The relevance of psychology to the study of religion can be illustrated by its
implicit presence in the works of eminent religious scholars. Eliade, for example,
contends that it is the task of history of religion to arrive at “general considerations
on the religious behaviour of man” (1959, p. 89), disregarding the fact that human
behaviour as such is a topic for psychological research. Smart (1987) similarly assigns
to history the essentially psychological task of identifying “recurrent patterns
of religious thought [...] and experience that can be found cross-culturally” whereas
psychology, in his view, explores “timeless patterns or types of religious experience"
(p. 571). Yet the only substantial difference between the historian, on the one
hand, and the psychologist, on the other, is that the historian looks for “recurrent
patterns” in religious texts whilst the psychologist seeks to identify them in the
thought and behaviour of actually existing persons. Needless to say, to understand
religion as a human phenomenon fully, the work of the historian and the psychologist
must be seen as complementary.