Culture, Religion and ‘the Dialogical Self’: Roots and Character of a Secular Cultural Psychology of Religion

Abstract

At present, the interest in the psychology of religion is clearly increasing, not only among students and the general public, but also among practitioners and re searchers (cf., for example, publications by the American Psychological Associa tion; e.g., Richards & Bergin 1997,2000; Shafranske 1996; for a review of the larger field, cf. Beizen 1998,2000). To a lesser extent this also applies to cultural psychol ogy: There is certainly more interest in the field than there was, say, ten years ago. Some authors and journals associated with this renewed attention to cultural psy chology also devote attention to religion; although usually not allied with the psy chology of religion, they give examples from religious domains, and certainly no longer treat religion as taboo (cf., e.g., Gergen 1993,1999; Gone etal. 1999; Much & Mahapatra 1995; Popp-Baier 1998; Sampson 1996). And perhaps even more im portant, a cultural psychological approach to the study of religion offers the op portunity to overcome some of the aprioris and moral biases that have dominated and hindered the psychology of religion for too long (especially the notion that religion is part of man's nature, and that it is therefore better, or more healthy or whatever, to be religious than non-religious; cf. Beizen 1999). When we under stand religion as an element of culture, we need concepts and units of analysis that will enable us to investigate the nexus between a certain culture (or cultural con text) and the person, such as activity, action, habitus, and also narrative or 'story'. The theorizing about the 'dialogical self as initiated by Hermans and Kempen may count as a case. Their work which has been well received by the interna tional cultural psychology 'movement' (Hermans 1999a,b; Valsinger 2001) is promising for a cultural psychological analysis of religion. It is particularly inter esting to take a closer look at this body of theory, as it simultaneously provides an opportunity for an analysis of the second type mentioned above: The develop ment of the concept of the dialogical self is inextricably bound up with the history of psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands). The dia logical self may be regarded as a belated result of a much older Dutch initiative to integrate cultural psychology and the psychology of religion, which led to the es tablishment of a department for the psychology of culture and religion at Nij megen in 1956 (although its roots reach back to the founding years of psychology in general in the Netherlands). As well as this, it belatedly catches up with a stand that has been fundamental to all psychologies of religion for a long time: Psycho logical research on religion must be performed from a secular perspective (cf. Beizen 2001). To corroborate these claims, it is necessary to draw substantially on