Soul

===Psychology===
Soul belief prominently figures in [[Otto Rank]]'s work recovering the importance of immortality in the psychology of primitive, classical and modern interest in life and death.  Rank's work directly opposed the "scientific" psychology that concedes the possibility of the soul's existence and postulates it as an object of research without really admitting that it exists. "Just as religion represents a psychological commentary on the social evolution of man, various psychologies represent our current attitudes toward spiritual belief. In the animistic era, psychologizing was a ''creating'' of the soul; in the religious era, it was a ''representing'' of the soul to one's self; in our era of natural science it is a ''knowing'' of the individual soul."  <ref name="Psychology and the Soul">{{cite book |last=Rank |first=Otto |title=Psychology and the Soul: Otto Rank's Seelenglaube und Psychologie |translator-first=William D.|translator-last=Turner |location=Philadelphia |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |year=1950 |page=11 |oclc=928087}}</ref> Rank's "Seelenglaube" translates to "Soul Belief". Rank's work had a significant influence on [[Ernest Becker]]'s understanding of a universal interest in immortality.  In [[Denial of Death]], Becker describes "soul" in terms of [[Kierkegaard]]'s use of "self" when he says, "what we call schizophrenia is an attempt by the symbolic self to deny the limitations of the finite body."<ref>*{{cite book|last=Becker|first=Ernest|title=The Denial of Death|location=New York|publisher=Simon & Schuster|year=1973|isbn=0-684-83240-2|url=https://archive.org/details/denialofdeathbeckrich | page=76}}</ref>

{{Poemquote
|text=† Kierkegaard's use of "self" may be a bit confusing. He uses it to include
the symbolic self and the physical body. It is a synonym really for "total
personality" that goes beyond the person to include what we would now call
the "soul" or the "ground of being" out of which the created person sprang.}}