[Prayer, an intermediary world].

Abstract

Prayer, considered under its theological aspect as a love relation between the orant and God becomes, under a psychopathological point of view, deviated as it is from its original aim, a space of potential cure for narcissistic wounds. In this sense, prayer is a kind of intermediary world between normality and madness, which according to the religious ideas of the individual and the importance of his mental disorders, tends towards one or the other of these extremes, and makes his defences operative. It happens therefore that Faith, as materialized in prayer, can be a mean to save oneself of mental morbidity. Prayer is an intricate phenomenon which originates in the multiple dimensions of the human being, where religion, psychology, morals, pathology and metaphysics confront each other.