People=s faith determines both their personal understanding of the world and of themselves, as well as their place in society. In addition to traditional religions and individual spirituality, non-religious ideological belief structures and also liberal worldviews exist. Faith& understood as an elementary imaginative, affective and cognitive mixed function of the human psyche& therefore deserves greater attention in everyday psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice. This volume discusses spirituality and the diversity of religious belief in today=s world both from the therapeutic point of view and in relation to its development in the history of humanity. It emphasizes the basic hypothesis that there is a ?reciprocal entanglement= of the poles of faith and knowledge relative to mental health and illness. In his plea for a tolerance of ambiguity in dealing with patients= religious worlds, the author reflects on cultural studies, medical and psychotherapeutic sources, and, last but not least, Karl Jaspers=s positions and analyses.

Norbert Mönter, MD, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, founded the Association for Psychiatry and Mental Health and has for many years chaired the interreligious working group ?Religion and Psychiatry=, as well as the annual Berlin Colloquia on Religious Studies and Psychiatry.