Truths on the line: a psychological analysis of the Dawkins´s atheism on the frontiers of science and fame.

• Grant number: 11/10759-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2011
• End date: November 30, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: João Edênio Reis Valle
• Grantee: Clarissa de Franco
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pós-Graduação (PRPG). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC-SP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The object of study consists of the resolutions, reformations and choices facing processes of crisis, challenge and loss of faith, seen in two different groups: religious people and people who have experienced traumatic situations. It is assumed that the most frequent answers to crises of faith that comes with a certain violence are: 1) significant changes in transit or affiliation, religious beliefs and practices, 2) maturation and deepening religious or spiritual, changing the quality of the bond with an institution or with divinity and 3) destruction, despair, bitterness and loss of faith. To understand the crisis of faith will use psychosocial development theory of Erik Erikson (1998), which describes the stages of human development and the resulting conflicts of each stage of ripening. Applied to the context of the Psychology of Religion, the authors have Amatuzzi Mauro (2001), with the Outline of the Theory of Religious Development and James Fowler (1981) in his book Stages of Faith Studies psychoanalyst Ana Maria Rizzuto (2006, 2001) regarding the construction of the representation of God and religious disbelief of Freud will also be important references in the study. So with John Bowlby (1973, 1980, 1999) in his theory of bonds and loss, considering the tragic dimension of the disruption that causes a deep crisis.