The History and Current Status of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

Abstract

Abstract Religion and spirituality were major concerns of the early American psychologists. Many of the early psychologists sought to give reductionist explanations for both religion and spiritual phenomena as they sought to dissociate psychology from the popular cultural association of psychology with parapsychology and spiritualism. William James was the most notable exception, insisting on the possible ontological reality of both religious and psychic phenomena. Psychoanalysis influenced by the French medical tradition continued exploring religion, with Sigmund Freud offering an explanation of religion first simply as an illusion but finally as a mass delusion, thereby linking religion and madness. As American psychology sought to emulate the German tradition of experimental psychology within the limits of natural science, interest in religion waned. The reemergence of a psychology of religion came in the 1960s, partly influenced by interim concerns with prejudice and cognitive dissonance theory, both of which had a marginal concern with religion. The cultural unrest of the 1960s rekindled interest in new religious movements and psychedelic states of consciousness, both of which fueled the psychology of religion. The field is now well established with a division in the American Psychological Association and an APA journal. However, two psychologies have emerged. One committed to naturalism and the other to a postmaterialist psychology, each with radical different ontological assumptions and criteria for appropriate methods.