Psychology of Religion

From the perspective of science and religion, there exist three kinds of psychology of religion. "Secular" empirical psychology (e.g., Hood) – the most widely practiced – excludes the question of the transcendent and researches religious experiences and behavior in terms of meaningful psychological concepts such as cognition, emotion, motivation, attribution, social interaction, and development. The two other kinds are more mission-oriented. "Theistic" religious psychology (e.g., Koteskey; cf. Reich) includes the transcendent and aims to understand God's creation and make people more God-like by improving their mental functioning, their moral judgment, their empathy and so forth. "Atheistic" psychology of religion (e.g. Kurtz; Vetter) aims primarily to demonstrate the illusion of a perceived transcendent and the regressive and oppressive effects of being religious.

See also Freud, Sigmund; Psychology; Self

Bibliography

hood, ralph w., jr.; spilka, bernard; hunsberger, bruce; and gorsuch, richard l., eds. the psychology of religion. an empirical approach. new york: guilford, 1996.

koteskey, ronald l. psychology from a christian perspective. lanham, md.: university press of america, 2002.

kurtz, paul. the transcendental temptation: a critique of religion and the paranormal. buffalo, n.y.: prometheus books, 1991.

reich, k. helmut. "scientist vs. believer?: on navigating between the scilla of scientific norms and the charybdis of personal experience." journal of psychology and theology 28, no. 3 (200): 190-200.

vetter, george b. magic and religion: their psychological nature, origin, and function. new york: philosophical library, 1958.

wulff, david m. psychology of religion: classic and contemporary. new york: wiley, 1997.

k. helmut reich

Psychology of religion. The field of study which employs psychological techniques and theories to explore and explain religious phenomena. In the W., various schools of psychology have given birth to different treatments of religion. Theories have been taken from associational psychology ( J. G. Frazer's The Golden Bough, 1890–1937), from psychoanalysis ( S. Freud, C. G. Jung), from social psychology (as surveyed by M. Argyle and B. Beit-Hallahmi in The Social Psychology of Religion, 1975), and from cognitive psychology (see L. Festinger, When Prophecy Fails, 1956, and D. Sperber's Rethinking Symbolism, 1975). The most influential of these approaches has been psychoanalytic theory, specifically in the psychodynamic form.

In most cultures, however, psychologies are less ‘of’ religious life than they are integral to it. Since religions must address participants as well as whatever is taken to be ultimate, they contain their own psychologies. The most sophisticated, and, it appears, efficacious indigenous psychologies appear in the great Eastern traditions (see e.g. Rama et al., Yoga and Psychotherapy, 1976), but there are countless other examples (e.g. V. Turner on rites of passage and curing rituals).

The most frequently met aim of indigenous psychologies ‘of’ religion is transformative. The aim of Western, supposedly more scientific psychologies of religion is explanatory.

psychology of religion. A modern field of study in which the concepts and methods of psychology are applied to religious experience and behaviour. One of the first to investigate such possible applications of psychology was W. James; he studied the experience of well-being or of conflict in human response to God, and the experiences of religious conversion and of saintliness and mysticism. Many of the writings of S. Freud (1856–1939) on psychoanalysis contributed to the psychological study of religion, though his critical and reductionist views of religion no longer command assent. Similarly the conclusions of C. G. Jung (1875–1961), though by contrast tending to assign an almost indiscriminate validity to religious phenomena in human experience, have in turn led to restatements of permanent value for the psychology of religion. Since the early 1960s more sophisticated methods of analysis have been developed. Religious behaviour and experience have been studied in relation to age, to cognitive style and other personal characteristics, and also with reference to pathological and drug-induced conditions. Merely psychological methods, however, cannot fully answer questions about the validity of religious behaviour and experience, even if they can account for some aspects of both in non-religious terms.