Miracles of Healing

A rigorous historical investigation of the relationship between religion and psychotherapy in twentieth-century Scotland Although a tide of secularization swept over the post-war United Kingdom, Christianity in Scotland found one way to survive by drawing on alliances that it had built earlier in the century with psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis was seen as a way to purify Christianity, and to propel it in a scientifically rational and socially progressive direction. This book draws upon a wealth of archival research to uncover the complex interaction between religion and psychotherapy in twentieth-century Scotland. It explores the practical and intellectual alliance created between the Scottish churches and Scottish psychotherapy that found expression in the work of celebrated figures such as the radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing and the pioneering psychoanalyst W.R.D. Fairbairn, as well as the careers of less well-known individuals such as the psychotherapist Winifred Rushforth. Gavin Miller is Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities in the School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow, where he directs the Medical Humanities Research Centre.

Gavin Miller is Reader in Contemporary Literature and Medical Humanities at the University of Glasgow. His research interests include science fiction, history of the psychological disciplines, book history, and the cultural history of UFOs. He is the lead editor of the Edinburgh University Press series, Contemporary Cultural Studies in Illness, Health and Medicine, and the author of Science Fiction and Psychology (2020) and Miracles of Healing: Psychotherapy and Religion in Twentieth-century Scotland (2020).