Concepts of God and Parental Images

Abstract

The Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale, also identified in the psychometric literature as the Semantic Differential Parental Scale (SDPS) or the God-Parent-Score (Score-Dieu-Parent), was developed by Antoine Vergote and colleagues (1969) at the Catholic University of Louvain (Université Catholique de Louvain) in Belgium. The instrument was engineered to assess the structural relationship between individuals’ internalized, symbolic representations of parental figures—specifically maternal and paternal archetypes—and their conceptual representation of God. Rooted methodologically in Charles E. Osgood‘s semantic differential technique and theoretically within psychoanalytic formulations of religious representations, the scale measures 36 attributes evenly divided into 18 maternal qualities (e.g., warmth, welcoming, tenderness, comfort, intimate refuge) and 18 paternal qualities (e.g., law, authority, dynamic initiative, justice, order). Respondents evaluate three distinct target entities—Mother, Father, and God—across all 36 items using a 7-point Likert-style continuum ranging from 1 (“not at all associated”) to 7 (“very much associated”). Critically, respondents are instructed to rate parental targets at a “symbolic” ideal level rather than an autobiographical memory level. Rather than utilizing linear summation to yield aggregate scale scores, psychometric evaluation relies on generalized Euclidean distance formulas ($D$-scores) and profile similarity analyses to quantify structural congruence and semantic overlap between the divine image and parental representations. Empirical validation across international cohorts (including Belgian, North American, Italian, and Latin American samples) establishes significant discriminant capacity between maternal and paternal dimensions, revealing that the symbolic God concept comprises a differentiated, culturally mediated synthesis of both paternal authority and maternal nurturance.

Keywords

Concepts of God and Parental Images, Semantic Differential Parental Scale, SDPS, Antoine Vergote, God image, parental representation, psychoanalysis of religion, maternal archetype, paternal authority, semantic differential

Authors

The Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale was designed and standardized by an interdisciplinary research team directed by Antoine Vergote at the Center for Psychology of Religion, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Key co-investigators and contributing psychometricians include:

• Antoine Vergote, Ph.D., S.T.D. (1921–2013) — Professor of Psychology of Religion and Psychoanalysis, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
• Álvaro Tamayo, Ph.D. — Research associate at the Center for Psychology of Religion, Université Catholique de Louvain, later Professor of Psychology at the University of Brasília (Universidade de Brasília), Brazil.
• Luiz Pasquali, Ph.D. — Psychometrician and researcher at Université Catholique de Louvain, later Professor Emeritus of Psychometrics at the University of Brasília, Brazil.
• Michel Bonami, Lic. Psych. — Research fellow, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
• Marie Pattyn, Lic. Psych. — Research psychologist, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
• Anne Custers, Lic. Psych. — Research collaborator, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
• André Vannesse, Ph.D. and Patrick De Neuter, Ph.D. — Investigators at UCLouvain who established standard French adaptations and profile validation metrics (Vannesse & De Neuter, 1981).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale is to operationalize and empirically investigate the psychological origins and structural components of the God representation in the human psyche. Since the inception of the psychology of religion, scholars have debated whether the mental representation of God is primarily an unmediated theological abstraction, an exact mirror of autobiographical parent-child relationships, or a symbolic construct mediated by fundamental cultural and psychological archetypes of mothering and fathering.

Prior psychological investigations, such as those conducted by Nelson and Jones (1957) and Strunk (1959), utilized Q-sort methodologies and basic rating scales to demonstrate empirical correlations between parental attitudes and God concepts. However, those early approaches conflated the historical memory of one’s empirical parents with the broader symbolic structure of parental functions. Vergote et al. (1969) constructed the SDPS specifically to overcome this limitation. The scale’s purpose is not to measure whether an individual’s biological mother or father was warm or strict in actual childhood history, but rather to evaluate how the subject conceptualizes the normative, symbolic parental figures (“as they should be”) and how those differentiated dimensions configure the semantic space occupied by the divine representation.

In clinical, developmental, and pastoral psychology, the instrument serves multiple applied functions:

• Investigation of Religious Neurosis and Psychopathology: Clinical researchers use the instrument to explore how severe developmental deficits, parental absences, or psychopathology (such as schizophrenia, personality disorders, or affective disturbances) distort the symbolic integration of divine authority and divine benevolence.
• Cross-Cultural Psychopathology and Anthropological Psychology: The scale allows cross-national comparative research regarding how family structures (e.g., patriarchal vs. matricentric family arrangements in Western Europe, North America, Latin America, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia) modulate the psychological accessibility of God as an ultimate provider or absolute lawgiver.
• Pastoral Counseling and Psychotherapy: Clinicians assessing spiritual distress can determine whether a client’s concept of God is pathologically aligned with an authoritarian, punishing paternal figure devoid of maternal consolation, or vice versa, illuminating target areas for therapeutic restructuring.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the instrument is the multi-dimensional semantic overlap between symbolic parental representations and the representation of the deity. The scale posits that human parental representations are bifurcated into two distinct psychological dimensions that operate at a symbolic, cultural, and unconscious level: the Maternal Symbolic Dimension and the Paternal Symbolic Dimension.

1. The Maternal Symbolic Dimension

The maternal dimension is defined by unconditional affective availability, bodily and psychological shelter, visceral intimacy, receptive acceptance, and restorative care. Within Vergote’s psychodynamic framework, the maternal symbol represents the primary matrix of life—the source of comfort that welcomes the child unconditionally before any ethical demands or normative laws are imposed. The 18 maternal items capture these psychological themes through attributes reflecting:

• Refuge and Unconditional Welcoming: Expressed by descriptors such as “A warm-hearted refuge,” “Who welcomes me with open arms,” “Who is all-embracing,” and “Close to whom one feels at home.”
• Affective Nurturance and Attunement: Expressed through items such as “Warmth,” “Tenderness,” “Sensitive,” and “Who will sympathize with the child’s sorrows.”
• Consolatory Care: Captured by items such as “Who takes loving care of me,” “Who gives comfort,” and “Self-giving love.”
• Relational Receptivity: Represented by “Who is intimate,” “Who is always waiting for me,” and “The one who is most patient.”

2. The Paternal Symbolic Dimension

The paternal dimension is defined by structural mediation, law, ethical differentiation, authority, dynamic action, and active insertion into the wider social order. Drawing on psychoanalytic anthropology, the father is conceived not merely as a biological caregiver, but as the symbolic agent who introduces the third term into the dyadic mother-child union. The father embodies the principle of reality, social order, boundaries, and justice. The 18 paternal items systematically reflect:

• Structural Authority and Law: Operationalized via items such as “The authority,” “Who gives the law,” “Who is the principle, the rule,” and “The judge.”
• Dynamic Agency and Decisiveness: Measured through “Dynamic,” “The one who acts,” “Who takes the initiative,” and “Who makes the decisions.”
• Cognitive Structure and Direction: Reflected in “Systematic mind,” “Who gives the directions,” “The one who has the knowledge,” and “Who examines things.”
• Structural Strength and Discipline: Expressed through “Strength,” “Power,” “Firmness,” “Stern,” “The one maintains order,” and “Protection against danger.”

3. The God Representation Construct

In this psychometric paradigm, God is not treated as an external metaphysical entity, but as an internalized cognitive-affective representation (an object representation in object relations terms). The scale measures the extent to which this divine representation draws from, correlates with, or distances itself from the symbolic maternal and paternal prototypes. A person’s God image may be predominantly paternal (associated with law, dynamic authority, and cosmic order), predominantly maternal (conceived as an all-encompassing, comforting sanctuary of unconditional love), balanced/integrative (simultaneously bearing maximal maternal tenderness and paternal firmness), or structurally alienated from both parental prototypes.

Theoretical Framework

The Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale is rooted in the convergence of two major intellectual traditions: psychoanalytic theory and quantitative structural linguistics / psychosemantics.

1. Classical and Post-Freudian Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Freud famously argued in Totem and Taboo (1913) and The Future of an Illusion (1927) that the personal God is psychologically nothing other than an exalted, idealized biological father—a projective defense mechanism against infantile helplessness. Vergote and his collaborators adopted Freud’s premise that parental imagos serve as the psychological substrate for religious representations, but profoundly revised Freud’s reductive conclusions. Vergote incorporated insights from Jacques Lacan‘s linguistic structural psychoanalysis, particularly the concept of the “Name-of-the-Father” (Nom-du-Père) as a symbolic function rather than an empirical individual.

Vergote posited that religion cannot be reduced strictly to an infantile Oedipal father projection. Instead, religious representation requires a dialectical tension between maternal and paternal symbolic functions. The maternal imago provides the affective guarantee of existence, emotional security, and unconditioned grace, while the paternal imago introduces the dimension of transcendence, ethical responsibility, and existential promise. Consequently, Vergote hypothesized that mature, culturally evolved concepts of God necessarily integrate both symbolic polarities, challenging the strictly patriarchal Freudian hypothesis.

2. Osgood’s Semantic Differential Paradigm

Methodologically, the SDPS is constructed upon the semantic differential technique established by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957). Osgood demonstrated that human conceptual meaning can be mapped onto a multidimensional semantic space, typically governed by dimensions of Evaluation, Potency, and Activity (EPA). Vergote adapted this quantitative linguistic paradigm to psychoanalytic concepts. Rather than using arbitrary bi-polar adjectives (e.g., hot-cold, fast-slow), the Louvain team developed domain-specific unipolar semantic markers representing established clinical-phenomenological components of maternal and paternal symbolic roles.

By requiring participants to rate the three intentional targets (Symbolic Mother, Symbolic Father, and God) across an identical semantic grid of 36 items, the psychometric framework maps all three concepts into a common 36-dimensional coordinate space. Mathematical vectors and distance metrics can then objectively establish whether the cognitive coordinates of God gravitate closer to the maternal cluster or the paternal cluster.

Validity

The validity of the Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale has been documented across numerous studies conducted across different cultural linguistic environments, summarized comprehensively in the research monograph by Vergote and Tamayo (1981).

Content and Construct Validity

The content validity of the instrument was established through extensive phenomenological and textual curation. Vergote et al. (1969) initially surveyed more than 100 philosophical, religious, psychological, and literary treatises to extract an exhaustive catalog of parental qualities, yielding 226 distinct linguistic expressions. Through iterative content sortings by panels of psychologists, psychoanalysts, and graduate judges, items were eliminated if they failed to exhibit unambiguous cultural attribution to either maternal or paternal archetypes. The 36 items that demonstrated the sharpest theoretical discrimination were retained (18 maternal, 18 paternal).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity between the maternal and paternal item pools has been repeatedly corroborated across diverse international samples:

• In the original American validation cohort of 62 high school and college students (Vergote et al., 1969), all 36 items discriminated between the Mother and Father target figures at statistically significant levels ($p < .001$).
• In an independent cross-validation involving 200 French-speaking Canadian university students, Tamayo and Dugas (1977) confirmed that the 18 maternal items were rated significantly higher for the Mother imago than for the Father imago, whereas the 18 paternal items were rated significantly higher for the Father imago than for the Mother imago, confirming complete discriminant demarcation between the two symbolic domains.
• Vannesse and De Neuter (1981) administered the scale to 300 American university undergraduates and established that the instrument effectively discriminates between “symbolic ideal instructions” and “empirical autobiographical memory instructions.” When subjects evaluated parents under symbolic instructions (“as they ought to be”), the differentiation between maternal and paternal traits was pronounced and stable; under autobiographical instructions, idiosyncratic familial experiences produced blurred, heterogeneous item attributions.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

Construct validity regarding the God concept was demonstrated by Tamayo and Desjardins (1976) across groups varying in religious involvement and belief systems. Practicing religious individuals exhibited God representations that harmoniously synthesized both maternal nurturance and paternal authority, displaying smaller Euclidean distance metrics to both parental archetypes. Conversely, non-believers and alienated cohorts exhibited structural divergence, viewing the divine figure as either an authoritarian paternal caricature or projecting low affinity across both maternal and paternal dimensions. Cross-cultural studies across Catholic, Protestant, and non-Western cohorts (e.g., Zaire, Colombia, the Philippines, Indonesia) documented systematic cultural variations in whether God is conceptualized with paternal or maternal predominance, demonstrating the instrument’s sensitivity to cultural-religious modulation (Vergote & Tamayo, 1981).

Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of reliability for the SDPS requires contextualization within the measurement paradigm of Osgood’s semantic differential profile analysis. Because the scale was not designed as an additive summative index (where items are summed into a composite total score), classical internal consistency metrics (such as Cronbach’s alpha) were not originally computed or reported in the seminal publications of Vergote et al. (1969) or Tamayo and Desjardins (1976). In traditional profile distance psychometrics, items represent distinct structural coordinates in multidimensional space rather than parallel measures of a single latent univariate continuum.

In subsequent re-analyses and psychometric extensions (e.g., Pasquali, 1981), when items within each 18-item dimension were aggregated for exploratory composite scoring, high internal consistency was documented. The 18-item Maternal scale routinely yields Cronbach’s alpha coefficients exceeding $\alpha = .88$, and the 18-item Paternal scale demonstrates coefficients exceeding $\alpha = .86$ across diverse cultural adaptations.

Regarding temporal stability, formal test-retest reliability data over short intervals (e.g., 2–4 weeks) were not systematically published in the initial 1969 paper. However, profile stability studies reported in Vergote and Tamayo (1981) demonstrated that the structural distances between Mother, Father, and God representations remain highly stable across repeated testing in normative adult populations, yielding profile congruence coefficients ($r_p$) generally ranging between $.78$ and $.86$. The semantic differential profile method demonstrates substantial resistance to transient state fluctuations when administered with standardized symbolic instructional sets.

Factor Analysis

The latent structure of the 36 items was thoroughly investigated by the Louvain psychometric team using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multidimensional profile scaling. Luiz Pasquali (1981) conducted comprehensive factor analytic investigations across multiple international datasets to evaluate the internal construct validity of the item pool.

Factor Extraction and Loadings

Principal components analyses with orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique rotations consistently yield a robust two-factor higher-order structure corresponding directly to the theoretical Maternal and Paternal domains:

• Factor 1: Paternal Law and Authority: Accounts for approximately 28% to 34% of the total variance across target evaluations. High-loading items (loadings ranging from $.60$ to $.82$) include “The authority,” “Who gives the law,” “The judge,” “Who is the principle, the rule,” “Dynamic,” and “Power.”
• Factor 2: Maternal Affective Refuge: Accounts for approximately 24% to 30% of the total variance. High-loading items (loadings ranging from $.58$ to $.85$) include “Warmth,” “Tenderness,” “A warm-hearted refuge,” “Who takes loving care of me,” “Self-giving love,” and “Close to whom one feels at home.”

Cross-loadings between the maternal items onto the paternal factor, and vice versa, are negligible (rarely exceeding $.25$), confirming the empirical orthogonality of the two symbolic parental functions when evaluated under the symbolic instructional set.

Factor Structure of the God Imago

When factor analyses are conducted specifically on the ratings of the God target, a unique structural configuration emerges. Rather than collapsing into an undifferentiated general factor of divine praise (halo effect), the items maintain their bifurcated maternal and paternal loadings. However, the first unrotated factor reflects an integrative religious dimension wherein both maternal care and paternal authority items load positively, demonstrating that cognitively mature religious representations synthesize both parental functions while preserving their conceptual differentiation.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational specifications of the Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale are structured as follows:

• Instrument Designation: Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale (also cited as the Semantic Differential Parental Scale [SDPS], God-Parent-Score, or Score-Dieu-Parent).
• Instrument Type: Psychosemantic differential rating scale based on profile distance and similarity analysis.
• Target Entities: Three distinct targets evaluated sequentially:
  1. Target 1: Mother (evaluated under symbolic instructions: the ideal mother, “as she should be”).
  2. Target 2: Father (evaluated under symbolic instructions: the ideal father, “as he should be”).
  3. Target 3: God (evaluated as the individual conceptualizes God).
• Item Count: 36 items total (18 Maternal items, 18 Paternal items), administered in an identical pseudo-randomized sequence for each of the three target entities (resulting in 108 total rating responses per administration).
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-style continuum:
  • 1 = Not at all associated
  • 2 = Very slightly associated
  • 3 = Slightly associated
  • 4 = Somewhat associated / Moderately associated
  • 5 = Considerably associated
  • 6 = Strongly associated
  • 7 = Very much associated / Completely associated
• Item Valence / Direction: All 36 items are worded unidirectionally in a positive semantic direction (higher scores indicate greater attribution of the respective maternal or paternal quality to the evaluated target). There are no reverse-scored items.
• Scoring and Analytical Rules:
  • Univariate Mean Indices: Mean maternal scores ($M_{mat}$) and mean paternal scores ($M_{pat}$) can be computed for each target figure (Mother, Father, God) by calculating the arithmetic mean of the respective 18 items (range 1.00 to 7.00).
  • Euclidean Distance Metric ($D$): To determine whether God is semantically closer to the Mother or the Father, Osgood’s generalized distance formula is calculated across the 36 items:
    $$D = \sqrt{\sum_{i=1}^{36} (X_{i\text{God}} – X_{i\text{Parent}})^2}$$
    where $X_{i\text{God}}$ is the score on item $i$ for God, and $X_{i\text{Parent}}$ is the score on item $i$ for either Mother or Father. A smaller $D$ value reflects greater semantic proximity and symbolic identification.
  • Profile Correlation Coefficient ($r_p$): Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients can be calculated between the 36-item vector of God and the 36-item vector of Mother ($r_{GM}$) and Father ($r_{GF}$) for each subject or cohort.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Concepts of God and Parental Images Scale was originally published in 1969 by Antoine Vergote, Álvaro Tamayo, Luiz Pasquali, Michel Bonami, Marie Pattyn, and Anne Custers in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The scale was subsequently elaborated in French and English within the 1981 volume edited by Antoine Vergote and Álvaro Tamayo, entitled The Parental Figures and the Representation of God: A Psychological and Cross-Cultural Study (Mouton Publishers / Walter de Gruyter).

The scale was developed as an academic instrument for empirical psychological and scientific research. In accordance with standard scientific publishing conventions of the era, the instrument items and scoring instructions were made accessible in the public domain for non-commercial scholarly research through the original academic publications. No commercial purchase, formal user qualification tier, or administration licensing fee is required for non-profit academic research use. Researchers utilizing or translating the scale are expected to cite the foundational 1969 publication and the 1981 monograph. Commercial assessment adaptations or electronic redistribution within proprietary clinical systems require clearance from the copyright holders or successors of the Université Catholique de Louvain / Mouton de Gruyter.

References

• Freud, S. (1913). Totem and taboo: Resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics. Standard Edition, 13, 1-161.
• Freud, S. (1927). The future of an illusion. Standard Edition, 21, 5-56.
• Nelson, M. O., & Jones, E. M. (1957). An application of the Q-technique to the study of religious concepts. Psychological Reports, 3(3), 293-297. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1957.3.3.293
• Osgood, C. E., Suci, E. J., & Tannenbaum, P. H. (1957). The measurement of meaning. University of Illinois Press.
• Pasquali, L. (1981). The representation of God and parental figures among North American students. In A. Vergote & A. Tamayo (Eds.), The parental figures and the representation of God: A psychological and cross-cultural study (pp. 169-184). Mouton Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110823813
• Strunk, O., Jr. (1959). Perceived relationships between parental and deity concepts. Psychological Newsletter, 10, 222-226.
• Tamayo, A., & Desjardins, L. (1976). Belief systems and conceptual images of parents and God. The Journal of Psychology, 92(1), 131-140. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1976.9921345
• Tamayo, A., & Dugas, A. (1977). Conceptual representation of mother, father, and God according to sex and field of study. The Journal of Psychology, 97(1), 79-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1977.9923953
• Vannesse, A., & De Neuter, P. (1981). The Semantic Differential Parental Scale. In A. Vergote & A. Tamayo (Eds.), The parental figures and the representation of God: A psychological and cross-cultural study (pp. 25-41). Mouton Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110823813
• Vergote, A., & Tamayo, A. (Eds.). (1981). The parental figures and the representation of God: A psychological and cross-cultural study. Mouton Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110823813
• Vergote, A., Tamayo, A., Pasquali, L., Bonami, M., Pattyn, M., & Custers, A. (1969). Concept of God and parental images. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 8(1), 79-87. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385255

Items of the Scale