This essay examines whether Daisaku Ikeda can be considered a Jamesian psychologist of religion. It first identifies a shared concern between William James's psychology of religion as a distinct movement and Ikeda's view of religion in a secular world. It then articulates Ikeda's notion of self and the role of mediating symbols in religion, discourse, and the arts, relating these to James's psychology of religion. Finally, it raises critical questions for further development of the thesis.
Granville Stanley Hall and Carl Gustav Jung both held that studying religious experience is essential for deeply understanding the human subject, yet their shared interest has received little academic attention. This paper articulates preliminary evidence of affinities between their works, focusing on the locus and function of the inner deep psychic dimension as the religious. Hall, a founder of the psychology of religion movement and the first American experimental or genetic psychologist, and Jung, founder of analytical psychology, both engaged sympathetically with the religious dimension rooted in the human subject. Their fundamental works are mutually connected, and this paper examines that connection.