Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer

by Ann Belford Ulanov, Barry Ulanov

Prayer is our basic expression of religious belief. It is our personal and most private act of devotion. Words cannot do justice to the feelings, wishes, terrors, pains, or pleasures that we exchange with God. This book sets out to define prayer as both a means of drawing nearer to God everyday and as a coping tool that people can use in order to achieve harmony, balance, and satisfaction in their in their lives.

Genres: Spirituality, Prayer, Theology, Psychology, Christianity

178 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing book about what prayer is and how it works in our lives and in our selves. While viewing prayer from within a Christian framework, it does not espouse any particular doctrine. In fact, one could be praying to any God at all, so that the book transcends religion.

Prayer opens one up to the divine both within and outside ourselves. Ultimately, if pursued ceaselessly, it allows us to experience the "other," again both within and outside our limited boundaries and experience.

If we bring our whole selves to prayer, we will be made whole.

At the end, there is a list of musical pieces, poets, and art works which offer (by the authors' experience) an opportunity to experience the divine because art is a bridge to that experience.

I was inspired but also overwhelmed by the possibilities of prayer. As excited as I was by what I read, I have also experienced moments of withdrawing from my own prayer because of the fear that it would take over. But the authors Ulanov offer that promise as the ultimate joy.

[Kenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

A meditation on the journey to union with God using the insights of depth psychology. I found it deeply engaging and integrative.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books I’ve read for my spiritual director training. While I don’t find the writing style particularly easy to read, this book is the best description I’ve read of my prayer experiences and the way prayer has shaped me. I felt like it managed to put into words things that have seemed beyond words to me.

I wouldn’t recommend this book for casual reading - it’s a bit dense for that. But I did find it illuminating and I think it will be a great resource as a practicing director to help directees process their own prayer experiences.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's what this person said better than I could: Bekeh Utietiang "book reviewer"
This review is from: Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer (Paperback)

The authors account for the fundamental nature of prayer in human lives. According to them, prayer is like a primary speech. "In prayer we say who in fact we are - not who we should be, nor who we wish we were, but who we are." They raised six important aspects of human lives and they invite us to bring them to prayer. These are desire, projection, fantasy, fear, aggression and sexuality.

They acknowledge the importance of desire in prayer and say it is the motivating factor for prayer. Projection has been used in various forms throughout the history of philosophy and religion to discredit religion. Feuerbach was the first to use the terminology in this sense. Both Freud and Marx adapted it and applied it to reflect their own positions. Their underlining thesis is that we project to a god our own powers. The authors beautifully took this same terminology and applied it in a very positive and enriching way. They see projection as one of the ways we can reach out to God. They wrote, "In prayer we must begin where we are, with the images of the divine that we project and find ourselves projecting onto the unknown."

The authors opine that silence is one of the first fears that come in prayer. Their description of the fear of silence in prayer sounds like John and Teresa's description of the dark night of the soul. Rather than run away from prayer because of the fears or prayer taking us away from our fears, the authors say that prayer takes us into the center of these fears and help us to live through them.

One of the things people have the tendency to keep very secret is their sexuality. Sometimes people want to hide it from God, yet, it is at the very center of our lives. The authors invite us to contemplate our sexuality. They say, "our contemplative concentration must include our sexuality just as our sexuality must include our contemplative life."
This is definitely the best book on prayer I have read in recent times. The authors made appropriate use of the tools of psychology to help us pray without reducing prayer to psychology. It is practical, clear and very inviting. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in praying better. It is a must have for ministers, religious counselors and spiritual directors.

I WOULD ADD MY OWN THOUGHTS THAT THIS IS A DENSE BOOK THAT IS BEST READ IN SMALL INCREMENTS IN ORDER TO DIGEST IT.

[Elizabeth Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read PRIMARY SPEECH twenty years ago. On rereading it today I'm aware, with immense gratitude, of how profoundly the Ulanovs have helped form the foundation of my prayer life. They begin with the radical statement, "Everybody prays," made even more unbelievable by the four decades and collapse of Christianity since this book was published. "People pray whether or not they call it prayer." Prayer, the Ulanovs posit, is a basic impulse--a primary, internal speech--inherent to all humans. "To pray is to listen to and hear this self who is speaking." Prayer is how we relate to the ground of our being. It is the fundamental conversation each of us has with life itself, and as such is worthy of study, of a psychology. The Ulanovs turn to Christianity's wisdom tradition not out of blind religiosity but because millennia of seekers have unearthed trustworthy insights into this dimension of our humanity.

Any authors willing to explore how our sexuality informs, speaks through, and is augmented by our prayer, or able to treat with utmost respect the critical role imagination plays in our prayer life, get my undying devotion. Now onto the next Ulanov volume...

[Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a spiritual book worth reading-reading. It’s not a “brainy approach” towards prayer. It is a pondering and poem about how we dance with God. It is not a book about the entire history of how humans prayer. It is a thoughtful presentation of how we encounter God through grief, solitude, joy, desires, just to name a few.

It’s only 4 stars and not five because the subtitle, “A Psychology of Prayer,” is a tad misleading; that sounds academic. They do speak often about psychology, yet the material is presented with loads of ponderings presented as prose, and not academic in any way.

Their footnotes in the text do provide promising rabbit holes to delve deeper into what they found as their inspiration to write this book.

[Debra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would have stopped reading this book after the first chapter if it wasn't required reading for a course. Much of the thinking is antiquated and with the obtuse, circular writing, it is a difficult read. The most valuable part of the book is the Appendix where various art forms are suggested as a means for encountering the divine.

[Danielle Shroyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Ann Ulanov’s work so I appreciated this book. She seems at her most “preacher-like” in this book. That isn’t a good or a bad thing, just an observation that some parts feel like a sermon. I underlined a lot! Some great nuggets of truth and insight about prayer.

[Drick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book regards prayer to be "primary speech" and offers a psychological perspective on prayer. Essentially, their perspective is that in praying we come to know ourselves more fully and that God joins us to relieve the suffering and confront the issues about which we pray While they invoke God as one who answers prayer, their focus on the one who prays more than the one prayed to.

[Trey Kennedy · Rating 2 out of 5]

While there were some good insights to prayer in this book, overall it focuses too much on how prayer helps us instead of how it builds up our relationship with God.

[Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, in a wonderful way, challenged and changed the way I think of prayer. In this slim volume, the authors focus on desire, projection, fantasy, fear, aggression and sexuality as essential parts of ourselves and of prayer. Instead of pushing these aspects of ourselves aside, the authors suggest how acknowledging them and offering them to God can transform us, them and our relationship with God. Doing so moves us through purgation and illumination to union with God.

For instance, the authors write that through our projections,

"we attempt to control the unknown by turning it into a person like ourselves, only bigger, kinder, and all-wise.... Instead of reducing our images of God to personal wishes, we see them as the projections of groups and of society as a whole. God now personifies the social controls that operate among people, controls that have such a force that they take on a life of their own, like a separate being hovering above us. Or, God comes to be seen as a picture of the meanings we have poured into our sense of reality.... We come at God first through the way we need God to be. Only slowly and with much experience of prayer can we allow God to come to us.... Projections, when we carry them consciously, intelligibly, and trustingly into our prayers bring our primary selves right up to God's presence" (28-29, 33).

Each aspect covered plays essential roles in all our relationships, but it is refreshing to have it claimed that they also do so in our relationship with God, not as obstacles but as guides and aids. Throughout the book, the authors see the path to God as involving becoming more fully aware of ourselves and others. This is not a new message from psychology or philosophy, not even from religion. However the more positive aspect of this journey through the self is. Religion has been interpreted more as a denial of the self, of whatever is understood as being sinful or leading to sin. Here the authors suggest another interpretation, which suggests another response. They never mentioning sin per se, and thereby convey a very positive sense of human agency as well as divine .

[Kenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was interested in this book mainly because of the title and the question of how prayer relates to speech. "Primary speech" for Ann and Barry Ulanov is the unavoidable, and they would say prayerful, act of listening to and hearing your self speaking: "We pray say who in fact we are--not who we should be, nor who we wish we were."
I loved how broad this definition of prayer is and how applicable it can be to daily living. I also loved how they discussed working through difficult emotions like anger and fear through prayer.
And because of my interest in alchemy, I enjoyed it when they connected the "Triple Way" (purification, illumination, unification/transfiguration) with alchemical concepts.
The book felt simple as I read it, but I think I'll find myself returning to their ideas again and again.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tremendously enlightening book if you allow yourself to listen deeply as you read it. In brief, the authors' premise is that prayer is a "confession" of self to self. Before verbal prayers are breathed, something is happening inside us. It is this something that causes us to pray. It is this something that makes prayer primary speech. This something also tells us our deepest longings, desires, dreams, hopes, fears, and more. As we pray and as we listen to our prayers we find God in the midst of our being. We are transformed.

This book also calls our attention to our "shadows" - the parts of us that we hide from God, from others, and even deny ourselves. "So we must bring to prayer the excitements, the wonders, the confusions, and the bruises that make up our lives in this area, just as much as we bring the issues and problems of spirit and soul." (page 76). Truly liberating!

[Rev. Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

A text for a Fall 2016 Brite Class, "Spiritual Life and Leadership" -- From the publisher: Prayer is our basic expression of religious belief. It is our personal and most private act of devotion. Words cannot do justice to the feelings, wishes, terrors, pains, or pleasures that we exchange with God. This book sets out to define prayer as both a means of drawing nearer to God everyday and as a coping tool that people can use in order to achieve harmony, balance, and satisfaction in their in their lives.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the Ulanovs' best work, because the clearest about what's actually at stake in both their thought on prayer and their thought on psychology. A fascinating counterpoint to any 20th-c. ascetical theology (Evelyn Underhill, Martin Thornton).

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy cow! This is the only book I've read that counts as both a devotional book on mystical Christianity and a one within the larger tradition of Jungian psychology. They suggest, among other things, bringing ALL my desires and fantasies to God in prayer. Though I haven't tried that before, I wish I had; I know the power of God to transform all desire by consecrating it to Him.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very honest and upfront approach to what comes up in prayer. I really appreciated the frank and honest approach to the topics that were discussed (for example, aggression and sexuality within one's prayer life). A great read.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

They desperately needed to avoid their embarrassing political positions butting in; didn't.