Title: Between belief and unbelief
Authors: Pruyser, Paul W.
Publisher: Harper & Row
Year: 1974
Subjects: Belief and doubt.
Abstract: "First, a scholarly work on such a "hot" theme as belief and unbelief requires considerable personal involvement and existential engagement on the part of the writer. My ambition to do an honest, scientific job on the topic required objectivity and faithfulness to the observations that form the starting point of conceptual inquiry and systematization. My ambition to be at the same time a clinician (which I am by profession) imposed a special selectivity: a penchant for reasoning within a useful, pragmatic theoretical framework which lacks tightness and elegance but is clinically fascinating because of its hospitality to the messy details of life, and a proneness to seeing the conflictual origins and elements in many situations which may appear pure and simple to a layman. In addition, there is something in the very nature of belief, disbelief, and unbelief that is likely to make the student a participant, at some level, in the material with which he deals."
Contents: Sacred and secular contexts of belief -- Religious beliefs and alienation -- A psychological perspective on unbelief -- Dealing with dependency and autonomy -- Coming to terms with mystery -- Coming to terms with options -- Coming to terms with providence -- Coming to terms with fantasy -- Coming to terms with reality -- Between belief and unbelief.