Brallier, Virgil Victor2015-12-082015-12-0819571957b21156980https://hdl.handle.net/2144/13580Thesis (Ph.D)--Boston UniversityThis dissertation seeks to enter into the personality and religious experience of Samuel Butler as intimately as possible in order to understand the operation of authoritarianism in a single individual. Butler was chosen for study because of the controversial and deeply invalued part he played in the transition from Victorianism to modernism. Butler has been an enigma because his writings reveal a man who saw through many of the weaknesses of authority, yet apparently without achieving the emancipation his writings suggest.The procedure is fundamentally a psychoanalytic interpretation of Butler through a study of his writings and biographical sources. The objective of this approach is to show the ways in which religious experience is related to, conditioned by, or productive of authoritarian personality characteristics. [TRUNCATED]en-USBased on investigation of the BU Libraries' staff, this work is free of known copyright restrictions.Thesis/Dissertation