Review of The return to religion

Abstract

Reviews the book, The return to religion by Henry C. Link (1936). Probably no book written by a psychologist within a generation will provoke more discussion in educational and religious circles than this. In ten short chapters the author ranges from playing tennis to happiness in marriage, from dancing and bridge to social planning, from the creative employer to the destructive liberal; and in all topics he gives an interpretation that runs counter to many currently accepted educational, social, and political dogmas. The book is incidentally autobiographical, but chiefly an interpretation and psychological philosophy of life. It is an interpretation of the "struggles, despairs, and successes" of thousands of people who during a fifteen year period have sought the author's counsel, and who in turn are responsible for his discovery that to help solve their problems the customary professional and scientific vocabulary had to be replaced by a body of religious beliefs, many of which had been discarded for twenty years. The fundamental concept running through the solution of his problems, whether they be individual cases, of which he gives scores, or social and political practices, is that happiness is achieved by an individual's losing himself in larger wholes. From the many challenging concepts, directly or casually offered by Dr. Link, three are discussed here to illustrate his point of view: (1) His interpretation of religion; (2) An adequate subtitle for the book would be The Return to Restraint; and (3) His interpretation of the extroverted state as a desirable aim, and his implied criticism of introversion which he equates with selfishness, will challenge the belief in the inevitableness of the normal curve distribution of these much-disputed entities. The reviewer concludes that this is a book every clinician and counselor should read. It is one of the most challenging and daring books written by a psychologist since the science of psychology began. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)