http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler -

• Alfred Adler was concerned with the overcoming of the superiority/inferiority dynamic and was one of the first psychotherapists to discard the analytic couch in favor of two chairs. This allows the clinician and patient to sit together more or less as equals.
• Adler was an early advocate in psychology for prevention and emphasized the training of parents, teachers, social workers and so on in democratic approaches that allow a child to exercise their power through reasoned decision making whilst co-operating with others.
  
• Adler's prevention strategies include encouraging and promoting social interest, belonging, and a cultural shift within families and communities that leads to the eradication of pampering and neglect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_Religion -

• Max Weber gives religion credit for shaping a person's image of the world, and this image of the world can affect their view of their interests, and ultimately how they decide to take action.
• For Weber, religion is best understood as it responds to the human need for theodicy and soteriology. Human beings are troubled, he says, with the question of theodicy – the question of how the extraordinary power of a divine god may be reconciled with the imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over. People need to know, for example, why there is undeserved good fortune and suffering in the world. Religion offers people soteriological answers, or answers that provide opportunities for salvation – relief from suffering, and reassuring meaning. The pursuit of salvation, like the pursuit of wealth, becomes a part of human motivation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropology_of_religion

http://cyberper.cnc.net/relig.html -
Religion is defined as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate men (persons) to "the ultimate considerations of existence." That is, it is the most general model of the identity problem that one has of himself. In order for one's religion to function effectively, it is essential that one have a relatively condensed and highly general definition of the environment and that religion. From this we can infer that the religion must actually apply and be meaningful in regard to many aspects of one's roles. Thus, religion as a conceptualization of one's identity, is itself a definition of what that system (the religion) is and of what the world is in more than a transient sense (i.e. in a non-transient sense).
er, source please? That sounds like complete rot to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Eckstein
further on the subject of what happened with Emma Eckstein - http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1652467.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Allport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Batson - Daniel Batson thinks that pure altruism is possible. He also mentions Quest, a form of being religious where questions are seen as important as answers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Leuba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Personality_and_Social_Psychology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Experimental_Social_Psychology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience - William James believes that the study of the origin of an object or an idea does not play a role in the study of its value. He asserts that existential judgment, or the scientific examination of an object's origin, is a separate matter from that object's value. One must not consider an object's physical derivation when making a proposition of value.
William James described two types of spiritual health:

• The healthy mind. The healthy-minded have a naturally positive outlook on life. James assumed that some people simply are happy. "We find such persons in every age, passionately flinging themselves upon their sense of the goodness of life, in spite of the hardships of their own condition, and in spite of the sinister theologies in which they may be born. From the outset, their religion is one of union with the divine".
• The sick soul. Those people having a sick soul are those who are depressed and see the evil in all things. James believed that the only way for a sick soul to cure itself is to undergo a powerful mystical experience, or religious conversion. He argues these so-called "twice born" souls turn out to be the most healthy in the end, since they have seen life from both perspectives.