In 1913, two articles by Lakhtin on psychology of religion were published in the Issues of Psychiatry and Neurology Magazine: ‘Superstition in Life and in Clinic’ and ‘Suffering as a Source of Human Beliefs’. In the latter one, the author examines the emergence and functioning of religion and, reasoning in the spirit of his time, notes that in religions “the first hypotheses about man and the Universe are expressed, and in this respect they precede scientific knowledge”. But, on the other hand, he writes that “religions arise, develop and fall depending on how much they are needed and useful to the person professing them. This is their main life value”. Thus, Lakhtin points to the adaptive functions of religion, reducing the sphere of the religious not to the field of the sacred, but to its functional features.