Field of Flows: Therapeutic Culture and Roman Catholic Women’s Lived Religious Practices

This article examines the relationship between religion and therapeutic culture, focusing on the practices of Roman Catholic women in Poland. Its aim is to understand how flows between these domains reshape individual and communal religious practices. The study draws on qualitative research and employs a practice-oriented lived religion approach as the theoretical framework. Data was collected through individual in-depth interviews ( n = 48) with educated Roman Catholic women living in large Polish cities, and then analysed using a qualitative interpretive approach. The findings show that encounters with therapeutic culture reshape religious practices, generating new forms of methodical, individual, and communal work on religiosity and fostering more dialogical and relational understandings of the sacred. They also enable the renegotiation of dynamics within religious groups, including models of leadership and communication. The consequences of these processes extend beyond the religious field, as therapeutised religion also affects individuals’ mental well-being and everyday relationships. The article argues that the encounter between religion and therapeutic culture is best understood as a field of multidirectional intersections and flows – one that involves mutual transformations rather than one-sided influence and that does not weaken religion but facilitates its adaptation to late-modern lifestyles.