"History
William James
U.S. psychologist and philosopher William James (1842-1910) is
regarded by most psychologists of religion as the founder of the
field. He served as president of the American Psychological
Association, and wrote one of the first psychology textbooks. In the
psychology of religion, James' influence endures. His Varieties of
Religious Experience is considered to be the classic work in the
field, and references to James' ideas are common at professional
conferences.
James distinguished between institutional religion and personal
religion. Institutional religion refers to the religious group or
organization, and plays an important part in a society's culture.
Personal religion, in which the individual has mystical experience,
can be experienced regardless of the culture. James was most
interested in understanding personal religious experience.
If personal religious experiences were what James preferred, dogmatism
was something he disliked. The importance of James to the psychology
of religion - and to psychology more generally - is difficult to
overstate. He discussed many essential issues that remain of vital
concern today.
In studying personal religious experiences, James made a distinction
between healthy-minded and sick-souled religiousness. Individuals
predisposed to healthy-mindedness tend to ignore the evil in the world
and focus on the positive and the good. James used examples of Walt
Whitman and the "mind-cure" religious movement to illustrate healthy-
mindedness in The Varieties of Religious Experience. In contrast,
individuals predisposed to having a sick-souled religion are unable to
ignore evil and suffering, and need a unifying experience, religious
or otherwise, to reconcile good and evil. James included quotations
from Leo Tolstoy and John Bunyan to illustrate the sick soul.
William James' hypothesis of pragmatism stems from the efficacy of
religion. If an individual believes in and performs religious
activities, and those actions happen to work, then that practice
appears the proper choice for the individual. However, if the
processes of religion have little efficacy, then there is no
rationality for continuing the practice.
Other early theorists
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) gave explanations of the genesis of religion
in his various writings. In Totem and Taboo, he applied the idea of
the Oedipus complex (involving unresolved sexual feelings of, for
example, a son toward his mother and hostility toward his father) and
postulated its emergence in the primordial stage of human development.
Group photo 1909 in front of Clark University. Front row: Sigmund
Freud, G. Stanley Hall, Carl Jung. Back row: Abraham Brill, Ernest
Jones, Sandor Ferenczi.In Moses and Monotheism, Freud reconstructed
biblical history in accordance with his general theory. His ideas were
also developed in The Future of an Illusion. When Freud spoke of
religion as an illusion, he maintained that it is a fantasy structure
from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity.
Freud views the idea of God as being a version of the father image,
and religious belief as at bottom infantile and neurotic.
Authoritarian religion is dysfunctional and alienates man from
himself.
Carl Jung
The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961) adopted a very different
posture, one that was more sympathetic to religion and more concerned
with a positive appreciation of religious symbolism. Jung considered
the question of the existence of God to be unanswerable by the
psychologist and adopted a kind of agnosticism.
Jung postulated, in addition to the personal unconscious (roughly as
in Freud), the collective unconscious, which is the repository of
human experience and which contains "archetypes" (i.e. basic images
that are universal in that they recur regardless of culture). The
irruption of these images from the unconscious into the realm of
consciousness he viewed as the basis of religious experience and often
of artistic creativity. Some of Jung's writings have been devoted to
elucidating some of the archetypal symbols, and include his work in
comparative mythology.
Jung had a very broad view of what it means to be empirical. Suppose,
for example, that I hear a voice from deity but you do not, even
though we are sitting next to each other. If only one person
experiences something, for Jung it is an empirical observation. For
most contemporary scientists, however, it would not be considered an
empirical observation. Because of this, there has been little research
in the psychology of religion from a Jungian perspective.
Alfred Adler
Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler (1870-1937), who parted ways with
Freud, emphasised the role of goals and motivation in his Individual
Psychology. One of Adler's most famous ideas is that we try to
compensate for inferiorities that we perceive in ourselves. A lack of
power often lies at the root of feelings of inferiority. One way that
religion enters into this picture is through our beliefs in God, which
are characteristic of our tendency to strive for perfection and
superiority. For example, in many religions God is considered to be
perfect and omnipotent, and commands people likewise to be perfect. If
we, too, achieve perfection, we become one with God. By identifying
with God in this way, we compensate for our imperfections and feelings
of inferiority.
Our ideas about God are important indicators of how we view the world.
According to Adler, these ideas have changed over time, as our vision
of the world - and our place in it - has changed. Consider this
example that Adler offers: the traditional belief that people were
placed deliberately on earth as God's ultimate creation is being
replaced with the idea that people have evolved by natural selection.
This coincides with a view of God not as a real being, but as an
abstract representation of nature's forces. In this way our view of
God has changed from one that was concrete and specific to one that is
more general. From Adler's vantage point, this is a relatively
ineffective perception of God because it is so general that it fails
to convey a strong sense of direction and purpose.
An important thing for Adler is that God (or the idea of God)
motivates people to act, and that those actions do have real
consequences for ourselves and for others. Our view of God is
important because it embodies our goals and directs our social
interactions.
Compared to science, another social movement, religion is more
efficient because it motivates people more effectively. According to
Adler, only when science begins to capture the same religious fervour,
and promotes the welfare of all segments of society, will the two be
more equal in peoples' eyes.
Gordon Allport
In his classic book The Individual and His Religion (1950), Gordon
Allport (1897-1967) illustrates how people may use religion in
different ways. He makes a distinction between Mature religion and
Immature religion. Mature religious sentiment is how Allport
characterized the person whose approach to religion is dynamic, open-
minded, and able to maintain links between inconsistencies. In
contrast, immature religion is self-serving and generally represents
the negative stereotypes that people have about religion. More
recently, this distinction has been encapsulated in the terms
"intrinsic religion", referring to a genuine, heartfelt devout faith,
and "extrinsic religion", referring to a more utilitarian use of
religion as a means to an end, such as church attendance to gain
social status. These dimensions of religion were measured on the
Religious Orientation Scale of Allport and Ross (1967). A third form
of religious orientation, has been described by Daniel Batson. This
refers to treatment of religion as an open-ended search (Batson,
Schoenrade & Ventis, 1993). More specifically, it has been seen by
Batson as comprising a willingness to view religious doubts in a
positive manner, acceptance that religious orientation can change and
existential complexity, the belief that one's religious beliefs should
be shaped from personal crises that one has experienced in one's life.
Batson refers to extrinsic, intrinsic and quest respectively as
Religion-as-means, religion-as-end and religion-as-quest, and measures
these constructs on the Religious Life Inventory (Batson, Schoenrade &
Ventis, 1993).
Erik H. Erikson
Erik Erikson (1902-94) is best known for his theory of psychological
development, which has its roots in the psychoanalytic importance of
identity in personality. His biographies of Gandhi and Martin Luther
reveal Erikson's positive view of religion. He considered religions to
be important influences in successful personality development because
they are the primary way that cultures promote the virtues associated
with each stage of life. Religious rituals facilitate this
development. Erikson's theory has not benefited from systematic
empirical study, but it remains an influential and well-regarded
theory in the psychological study of religion.
Erich Fromm
The American scholar Erich Fromm (1900-1980) modified Freudian theory
and produced a more complex account of the functions of religion. Part
of the modification is viewing the Oedipus complex as based not so
much on sexuality as on a "much more profound desire", namely, the
childish desire to remain attached to protecting figures. The right
religion, in Fromm's estimation, can, in principle, foster an
individual's highest potentialities, but religion in practice tends to
relapse into being neurotic.
According to Erich Fromm, humans have a need for a stable frame of
reference. Religion apparently fills this need. In effect, humans
crave answers to questions that no other source of knowledge has an
answer to, which only religion may seem to answer. However, a sense of
free will must be given in order for religion to appear healthy. An
authoritarian notion of religion appears detrimental.
Rudolf Otto
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) was a German Protestant theologian and scholar
of comparative religion. Otto's most famous work, The Idea of the Holy
(published first in 1917 as Das Heilige), defines the concept of the
holy as that which is numinous. Otto explained the numinous as a "non-
rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and
immediate object is outside the self." It is a mystery (Latin:
mysterium tremendum) that is both fascinating (fascinans) and
terrifying at the same time; A mystery that causes trembling and
fascination, attempting to explain that inexpressible and perhaps
supernatural emotional reaction of wonder drawing us to seemingly
ordinary and/or religious experiences of grace. This sense of
emotional wonder appears evident at the root of all religious
experiences. Through this emotional wonder, we suspend our rational
mind for non-rational possibilities.
It also sets a paradigm for the study of religion that focuses on the
need to realise the religious as a non-reducible, original category in
its own right. This paradigm was under much attack between
approximately 1950 and 1990 but has made a strong comeback since then.
Psychometric approaches to religion
Since the 1960s psychologists of religion have used the methodology of
psychometrics to assess different ways in which a person may be
religious. An example is the Religious Orientation Scale of Allport
and Ross,[1] which measures how respondents stand on intrinsic and
extrinsic religion as described by Allport. More recent questionnaires
include the Religious Life Inventory of Batson, Schoenrade and Ventis,
[2] and the Age-Universal I-E Scale of Gorsuch and Venable.[3] The
former assesses where people stand on three distinct forms of
religious orientation - religion as means, religion as end, and
religion as quest. The latter assesses Spiritual Support and Spiritual
Openness.
Religious orientations and religious dimensions
Some questionnaires, such as the Religious Orientation Scale, relate
to different religious orientations, such as intrinsic and extrinsic
religiousness, referring to different motivations for religious
allegiance. A rather different approach, taken, for example, by Glock
and Stark (1965), has been to list different dimensions of religion
rather than different religious orientations, which relates to how an
individual may manifest different forms of being religious. (More on
Stark's work can be found in the article on Sociology of Religion.)
Glock and Stark's famous typology described five dimensions of
religion - the doctrinal, the intellectual, the ethical-consequential,
the ritual, and the experiential. In later work these authors
subdivided the ritual dimension into devotional and public ritual, and
also clarified that their distinction of religion along multiple
dimensions was not identical to distinguishing religious orientations.
Although some psychologists of religion have found it helpful to take
a multidimensional approach to religion for the purpose of
psychometric scale design, there has been, as Wulff (1997) explains,
considerable controversy about whether religion should really be seen
as multidimensional.
Questionnaires to assess religious experience
Since 1970 various questionnaires have been developed to assess
religious experiences, including Hood's (1975) M-Scale and the Francis-
Louden Mystical Orientation Scale (Francis & Louden, 2000). Hood's M-
Scale is relevant to mysticism. A more recent psychometric approach
than that proposed by Allport and Ross (1967) has come from Vicky
Genia (Genia, 1997). Genia has developed the Spiritual Experience
Index (S.E.I.), on which people are assessed on two orthogonal
dimensions - spiritual support, referring to gaining solace from
religion; and spiritual openness, referring to openness to different
spiritual traditions. She has argued that the most mature forms of
spirituality are those high in both spiritual support and spiritual
openness. She proposes that people go through stages to reach this
peak of spiritual maturity, making her work relevant to developmental
approaches to religion. A comprehensive list of questionnaires used in
psychometric approaches to the study of religion is given in Hill and
Hood (1999). Hill and Pargament (2003) have answered many of the
criticisms that may be levelled against psychometric approaches to the
study of religion, in an article which considers the problems inherent
in attempts to distinguish religion and spirituality.
Developmental approaches to religion
Main articles: James W. Fowler and Stages of faith development
Attempts have been made to apply stage models, such as that of Jean
Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, to how children develop ideas about God
and about religion in general.
By far the most well-known stage model of spiritual or religious
development is that of James W. Fowler, a developmental psychologist
at the Candler School of Theology, in his Stages of Faith[4]. He
follows Piaget and Kohlberg and has proposed a staged development of
faith (or spiritual development) across the lifespan in terms of a
holistic orientation, and is concerned with the individual's
relatedness to the universal.
The book-length study contains a framework and ideas considered by
many to be insightful and which have generated a good deal of response
from those interested in religion, so it appears to have at least a
reasonable degree of face validity. James Fowler proposes six stages
of faith development as follows: 1. Intuitive-projective 2. Symbolic
Literal 3. Synthetic Conventional 4. Indiduating 5. Paradoxical
(conjunctive) 6. Universalising. Although there is evidence that
children up to the age of twelve years do tend to be in the first two
of these stages, there is evidence that adults over the age of sixty-
one do show considerable variation in displays of qualities of Stages
3 and beyond. Fowler's model has generated some empirical studies, and
fuller descriptions of this research (and of these six stages) can be
found in Wulff (1991). However, this model has been attacked from a
standpoint of scientific research due to methodological weaknesses. Of
Fowler's six stages, only the first two found empirical support, and
these were heavily based upon Piaget's stages of cognitive
development. The tables and graphs in the book were presented in such
a way that the last four stages appeared to be validated, but the
requirements of statistical verification of the stages did not come
close to having been met. The study was not published in a journal, so
was not peer-reviewed, and never drew much attention from
psychologists. Other critics of Fowler have questioned whether his
ordering of the stages really reflects his own commitment to a rather
liberal Christian Protestant outlook, as if to say that people who
adopt a similar viewpoint to Fowler are at higher stages of faith
development. Nevertheless, the concepts Fowler introduced seemed to
hit home with those in the circles of academic religion, and have been
an important starting point for various theories and subsequent
studies.
A recent contributor here has put forward a stage model, Vicky Genia
(see information in Psychometric Approaches to Religion).
Religion and coping with stress
Psychologists of religion have looked at how individuals may use
religion as a resource in coping with stress. A major contributor here
is Kenneth Pargament, whose work shows the influence of attribution
theory. Pargament has distinguished styles of coping into the
deferring, in which people leave God to see to their problems; the non-
religious, in which they do not appeal to God; and the collaborative,
in which people believe that a co-operation of God and their own
efforts are necessary to help them to cope with stress. Some of
Pargament's papers have been published in the Journal for the
Scientific Study of Religion.
Religion and health
There is considerable literature on the relationship between religion
and health. Psychologists consider that there are various ways in
which religion may benefit both physical and mental health, including
encouraging healthy lifestyles such as abstinence from tobacco,
providing social support networks and encouraging an optimistic
outlook on life; prayer and meditation may also help to benefit
physiological functioning (Levin, 2001). The journal "American
Psychologist" published important papers on this topic in 2003 (see
those by Miller and Thoresen (2003) and Powell, Shahabi and Thorsen
(2003); see also the article by Oman and Thoresen, in Paloutzian and
Park (1996). Haber, Jacob and Spangler have considered how different
dimensions of religiosity may relate to health benefits in different
ways (Haber, Jacob & Spangler, 2007).
Evolutionary psychology of religion
Main article: Evolutionary psychology of religion
Evolutionary psychology is based on the hypothesis that, just like
hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, and immune systems, cognition has
functional structure that has a genetic basis, and therefore evolved
by natural selection. Like other organs and tissues, this functional
structure should be universally shared amongst humans and should solve
important problems of survival and reproduction. Evolutionary
psychologists seek to understand cognitive processes by understanding
the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.
Pascal Boyer is one of the leading figures in the cognitive psychology
of religion, a new field of inquiry that is less than fifteen years
old, which accounts for the psychological processes that underlie
religious thought and practice. In his book Religion Explained, Boyer
shows that there is no simple explanation for religious consciousness.
Boyer is mainly concerned with explaining the various psychological
processes involved in the acquisition and transmission of ideas
concerning the gods. Boyer builds on the ideas of cognitive
anthropologists Dan Sperber and Scott Atran, who first argued that
religious cognition represents a by-product of various evolutionary
adaptations, including folk psychology, and purposeful violations of
innate expectations about how the world is constructed (for example,
bodiless beings with thoughts and emotions) that make religious
cognitions striking and memorable.
Religious persons acquire religious ideas and practices through social
exposure. The child of a Zen Buddhist will not become an evangelical
Christian or a Zulu warrior without the relevant cultural experience.
While mere exposure does not cause a particular religious outlook (a
person may have been raised a Roman Catholic but leave the church),
nevertheless some exposure seems required - this person will never
invent Roman Catholicism out of thin air. Boyer says cognitive science
can help us to understand the psychological mechanisms that account
for these manifest correlations and in so doing enable us to better
understand the nature of religious belief and practice. To the extent
that the mechanisms controlling the acquisitions and transmission of
religious concepts rely on human brains, the mechanisms are open to
computational analysis. All thought is computationally structured,
including religious thought. So presumably, computational approaches
can shed light on the nature and scope of religious cognition.
Boyer moves outside the leading currents in mainstream cognitive
psychology and suggests that we can use evolutionary biology to
unravel the relevant mental architecture. Our brains are, after all,
biological objects, and the best naturalistic account of design in
nature is Darwin's theory of evolution. To the extent that mental
architecture exhibits intricate design, it is plausible to think that
the design is the result of evolutionary processes working over vast
periods of time. Like all biological systems, the mind is optimised to
promote survival and reproduction in the evolutionary environment. On
this view all specialised cognitive functions broadly serve those
reproductive ends.
For Steven Pinker the universal propensity toward religious belief is
a genuine scientific puzzle. He thinks that adaptationist explanations
for religion do not meet the criteria for adaptations. An alternative
explanation is that religious psychology is a by-product of many parts
of the mind that evolved for other purposes.
Religion and drugs
James H. Leuba
The American psychologist James H. Leuba (1868-1946), in A
Psychological Study of Religion, accounts for mystical experience
psychologically and physiologically, pointing to analogies with
certain drug-induced experiences. Leuba argued forcibly for a
naturalistic treatment of religion, which he considered to be
necessary if religious psychology were to be looked at scientifically.
Shamans all over the world and in different cultures have
traditionally used drugs, especially psychedelics, for their religious
experiences. In these communities the absorption of drugs leads to
dreams (visions) through sensory distortion.
William James was also interested in mystical experiences from a drug-
induced perspective, leading him to make some experiments with nitrous
oxide and even peyote. He concludes that while the revelations of the
mystic hold true, they hold true only for the mystic; for others they
are certainly ideas to be considered, but hold no claim to truth
without personal experience of such.
Drug-induced religious experiences
See main article entheogen on the use of psychoactive substances in a
religious or shamanic context.
The drugs used by religious communities for their hallucinogenic
effects were adopted for explicit and implicit religious functions and
purposes. The drugs were and are reported to enhance religious
experience through visions and a distortion of the sensory perception
(like in dreams in a state of sleep).
Cannabis, which grows all over the world except in very cold climates,
is used in religious practices in Indian and African communities
Certain Psychedelic mushrooms are used by Indians in Latin America,
especially in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico[citation needed].
The chief species is Psilocybe mexicana, of which the active
principles are psilocybin and its derivative psilocin, in their
chemical composition and activity not unlike LSD (D-lysergic acid
diethylamide); the latter is synthesised from the alkaloids
(principally ergotamine and ergonovine) that are constituents of
ergot, a growth present in grasses affected by the disease also called
ergot. Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) is another mushroom having
hallucinogenic properties that has not been thoroughly studied. It may
be extremely important, since it may have been the natural source of
the ritual soma drink of the ancient Hindus and the comparable haoma
used by the Zoroastrians. Fly agaric is mildly toxic at high dosages
and is said to have, in addition to its hallucinogenic properties, the
ability to increase strength and endurance. It is said also to be a
soporific.
Peyote used by some Indian communities of Mexico. The chief active
principle of peyote is an alkaloid called mescaline. Like psilocin and
psilocybin, mescaline is reputed to produce visions and other
evidences of a mystical nature. Despite claims of missionaries and
some government agents that peyote - from the Nahuatl word peyotl
("divine messenger") - is a degenerative and dangerous drug, there
appears to be no evidence of this among the members of the Native
American Church, a North American Indian cult that uses peyote in its
chief religious ceremony. Peyote, like most other hallucinogenic
drugs, is not considered to be addictive and, far from being a
destructive influence, is reputed by cultists and some observers to
promote morality and ethical behaviour among the Indians who use it
ritually.
Ayahuasca, caapi, or yajé, is produced from the stem bark of the vines
Banisteriopsis caapi and B. inebrians. Indians who use it claim that
its virtues include healing powers and the power to induce
clairvoyance, among others. This drink has been certified by
investigators to produce remarkable effects, often involving the
sensation of flying. The effects are thought to be attributable to the
action of harmine, a very stable indole that is the active principle
in the plant. While the Indians themselves attribute the properties of
the drink Ayahuasca to B. caapi, this is not the common scientific
view; the MAOIs present in the B. caapi instead allow the extremely
psychedelic ingredients in other plants added to the brew, noticeably
plants containing DMT, to be activated and produce an intense
experience.
Kava drink, prepared from the roots of Piper methysticum, a species of
pepper, and seemingly more of a hypnotic-narcotic than a hallucinogen,
is used both socially and ritually in the South Pacific, especially in
Polynesia.
Iboga, a stimulant and hallucinogen derived from the root bark of the
African shrub Tabernanthe iboga is used within the Bwiti religion in
Central Africa. The active ingredient in T. iboga is ibogaine, a drug
that has been studied for its use in treating addiction.
Coca, source of cocaine, has had both ritual and social use chiefly in
Peru.
Datura, one species of which is the jimsonweed, is used by native
peoples in North and South America; the active principle, however, is
highly toxic and dangerous. A drink prepared from the shrub Mimosa
hostilis, which is said to produce glorious visions in warriors before
battle, is used ritually in the ajuca ceremony of the Jurema cult in
eastern Brazil.
Salvia divinorum, a member of the sage family of plants, is a
hallucinogen used by Mazatec shamans for "spiritual journeys" during
healing.
The effects of meditation
The large variety of meditation techniques shares the common goal of
shifting attention away from habitual or customary modes of thinking
and perception, in order to permit experiencing in a different way.
Many religious and spiritual traditions that employ meditation assert
that the world most of us know is an illusion. This illusion is said
to be created by our habitual mode of separating, classifying and
labelling our perceptual experiences. Meditation is empirical in that
it involves direct experience. Though it is also subjective in that
the meditative state can be directly known only by the experiencer,
and may be difficult or impossible to fully describe in words.
Concentrative meditation can induce an altered state of consciousness
characterised by a loss of awareness of extraneous stimuli, one-
pointed attention to the meditation object to the exclusion of all
other thoughts, and feelings of bliss."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_religion
