Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy has been influential on psychologists who wish to integrate “spiritual” or “religious” concerns into the practice of psychotherapy. In this paper, I examine the irony of psychologists adopting Otto’s categories of the “numinous” and the “mysterium tremendum,” categories which resist the rational understanding and instrumentalization sought by psychology. Accordingly, I argue that psychotherapy cannot be a venue for “spirituality,” insofar as that spirituality seeks the kind of mystical experiences that Otto describes.