acquire religious knowledge by other than ordinary ways: by intuition, for instance. Their emotions are the same as those of other pietists. What is needed to explain their peculiarities is, not a psychology of religion, but a psychological explanation of a certain intellectual error or illusion. Advanced Theosophists, Spiritualist automatic writers, even certain meta physicians, have the same psychology. In large measure it is an indifference to the distinction between things imagined and things known, or a kind of affection for words whether or no they express realities. In many of these cases—the St. Theresa, St. Clare, St. Catherine of Siena, etc. type—there is a legitimate field for the psycho-analyst. Their love of Jesus is largely suffused by subconscious sex-feeling, and in many cases they attached themselves to male saints in a very interesting manner. Such types, of smaller stature, are common in the Roman Catholic convent-world, but in the entire religious world they are an insignificant group.
A very different type is the girl who is really tainted by a kind of nerve-poison from sex-suppression. Religious abnormality is one of the forms in which this may find expression, but in my experience it is not very common. In the Catholic Church such girls often fasten upon the confessional as an outlet and simply gloat over their remorse for their sins. In some the condition easily lets them be persuaded that they may legitimately have sex-satisfaction with a minister of religion. In the Middle Ages it led to self-scourging and other
