religious coping has to be assessed in the context of nonreligious coping methods and goals.
Pargament argues that religious struggle cannot be evaluated in isolation; its significance is determined only by mapping it within the full architecture of the individual's coping system, including non-religious attributions and goals.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
the struggle is merely another expression of ego. We go around and around, trying to improve ourselves through struggle, until we realize that the ambition to improve ourselves is itself the problem.
Trungpa reframes spiritual struggle as a self-reinforcing trap of ego, arguing that the very effort to overcome inner obstacles through striving perpetuates the suffering it seeks to resolve.
Trungpa, Chögyam, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, 1973supporting
you will find principalities and powers fighting against you, deflecting you against your will and provoking you to sin. But if you prevail over them through prayer and maintain your hope, you will receive God's grace
This passage describes the structural movement of spiritual struggle — assault by hostile powers, perseverance through prayer, and reception of grace — presenting religious combat as the normative arc of the contemplative path.
Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
excessive responses of systems under threat. In an effort to protect its values, the individual or group goes beyond marking its immediate boundaries to attacking others outside its circle.
This passage addresses intergroup religious conflict as a collective form of struggle, showing how communities under perceived threat may externalize and violently project their internal religious tensions.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
Many of us with strong religious beliefs had been unable to live by such convictions before finding ACA. We found religions that allowed us to reenact the shame and despair of our childhood.
This passage from the ACA literature documents how religious struggle may be internalized as shame-based self-condemnation, describing a population for whom formal religious engagement paradoxically deepened rather than relieved psychological distress.
INC , ACA WSO, ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES, 2012aside
the more intrinsic congregation members viewed their events as a spiritual threat as well as an opportunity to grow
Pargament's data show that intrinsically religious individuals simultaneously appraise difficult events as spiritual threat and growth opportunity, suggesting that religious struggle is constitutively ambivalent rather than uniformly negative.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
The initial contradiction that reflects his early discomfort with religion and his necessary growing pains with regards to spirituality corresponded with his Jupiter-Saturn square.
Dennett's astrological analysis maps Bill Wilson's religious struggle — his oscillation between atheism and spiritual surrender — onto a natal Jupiter-Saturn tension, offering an archetypal-astrological account of faith conflict in addiction recovery.
Dennett, Stella, Individuation in Addiction Recovery: An Archetypal Astrological Perspective, 2025aside