Editing Soul (section)

==Psychology==
"Seelenglaube" or "soul-belief" is a prominent feature in [[Otto Rank]]'s work.<ref name=":4">{{cite journal |last=Sheets-Johnstone |first=Maxine |year=2003 |title=Death and immortality ideologies in Western philosophy |journal=Continental Philosophy Review |volume=36 |issue=3 |pages=235–262 |doi=10.1023/B:MAWO.0000003937.47171.a9 |s2cid=143977431}}</ref> Rank explains 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.<ref name=":4" /> He says, "Just as religion represents a psychological commentary on the social evolution of man, various psychologies represent our current attitudes toward spritual 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 work had a significant influence on [[Ernest Becker]]'s understanding of a universal interest in immortality. In ''[[The Denial of Death]]'', Becker describes "soul" in terms of [[Søren Kierkegaard]] use of "self":

<blockquote>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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Becker |first=Ernest |url=https://archive.org/details/denialofdeathbeckrich |title=The Denial of Death |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1973 |isbn=0-684-83240-2 |location=New York}}</ref></blockquote>

According to [[Cognitive science|Cognitive scientist]] [[Jesse Bering]] and psychologist [[Nicholas Humphrey]], humans are initially inclined to believe in a soul and are born as soul-body dualists. As such, religious institutions did not need to invent or inherent the idea of the soul from previous traditions, rather the concept has always been present throughout human history.<ref name="auto"/> Echoing that sentiment, American philosopher [[Stewart Goetz|Steward Goetz]] has claimed that according to anthropologists and psychologists, ordinary human beings are soul-body substance dualists, who, at all times and in all places, have believed in the existence of a distinction between the soul and the body.<ref>{{Citation |last=Goetz |first=Stewart |title=Soul |work=Vocabulary for the Study of Religion Online |url=https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/VSRO/COM-00000026.xml?rskey=EmQACQ&result=1 |access-date=2025-04-11 |publisher=Brill |doi=10.1163/9789004249707_vsr_COM_00000026 |language=en}}</ref>