A Most Accursed Religion: When a Trauma Becomes God

The long-awaited, extensively revised and expanded version of Mogenson’s provocative first book, GOD IS A TRAUMA: VICARIOUS RELIGION AND SOUL-MAKING. Despite its title, this book is not about theology. When a psychologist writes of God, he must do so within the confines of his own field of inquiry: the psyche. Mogenson’s aim is to focus attention on the religious dimension of the psychology of those overwhelming events we describe as traumatic. Whether a divine being really exists or not, the psychological fact remains that we tend to experience traumatic events as if they were in some sense divine.