Prayer as a lived relationship : a psychological study

Abstract

Questions about the contents and the various dimensions of a relationship lived with God in prayer can be asked and indeed they ought to be asked, even from the psychological point of view. How, indeed, is prayer structured? Does prayer vary from one sex to the other? Or from one culture to another? Questions such as these shaped my investigation into the phenomenon of prayer. I My empirical project had a two-fold objective. The first was the development of a research instrument to be used in such an investigation.2 Tl}e second was an application of this tool to religious experience and the phenomenon of prayer. The first objective was necessary because the science of the psychology of religion has been notably lacking in studies on prayer. The few studies that do exist have, for the most part, been merely descriptive and they have been relatively deficient in the use of scientific methodology. These few studies have tended to concentrate on children and adolescents.