Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

Pyschology of religionâ 201â

Beit-Hallahmi, B. and Argyle, M. The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience. London and New York: Routledge, 1997.

Fowler, III, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning.

San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981.

Freud, S. ‘Group psychology and the analysis of the ego’. Standard Edition, 18: 69–143. London: Hogarth Press, 1955 [1921].

——Â ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood’. Standard Edition, 11: 63–137. London: Hogarth Press, 1957 [1910].

——‘Totem and taboo: Some points of agreement between the mental life of savages and neurotics’. Standard Edition, 13: 1–161. London: Hogarth Press, 1958 [1913].

——‘Obsessive acts and religious practices’. Standard Edition, 9: 117–27. London: Hogarth Press, 1959 [1907].

——‘The future of an illusion’. Standard Edition, 21: 5–56. London: Hogarth Press, 1961 [1927]. —— ‘Civilization and its discontents’. Standard Edition, 21: 64–145. London: Hogarth Press, 1961

[1930].

—— ‘Constructions in analysis’. Standard Edition, 23: 257–69. London: Hogarth Press, 1964 [1937]. ——‘Moses and monotheism: three essays’. Standard Edition, 23: 6–137. London: Hogarth Press, 1964

[1939].

——Â The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 24 vols. Ed. James Strachey, with Anna Freud, Alix Strachey, and Alan Tyson. London: Hogarth Press, 1966 (cited elsewhere as Standard Edition).

Grof, C. and Grof, S. The Stormy Search for the Self: A Guide to Personal Growth through Transformational Crisis. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1990.

James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Reprinted New York: New American Library, 1958 [1902].

Jung, C. G. Psychology and Religion: West and East, 2nd edn. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Maslow, A. H. Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences. 1964; rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd, 1976.

Meissner, W. W. Psychoanalysis and Religious Experience. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. Merkur, D. Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking. New York: State University of New York Press, 1999. Otto, Rudolf.‘The sensus numinis as the historical basis of religion’. Hibbert Journal 30: 283–97, 415–

30, 1932.

—— The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd edn. Trans. John W. Harvey. London: Oxford University Press, 1950 [1917].

Pargament, Kenneth I. The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice. New York & London: Guilford Press, 1997.

Pfister, Oscar. Some Applications of Psycho-Analysis. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1923. ——ÂChristianity and Fear: A Study in History and in the Psychology and Hygiene of Religion. Trans. W. H.

Johnston. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1948.

Pruyser, P. W. Between Belief and Unbelief. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.

Rizzuto, A.-M. The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.

Söderblom, Nathan. The Living God: Basal Forms of Personal Religion. Gifford Lectures 1931. London: Oxford University Press, 1933.

Starbuck, Edwin Diller. The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Study of the Growth of Religious Consciousness, 3rd edn. London, New York and Melbourne: Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd, 1911 [1899].

202â Key approaches to the study of religions

Suggested reading

Bakan, David, Merkur, Dan, and Weiss, David S. (2009), Maimonides’ Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

The posthumously completed final work of David Bakan, a major figure in the psychology of religion, is a historical study of Rabbi Moses Maimonides’ twelfth century cure of souls, as evaluated from perspectives in humanistic psychology and psychoanalysis, and highlighting the many parallels with Freud’s psychoanalysis; Freud was exposed to Maimonides during his religious education as a teenager.

Haartman, Keith. (2004), Watching and Praying: Personality Transformation in Eighteenth Century British Methodism. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi.

A historical study of John Wesley’s method and early British Methodist progress from conversion through sanctification, as evaluated from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective, and interpreted as a historical achievement of psychotherapeutic personality change.

Jones, James W. (2002), Terror and Transformation: The Ambiguity of Religion in Psychoanalytic Perspective. Hove, UK & New York: Brunner-Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

An application of contemporary psychoanalytic theory that explores the roles of healthy and morbid ideals and idealization processes in the formation of different religious phenomena.

Pargament, Kenneth I. (1997), The Psychology of Religion and Coping: Theory, Research, Practice. New York & London: Guilford Press.

A paradigm-shifting contribution to the academic psychology of religion, that has pioneered the empirical evaluation of health and morbidity in religion.

Rubin, Jeffrey B. (2004), The Good Life: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Love, Ethics, Creativity, and Spirituality. Albany: State University of New York Press.

A psychoanalyst and advocate of Buddhist meditation reflects candidly on the humanistic wisdom to which a ‘contemplative psychoanalysis’ may aspire.

Safran, Jeremy D. (Ed.). (2003), Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Boston: Wisdom Publications.

One of the better recent collections that brings together psychoanalysts and Buddhists to explore the intersection of these Western and Eastern approaches to the mind and its processes of change.

Spilka, Bernard, Hood, Jr., Ralph W. Hunsberger, Bruce, and Gorsuch, Richard. (2003), The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach, 3rd ed. New York and London: Guilford Press.

A current and magisterial survey of the academic psychology of religion.

Chapter 12

Phenomenology of religion

Douglas Allen

‘The phenomenology of religion’ became one of the major twentieth-century disciplines and approaches to religion. Readers may have some sense of what is involved in other disciplines and approaches to religion, such as ‘history of religion,’ ‘anthropology of religion,’ ‘psychology of religion,’ ‘sociology of religion,’ or ‘philosophy of religion,’ even if some initial ideas are inaccurate. Few readers will have any clue as to what the term ‘phenomenology of religion’ means or what this discipline and approach describe.

An introductory exercise

The following exercise will help illustrate the rationale for phenomenology of religion and several of its major characteristics. Most societies and cultures have been described as ‘religious.’ Several billion human beings today describe themselves as ‘religious.’ Some of our most common language – emphasizing such terms as ‘God,’ ‘soul,’ ‘heaven,’ ‘salvation,’ ‘sin,’ and ‘evil’ – is ‘religious.’ Even human beings who claim that they are not ‘religious’ usually think that they know what they reject.

Scholarly approaches to religion involve critical reflection. When we reflect critically on such common terms as ‘religion’ and ‘religious,’ it becomes apparent that we usually use these terms in vague ways. This exercise is an attempt to begin such critical reflection as key to understanding phenomenology of religion.

The exercise

This exercise will work best for a class or group of participants. If there are more than 20 participants, divide into smaller groups allowing for more individual participation. This exercise will also work well through internet group communication. If you are alone, you can do the exercise by yourself, but it will work much better if you ask others for their responses. Each class or group should ask for one person to record responses and summarize results.

Phenomenology of religion starts with the view that religion is based on religious experience. Human beings have experiences that they describe as religious. These may be traditional or nontraditional. They may focus on inner feelings or outward forms and relations. They may be institutional and involve organized religion, or they may be highly personal and outside any institutional framework. They may involve prayer, worship, rituals, nature, or cosmic experiences.

204â Key approaches to the study of religions

In this exercise, many participants will state that they are religious and that they have had religious experiences. Religious participants should be encouraged to describe their religious experiences. What kind of an experience was it? What did it mean to the person who had such an experience? It may take time for participants to feel comfortable sharing their experiences. It is important to be nonjudgmental and to emphasize that there is no right or wrong answer. It is important to maintain an atmosphere in which others, even when they personally disagree, are respectful and attempt to empathize with and understand what religious participants are expressing.

As a variation, after all participants have had the opportunity to describe their religious experiences, the group may focus on respondents whose expressions refer to ‘God.’ These religious participants may be asked to describe at greater length the nature of such an experience of God and what is intended by their use of the term God.

After eliciting as many responses as possible, compile the results. Do not include or exclude responses based on agreement or disagreement. Summarize the major ways of describing religious experience and possibly the more restrictive descriptions in terms of experiences of God.

Results of the exercise

After compiling the results, reflect critically on them and analyze the data. Phenomenology of religion involves certain kinds of analysis.

When considering the major features expressed by religious participants, are there common characteristics in all or most of the descriptions? What are they? In reflecting on the tremendous variety of religious expressions, phenomenologists of religion claim that there are common general characteristics, structures, and patterns revealed only in religious experiences.

Religious people do not believe that their religious experiences are nothing more than subjective psychological feelings. They believe that they have experienced some religious reality: the experience of X. Based on your descriptions, what is the content or nature of X? How have participants described X? As God? In other terms? This points to the phenomenological doctrine of ‘intentionality’ emphasizing that all consciousness or experience is experience of something. Is there a common religious object or referent in your descriptions? If not one, are there several essential patterns and variations?

Phenomenologists of religion focus on language. We never have direct access to experiences of others. Instead we have expressions of others as they try to describe their religious experiences and realities. How do religious participants use language to describe experiences? Is there a specific or unique religious language? If the intended religious referent or reality transcends human attempts at definition and conceptual analysis, does this mean that religion cannot be studied in a critical, reflective, scholarly way?

In reflecting on the assembled data, here are several likely questions and concerns. On the one hand, are descriptions of ‘religion,’ ‘religious,’ and ‘religious experience’ too narrow? Some religious participants will be uncomfortable with other descriptions. For example, Buddhists may be uncomfortable identifying with certain God expressions. Even some participants using God expressions may feel that other God formulations, expressing personal anthropomorphic views or traditional exclusivistic views, have little to do with their experiences. To the extent that participants reflect religious, ethnic, class, and other differences, there will be a great plurality and diversity in responses. From the perspective of

Phenomenology of religionâ 205â

phenomenology of religion, which attempts to uncover universal or general structures and meanings, think about whether various expressions can be broadened.

On the other hand, are some descriptions too broad in the sense that they are also true of experiences and beliefs that are not religious? For example, some may describe religion as consisting of whatever is true or real for the experiencer. But don’t nonreligious people also experience what they consider true or real? From the perspective of phenomenology of religion, our general descriptions must allow us to distinguish religious phenomena from nonreligious phenomena and analyze the religious as a specific kind of experience.

Reflecting on the assembled data, do some descriptions reveal a clear ethnocentrism, expressing one’s own background, socialization, and beliefs but not adequate to describe the religious experiences and phenomena of others? Do some descriptions reflect normative positions, based on value judgments, that do not do justice to religious others?

This is not meant to criticize such ethnocentric and normative formulations. Such formulations are inadequate for providing a general phenomenological description of ‘religion’ and ‘religious.’ On theological, philosophical, or some faith-based grounds, Christian fundamentalists may describe religious experience as consisting only in the experience of Jesus Christ, and they may argue that those who do not experience and accept this reality are doomed to Hell. Many Muslims may describe religious experience as submitting to Allah and recognizing Muhammad as the true Messenger, and they may argue that others are nonbelievers whose experiential referents are unreal or demonic.

Phenomenology of religion attempts to avoid such narrow, overly broad, ethnocentric, and normative approaches. It attempts to describe religious experiences with their religious phenomena as accurately as possible. In its descriptions, analysis, and interpretation of meaning, it attempts to suspend value judgments about what is real or unreal in experiences of others. It attempts to describe, understand, and do justice to the religious phenomena as they appear in religious experiences of others.

The term ‘phenomenology of religion’

Although ‘phenomenology’ and ‘phenomenology of religion’ are not part of ordinary language, they are popular terms in various scholarly disciplines. Starting in the early twentieth century, philosophical phenomenology became one of the major philosophical approaches. Phenomenology of religion emerged as one of the most influential modern approaches to religion. Scholars sometimes identify phenomenology of religion as a discipline and approach within the general field of Religionswissenschaft, the scientific study of religion. We shall use the term ‘religious studies’ to identify modern scholarly approaches to religion that include phenomenology as well as history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, and other disciplines.

It is possible to differentiate four groups of scholars who use the term phenomenology of religion. First, there are works in which the term means nothing more than an investigation of phenomena or observable objects, facts, and events of religion. Second, from the Dutch scholar P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye to such contemporary scholars as the Scandinavian historians of religions Geo Widengren and Åke Hultkrantz, phenomenology of religion means the comparative study and the classification of different types of religious phenomena.

Third, numerous scholars, such as W. Brede Kristensen, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Joachim Wach, C. Jouco Bleeker, Mircea Eliade, and Jacques Waardenburg, identify phenomenology of religion as a specific branch, discipline, or method within Religionswissenschaft or religious