Durkheim, Mental Health and Religious Socialization.

This article focuses on the concept of mental health and religious socialization given by sociologist Emile Durkheim. It seeks an alternative explanation, one which is couched at the socio-psychological level. Its method of approach is an analysis of religious socialization. In the analysis which blows, stress is placed upon differences in the content and function of the mythological reference group structure, i.e., the inventory of both divine and demonic personalities, with whom the religious confessant develops relationships. Such mythological reference groups may be thought of as independent of, but supplemental to, the real worldly reference groups to which the individual relates. The analysis proceeds from a conception of the ideal-typical rather than the modal form of the conscience manifest in New World Catholics and Protestants, specifically those raised in the Calvinistic tradition prevalent throughout English-speaking North America. The focus of this article, moreover, is with the type of conscience produced in members of the two respective religious communities during the historical period beginning in the Renaissance-Reformation.