Criticism of new age spirituality comes from different directions. It may be that this type of spirituality is too commercial, unchrissable, historyless, dumbing down, tasteless, etc. The criticism that is most relevant to this website is the one that is made from a psychological perspective. Three of the sharpest critics of the latter kind, whom I encountered, are Carl Raschke, Mel D. Faber and Paul C. Vitz : MD Faber, in his book "New Age Thinking – A Psychoanalytic Critique", writes: "From the psychoanalytic angle, three items stand out clearly; first, we have an overarching presence of infantile omnipotence, the egocentric, unconscious belief in one's unlimited powers […]; second, we have the urge to fuse regressively with the environment, to attach oneself to the surrounding world (universe) in a way that denies, erases, cancels out the ever-present sense of separation which the cronologically mature individual must cope with during the course of his days on the planet; third, we have a longing for narcissistic inflation, the longing to go about in the belief that one is somehow magical, wonderful […] as opposed to being simply another regular person in the world. […] "I regard New Age thinking as essentially regressive or infantile in nature. It is absorbed, I contend, in matters of symbiotic merger, omnipotence, narcissistic inflation, and in magical thinking and wishing generally. New Age thinking makes war on reality; it denigrates reason; it denies and distorts what I consider to be the existential facts of our human experience; it seeks to restore the past, specifically, the before-separation-world, in an idealized, wish-fulfilling form that has little or no connection to the adult estate." (Faber, 1996, pp 14-15) Vitz (1977) writes about the new spirituality that it "knows no laws at all, since laws imply a law-giver". Raschke, writing (ref?): "I would call it [New Age] the spiritual version of AIDS – that is, it destroys the defences, the immune system, the abilty to cope and function." (Raschke, 1987, quote from any U.S. newspaper, should find ref!)