An Integrated Role Theory for the Psychology of Religion: Concepts and Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter aims to integrate the sociopsychological perspective with the psychodynamic approach. The structural-analytical approach is concerned with analyzing the different roles of a social unit. The interactionist stance examines the interaction between two or more individuals. Interactionist model isolates the different roles played by the person in various daily situations and sees how they are performed. Interest is directed at the person’s efforts within the frame of a social context. The main question for H. Sunden is how an experience of the world in religious terms is psychologically possible. In the same way that physicists use different instruments to understand the properties of matter, so the human mind needs to be “prepared” for a religious experience to take place. In Sweden, Sunden’s achievements within the psychology of religion led to founding of a school. A number of his pupils have used this perceptual role-theory in their research, and one theoretically oriented study is J. Unger’s dissertation On Religious Experience.