The Doctrine of Ensoulment and Psychology
At lunch today, I was asked what I thought about ensoulment and psychology. I gave a brief answer. Here’s a bit more than I gave him.
Ensoulment and Religion- the Brief Version
Ensoulment is the moment when a being is given a soul and is a concept that appears in both philosophy and religion. The word "ensoul" comes from the verb meaning to imbue or endow with a soul.
Different belief systems have different ideas about ensoulment, including:
Creation: The belief that a soul is created by God in the womb. The Catholic Church teaches that scientific evidence supports this belief.
Pre-existence: The belief that a soul already exists before birth and enters the body at a specific stage of development. This was a common Christian belief in the first three centuries.
Traducianism: The belief that a new soul is an offshoot of its father's soul.
Jewish perspective: Some say that the most important thing is the type of soul that enters, not when it enters.
Greek perspective: The Greeks believed that ensoulment occurred during birth.
Islamic perspective: The Islamic view is that ensoulment is a stage when a spirit causes the human soul to emerge.
Note: The notion of people living as disembodied souls is not necessarily a Christian one as some claim that following death believers have a new body.
Psychology and Ensoulment
The notion of a soul in the religious sense is not a concept in mainstream psychology unless people use the term "soul" to mean self or one’s inner self.
According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 91% of Catholics and 93% of Protestants believe that people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body.
However, the religious sense of the term soul is important to psychotherapists who treat people who believe they or their loved ones have a soul--especially an eternal soul. The belief is especially relevant in the divide over the morality of abortion. That is, killing a developing human who has a God-given soul is not only murder but a sin against God. When beliefs evoke internal conflict, a person may experience serious spiritual struggles linked to anxiety and depression.
Notes
The section titled Ensoulment and Religion- the Brief Version is my edited version of a response provided by Google AI.
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