Since William James, psychologists have been much interested in religion: from the concept of some kind of mystical experience, their thinking has evolved to search for the place of religion in the brain with the help of new technologies. What unites religion with neurosis, how do superstitions arise and how are epilepsy, sex and God connected? T&P publishes a transcript of a lecture by pathopsychologist Lyudmila Pyatnitskaya on the psychology of religion.
The lecture was given as part of the Praxis psychological education project.
The psychology of religion deals with the consciousness of religious people: it studies how it is formed and what factors influence it; by the people themselves: their thinking and behavior; as well as religious sects. A very important point is the exclusion of the transcendental principle. This postulate in the psychology of religion says that we do not evaluate whether there is a higher mind or not. We confront ourselves with a fact: there are people who believe, and we study them. To begin to study a believer, you need to understand how he becomes a believer. Theologian James Fowler described seven corresponding stages.
The first is a child under 3 years of age, who develops either trust or distrust in the environment. That is, his faith is limited by trust or distrust.
The next stage is intuitive-projective faith, based on intuition (4–7 years). This is our favorite “I’ll jump over these two steps and something good will happen.” At this stage, the child is intuitive in his faith: he has some ideas about what is good and what is bad, and this is not a formalized doctrine, but his fabulous thoughts about faith.
The next stage is the literal-mythical stage (7-11 years), in which a person begins to study fairy tales or myths and take them damn literally. His faith at this point is based on these literal myths.
Then synthetic-conventional faith happens (11–13 years). This is a conformist faith: at this age we integrate into a group, accept the faith that is in it, and are afraid to leave this faith and group. The most important thing is that some people remain at this stage. Then there will be no age restrictions, and nothing terrible will happen: we will accept the faith that is in our group.
The next stage is individual reflective faith. At this stage, a person thinks: “Is everything so good in the faith that I accepted? Maybe there are some errors in it? He is trying to regain faith in himself: the faith of the group was alien, now he is returning it.
Then a unifying faith happens, in which attempts to resolve the paradoxes of faith and inconsistencies come to naught, and we accept it for what it is. If this happens, then it happens at the age of 30. A person rediscovers myths and legends, but with a double meaning: if a child discovered all this literally, now we see double meanings.
And finally, all-encompassing faith. This is something that no one (or gurus and mentors) achieves. It turns out that it is no longer man who has faith, but faith who has man.
William James
How did famous psychologists talk about faith? I'll tell you about this in chronological order. William James appears first. We owe it to him that he was the first to talk about the connection between religion and man, but he did it more philosophically than scientifically. For James, religiosity was a person's attitude towards the world with a very important component - mystical experience and confidence in the existence of higher powers. What is a mystical experience according to James? If you cannot explain what exactly you experienced, if you felt inner enlightenment, if this feeling was short-term and then disappeared, and at that moment your will turned off - you had a mystical experience according to James. At the same time, inactivity of the will is present only at the moment of experience, but in order to get into it, you need to be very strong-willed and make efforts. James wrote a huge book about all this - The Varieties of Religious Experience. It is about the fact that the visible part is only a part of the existing world; there is also a spiritual part. The true goal of man is harmony with this world, which is achieved through prayer. Religion gives life new value, encourages heroism, gives confidence in salvation and influences the feeling of love. This is a very romantic point of view and more philosophical than scientific.
Contribution of the French psychological school - modern approaches
The French school of psychology made a significant contribution to the psychology of religion. In the first half of the 20th century, two traditions can be traced in it. The first was associated with the development of psychiatry, especially with the study of various psychopathologies associated with religion. For example, the famous physician Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1930) in his study of mysticism defined demonic possession as a product of hysteria and psychological infection, and considered healing by faith to be the result of self-hypnosis. Pierre Janet (1859-1947), a student of Charcot and the founder of imagery psychology, studied psychopathology by observing his patients falling into mystical states, such as religious ecstasy, when the patient was in a crucifixion position, or, conversely, possession by evil forces, levitation and the appearance of stigmata - a condition that he called psychasthenia. Théodule Ribot (1839-1916) believed that the sphere of religion in a person most strongly depends on the mental state; ecstatic states are the spontaneous result of individual condition and temperament. Religious passion can develop into pathology, taking, according to Ribot, two forms: depressive (melancholic), when a person is haunted by feelings of guilt and anxiety, and exalted, when he is overwhelmed by incredible feelings of love.
In accordance with the second principle, the principle of biological interpretation, the psychology of religion develops:
1) psychological approach to the study of the organic conditions of religious phenomena; 2) Genetic and evolutionary approaches to the study of both internal and external factors in the development of religious phenomena; 3) Comparativist approach to the study of individual differences; 4) A dynamic approach, which involves the affirmation of religious life as a living, changing and extremely complex process, including many factors. The second tradition of French psychology of religion, social psychological, dates back to the sociology of Emile Durkheim (1853-1917), who created the theory of collective representations. These are, first of all, the socio-psychological studies of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939), who applied Durkheim's theory to the study of primitive thinking.
After World War II, new ideas and trends appeared in the psychology of religion, as well as in psychology in general, modifying already existing approaches. The study of the spiritual world of man and religiosity is at the center of humanistic psychology, which primarily deals with issues of personal development and growth. The psychology of religion is particularly evident in the work of Abraham Maslow (1908-1970), founder of the humanistic movement, Gordon Allport (1897-1967), one of the leading personality theorists, and Viktor Frankl (b. 1905), who calls his approach “logotherapy.” In the preface to the second edition of his book Toward a Psychology of Being (1962), Maslow announced the development of a new field of psychology: he wrote that he considered humanistic psychology, which he called the third force (as opposed to psychoanalysis and behaviorism), as preparation for an even higher ", the fourth psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, oriented more towards the cosmos than to human needs and interests, going beyond the human, identity, self-actualization, etc. n. This new transpersonal psychology, the most famous representative of which is Stanislav Grof (b. 1931), which arose on the basis of humanistic psychology, is very controversial. Many experts believe that Grof’s concept itself can be called a kind of religious system. He views the cosmos as a living organism in which each particle contains all the information about the whole; Accordingly, every person potentially has knowledge about his stay in the womb, about his birth and childhood, about his previous lives, and even about the origin of the Universe. The memory of these events can be returned through the practice of so-called holotropic breathing - a special technique developed by Grof based on various psychotechniques developed in religious traditions, which lead to an altered state of consciousness.
Sigmund Freud
The most ardent critic of religion is Freud. He believed that religion is dangerous because religion does not allow one to think critically, and if a person does not think critically, he becomes intellectually stuck. The danger is that if religion takes responsibility for morality and morality, then as soon as it itself is shaken, morality will shake behind it, and this cannot be allowed. Freud called religion a mass neurosis. But neurosis does not happen out of nowhere. For it to arise, a conflict and a complex are needed, according to Freud. This will be an Oedipus complex, I will explain why. Imagine yourself as an ancient person. You live in Africa, everything is fine, and then suddenly a tree falls on your friend. You understand that, damn it, you are also defenseless, you can die at any second. Living with such fear is monstrous; it is destructive to the psyche. You need to come to terms with ruthless nature. And since we can only negotiate with those with whom we can talk, we will humanize the forces of nature. The image of the father, and with it the Oedipus complex, is immediately projected onto the humanized, formidable and terrible forces of nature. Now we can arrange rituals to appease this god, because we can agree with him: after all, he is essentially a man. On the basis of this complex, a neurosis is formed, and not an ordinary one, but a colossal one - a massive one. Freud said that such a massive neurosis is useful because it protects against smaller neuroses. Mass neurosis is an illusion of calm, an illusion of salvation. You need to get rid of him. Why? Because religion, as I said earlier, is dangerous.
What is the psychology of religion (faith)? In what cases can you ask for help?
The psychology of religion occupies more and more space in the modern world
. It's no secret that we constantly encounter questions of faith in our daily lives: from temple services to observing spiritual traditions in everyday life, from the desire to distinguish between the true religion of our ancestors and outright sectarianism to indulging in elementary superstitions.
And here the psychologist must carry out extensive educational and practical work, the purpose of which is to return the client’s spiritual comfort and desire for further self-education.
Here is an approximate list of problems with which you can seek help from specialists in the field of psychology of religion
:
1) The need for counseling on the subject of psychological signs of totalitarianism of a particular religious sect;
2).The impossibility of combining personal religious views with certain approaches in modern psychology (a specialist in the field of psychology of religion in his position is closer to believers than to non-believers);
3).The need to solve interpersonal problems that have religious overtones;
4).The desire to find a way out of the current difficult situation, when all the basic psychological methods turned out to be unsuccessful (or unacceptable);
5).The desire to receive any other advice or help from the standpoint of the psychology of religion (faith).
Despite some non-standard approaches, a specialist in the field of psychology of religion does not replace a clergyman, but only performs psychological work within his competence.
WHAT IS THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION?
Psychology of religion (religious psychology) is a branch of psychology that studies the psychological and socio-psychological factors that determine the characteristics of religious consciousness. Tries to understand and explain the behavior of believers in general and representatives of various religious movements in particular.
This section of psychology examines mental processes expressed in religious experiences and state of mind (piety, piety, etc.), their role in the life of an individual, including moments of crisis.
The psychology of religion does not deal with questions of the objective existence of God, His grace - these are questions of philosophy and theology, but it examines how a particular person or group of people understands the existence of the Almighty and His actions in their lives.
This area of research takes its origins from the late 19th – early 20th centuries. At the moment, considerable experience has been accumulated about the content of religious consciousness, as well as about the emotional states and feelings of a person during prayer, confession and other rituals.
The study of the laws of formation, development and functioning of religious psychology is carried out in the following directions
:
1).General theory of the psychology of religion - studies religious consciousness, religious feelings, psychological functions of religion in the spiritual life of the individual and society;
2).Differential psychology of religion - examines the religious consciousness and feelings of believers, taking into account the specific social environment and historical era;
3).Psychology of religious groups - studies the socio-psychological structure of religious communities, mechanisms of communication, feelings and behavior of believers;
4).Psychology of religious cult - explores the influence of religious rituals on a person;
5).Pedagogical psychology of atheistic education - develops principles for the formation of an atheistic worldview.
Unfortunately, in our country there has never been (and still is not) either an institute, a department, or a scientific periodical on the psychology of religion.
WHAT IS RELIGION?
Religion (from Latin relegere - to reproduce, religari - to unite oneself, to unite) is a connection with the Sacred, openness and trust in Him, a willingness to accept the Highest as the guiding principle of one’s life. In other words, religion implies the possibility of a person achieving contact with a deity.
The Encyclopedic Dictionary gives us the following definition: “religion is the organized worship of higher powers. It (worship) presupposes the undoubted reality for the believing consciousness of those higher powers that are worshiped. At the same time, it presupposes faith, i.e. a religious mood, expressed in a certain system of cult and system of ideas about the divine.”
Religion is closely related to culture and it is not always possible to determine the cause-and-effect relationship between them.
Max Müller, one of the founders of modern religious studies, said: “Nowadays it is almost impossible to talk about religion without offending someone. To some, religion seems too sacred a subject for scientific study; others put it on a par with alchemy and astrology, believing that it is woven from errors and hallucinations unworthy of the attention of a scientist. In some ways I agree with these two opinions. Religion is a sacred subject, and in its most perfect or most imperfect form it deserves the highest respect.”
These words were spoken in the second half of the 19th century, but today they sound more modern than ever.
Why is the study of religion and its influence on people so important?
Experts are well aware that religion performs several essential functions in our lives, three of which are given below. Religion:
1).Satisfies natural human curiosity - gives its own explanation of the origin and development of the world;
2). Significantly reduces fear of surprises and vicissitudes of life, giving confidence in the favorable outcome of certain events, comforts a person in difficult periods;
3).Gives authoritative instructions, including permissions, prohibitions, restrictions, rules and advice for the daily life of its adherents.
Different religions and even different movements of the same religion contain both their specific characteristics and general principles.
Somehow the following phrase caught my eye: “A psychologist should be vitally interested in clarifying the content of religion, because it is important for him what kind of human attitude is expressed in it, and what effect - good or evil - it has on a person, on the development of human powers . He is interested in finding out not only the psychological roots of various religions, but also their value.”
And no matter how much a psychologist strives to objectively study the psychological foundations of religion, he will still be within the framework of his own religious (or atheistic) worldview. It is no secret that man is a religious being: some believe in the existence of God, others fervently profess materialistic views. There are no people who are indifferent to issues of spirituality and world order. And psychologists are no exception here.
Since religious experience is associated with the active activity of the soul (or, scientifically speaking, the psyche), research in the field of psychology of religion is of certain interest, both for psychology itself and for society as a whole.
The development of the psychology of religion was greatly influenced by the views of I. Kant, F. Schleermacher, and the studies of such European scientists as W. Wundt, E. Starbook, T. Fechner, G. Tyrrell, F. von Hugel, W. James, A. Maslow , J. Fowler, E. Erikson, E. Fromm, W. Frankl, et al.
Problems of the psychology of religion were considered from the perspective of depth psychology and humanistic psychology.
Note that until the 17th century, European science attributed the concept of religion mostly to Christianity. It was believed that religiosity was manifested in piety, a reverent attitude towards the Christian God. And already from the middle of the 17th century the meaning of these terms was changed. Religion began to be regarded as various systems of beliefs and practices. Religiosity now had to do with any kind of Higher Powers in animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, etc. Thus, religiosity determines the personal adaptation of a particular person to certain rules of religious life, thereby being a subjective link in religion.
Here it makes sense to quote the following: “Religiosity in psychological terms can be considered as a feedback connection between a person and supernatural reality. The psychology of religion fundamentally deals only with man as a partner in this connection and explores the reflections, images, concepts of supernatural reality that are created by people. In our time, this science deals with the problems of the structure and typology of religious experience and its conditionality, studies the role of religious states and acts in the behavior of an individual, raises the problem of conversion of conscience, explores religious positions, experience, development, as well as feelings of guilt and regret.”
Experts in the field of psychology of religion argue that there are three types of fears in which religiosity is manifested:
- personal anxiety arising from insufficient integration of the individual;
- neurotic and moral fear - is formed by a feeling of guilt or a sense of duty to someone. The presence and functioning of this feeling is psychologically very important, since a person lives in an environment where the concepts of good and evil are concretized. John Henry Newman (1801-1890) once wrote: “If it turns out that, having sinned against our conscience, we feel responsibility, shame, fear, then this may mean that there is One (God - note by Sergei Saratovsky), to whom we must answer, to whom we feel shame, whose wrath we fear”;
-existential anxiety - arises in a person due to the need to pose the question of the meaning of life. And here the most typical will be experiences and concerns about the most fundamental questions of good and evil for a person, about the origin of life and the existence of an afterlife (posthumous).
Erich Fromm pointed out: “There is no person who does not have a religious need - for a system of orientation and an object for service; but this tells us nothing about the specific context of its manifestation. A person can worship animals, trees, gold or stone idols, an invisible god, a holy man or leaders with a devilish appearance; he may worship ancestors, nation, class or party, money or success; his religion can promote the development of destructive principles or love, oppression or brotherhood of people; it can promote his reason or lead his mind to a state of paralysis; a person may consider his system to be religious, different from systems of a secular nature, but may also think that he has no religion, and interpret his service to certain, supposedly secular goals - such as power, money or success - as only a concern for the practical and useful . The question is not whether there is religion or the absence of it, but what kind of religion: either it is a religion that promotes human development, the revelation of human powers, or a religion that paralyzes these forces. … The thesis that the need for a system of orientation and an object for its service is rooted in the human condition seems to be sufficiently confirmed by the fact of the universal presence of religion in history.”
PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING FOR BELIEVING PATIENTS.
FEATURES OF THE WORK OF A SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
What is the difference between the work of a clergyman and the work of a psychologist (psychotherapist)?
European experts identify three separate areas of pastoral counseling: religious counseling, pastoral care in the field of mental health and pastoral psychotherapy.
And here the thesis about the separation of the functions of a psychiatrist and a priest occupies an important place.
Here, for example, is the opinion of Pope Pius XII on this important issue:
“Absolution from sins is in no way applicable to the actions of a psychologist. It comes only through the priest during the Sacrament of Penance. In the case of real guilt, a purely psychological effect cannot be healing.” In other words, a psychologist (psychotherapist) should not take on the role of a confessor, but his task is to direct a believing patient to a priest, helping him first to get rid of psychological difficulties. Resolution of issues related to spiritual difficulties is within the competence of the clergy of a particular denomination. A psychologist can only help clarify the psychological characteristics of a particular crisis situation and the patient’s awareness of the causes of his spiritual and psychological problems.
In his article “Aspects of Mental Health for Pastoral Counseling,” V. Beer defines counseling as a psychological term, and psychotherapy as a medical one. He goes on to point out the difference between counseling and advising. The task of a competent consultant is not to think for the client, but to facilitate his thinking. The author also points out that the consultant should show empathy rather than sympathy (as disciplined compassion).
It should be noted that there is a serious difference between pastoral counseling (counselor - God - client) and secular counseling (counselor - client).
A special place in modern psychological research is occupied by descriptions of various distortions of spiritual experience. These pathopsychological phenomena arise both within traditional confessions and (for the most part) are characteristic of pseudo-religious cults of modern times.
The Guide to Helping Victims of Spiritual Abuse (edited by M. Langone) outlines the criteria by which cult is opposed to religion:
1).Religion respects the autonomy of the individual / Cult forces the individual's compliance;
2).Religion tolerates and even encourages questions and independent opinions / The cult rejects the possibility of critical thinking;
3).Religion promotes psycho-spiritual (spiritual-psychological - note by Sergei Saratovsky) integration / The cult distinguishes in its participants the “good new “I” and the “old bad “I”;
4).Religion tries to feed spiritual needs / Cult exploits spiritual needs;
5).Religious conversion predisposes to the disclosure of internal resources to achieve personal identity / Cult conversion affects external patterns of behavior without worrying about internal identification;
6).Religion encourages marriage / Cult often makes family members treated as enemies;
7).Religion respects sex between husband and wife / The cult either allows sexual unbridledness or calls for complete “mortification of the flesh.”
Official website of Sergei Saratovsky
Gustav Jung
Straight from Freud to his student Jung. Jung's most famous theory, the theory of the collective unconscious, fits perfectly into the explanation of religiosity. If the personal unconscious is an oasis of our desires, fears, instincts, then the collective unconscious is an island of archetypes that are built into us from birth. If John Locke believed that we are born like a board, like a tabula rasa, then Jung said that we are born with a set of archetypes in our heads and it is on them that our physical life, mythology, fairy tales, legends and everything else will be built. Jung simply observed that in different fairy tales, beliefs and legends, the same characters suddenly appear, who act in the same way, and the plots are more or less similar. And then there was this concept of archetype that we are born with, which has the same content no matter where you are. Therefore, Jung called religion the unconscious, but not the ordinary unconscious, but the collective. For a religion to work, several archetypes must combine. The archetype of God is a projection of everything sublime, good that is in man, the opposite is the archetype of the devil. As soon as God and the devil begin to fight, religion emerges.
Frederick Skinner
Let's go further and come to the behaviorists. Skinner believed that religious behavior grew out of superstition, and superstition grew out of the classic behaviorist concept of stimulus-response: every stimulus is followed by a response. To demonstrate this, he conducted a simple experiment with pigeons. A pigeon sits in a pen and gets food every 15 seconds. The pigeon is happy, but for some reason it suddenly begins to suffer from some kind of nonsense: it starts dancing, spinning, shaking its head. For what? It's simple. When one day the food fell out, the dove turned around. And he decided: “Maybe this is somehow connected? I’ll turn around again.” And it fell out again. And he was like, “Wonderful. Maybe I’ll turn around again?” It fell out again because it drops out every 15 seconds. But the dove doesn't know this. A superstition has formed! Pigeons, indeed, had different superstitions: some spun around their axis, others hit something with their beaks. Initially there was superstition, which grew into religious behavior, and religious behavior developed into religious thinking and everything else. Beautiful.
Erich Fromm
Moving further along the chronological spiral and the course of general psychology, we move on to Erich Fromm. He was the first to give a damn about how religion turned out: he was interested in what came of it. He was also the first after James to say that, in fact, someone needs this, because, dear psychologists, your function has been performed by priests for many years. Fromm called religion psychotherapy, but not all confessions, but some. But Fromm also has a certain provocative idea: neurosis = religion. We've already seen this somewhere. For Freud, religion = neurosis, and for Fromm, neurosis = religion. The fact is that Fromm expanded the concept of religion to any thing that we live by, that moves our lives. iPhones are quite a religion, according to Fromm. Or the cult of personality - Kim Jong-un: there is no God, but there is religion. Fromm did not consider all religions to be psychotherapy, but only some of them, because he divided them into authoritarian and humanistic. Authoritarian religions are characterized by obedience, submission to doctrine, loss of independence and, as Fromm said, the greatest powerlessness. Man is powerless before religion, he is completely subservient to it and acts only to feed this religion. There are also humanistic religions. They are characterized by independence, the cult of self-actualization and realization of potential, the right to happiness and freedom, which is not regulated by anything, and, in contrast to the greatest powerlessness, the greatest strength. As you probably guessed, Fromm was a fan of Zen Buddhism. He has a book “Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis”.
Psychology of religion: subject, functions and methods
The subject of psychology of religion can be defined as the study of the totality of psychological phenomena associated with religion and religiosity
The study of religion from the point of view of psychology is carried out at two levels: firstly, a theoretical analysis of the religious psyche of both the individual and the group, and secondly, an empirical study of the psychology of believing them. Of course, shows the real practice of a psychologist of religion, both levels are closely related to each other another: the theoretical analysis of the religious psyche is carried out on a factual basis collected during empirical research; in turn, theoretical schemes should always be verified by comparing them with specific data.
The psychology of religion uses the methods of social psychology, among which the following can be distinguished:
• Observation This method is especially effective when information about religious people is obtained by studying their behavior in their usual conditions: during worship, prayer, etc. On the other hand, the capabilities of this method are limited by the fact that it records the external manifestations of religiosity, leaving out the most interesting thing - the internal experiences of people imbued with religious faith.
• Research of documents Many researchers of religious psychology base their reasoning on the diaries and autobiographies of religious mystics, ascetics, hermits, “clairvoyants.” This method provides a rare opportunity to penetrate into the inner world of a believer, although, on the other hand, without a critical attitude to such material, you can get erroneous results. For an atheistically minded psychologist in religion, the testimonies of people who, for one reason or another, have left religion are of particular interest. Such testimonies can tell a lot about the conditions and psychological, worldview factors of the guilt of religious faith and, conversely, departure from not her.
• Survey (in the form of a questionnaire or interview) Thanks to this method, data is acquired on the real motivation of the behavior of the believers surveyed, their socio-psychological and ideological orientations
• Experiment The main requirement for this method is its naturalness. In other words, no artificial interference in religious activity is considered to be allowed. For example, several different individuals or groups listen to a sermon of a certain content, which is delivered by a preacher with certain characteristics. According to the differences that have arisen between the listeners sermon and by those who did not listen to it, analytical conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of the propaganda techniques used in the sermon, the personal qualities of the speaker, etc. Also sensational were the experiments of the American doctor J. Lippi, who extensively experimented with the wet consciousness, using psychotropic substances, and then constructed an insulation bath, where he used technical means to simulate the limiting states of communication with supernatural relatives.
As we can see, each of the above methods makes it possible to satisfactorily solve specific research problems that psychologists of religion set for themselves; while only the comprehensive application of the mentioned methods can provide a sufficient level of generalization.
For the psychology of religion, two types of attitude towards religion as such are typical: either an impartial approach, or a theological approach. From the first point of view, one should fundamentally refuse to clarify the question of the truth or falsity of religious ideas, as such, which goes beyond the competence of psychology as a science. So was decided at the XV World Psychological Congress However, representatives of this approach are more inclined to consider the whole variety of mental manifestations of religiosity as a consequence of the reorientation of the ordinary human psyche due to the action of certain important factors. Let's say, there is religious love, religious fear, but religious love is only a general feeling of love, directed towards religious an object; religious fear is the usual trembling of the human heart, fueled by the idea of otherworldly thanksgiving. From a theological point of view, the very existence of religious beliefs, the meeting of a person with God in them, is explained by the actual presence of the supernatural (sacred, divine) - either outside the natural world, that surrounds a person or in the depths the very human soul of the soul.
Vileyanur Ramachandran
At this stage, psychologists have finished reasoning. They realized that they could look because methods of recording brain activity had become available, and they began to look for where religion fits into the brain. Of course, there is no “god spot” there. Religion is a very complex construct. But there is temporal lobe epilepsy, which more or less concentrated hyper-religiosity. Vileyanur Ramachandran is a very famous scientist, he is now working on mirror neurons and generally believes that they gave birth to our civilization. But he studied temporal lobe epilepsy too. I studied it in simple ways, namely GSR - this is the galvanic skin response of the sweat glands to irritation by a stimulus (a clothespin is placed on the finger). He had a group of patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and healthy people, to whom he showed words that were neutrally charged (for example, poker), sexually charged (for example, orgasm) and religiously charged (for example, god). For the norm, everything is quite primitive: we do not react to normal words, we react more or less to religious words, and we respond well to sex. Patients with epilepsy unexpectedly have the strongest reaction to religious words. This experiment was the first to prove that temporal lobe epileptics are characterized by hyperreligiosity.
The concept and essence of religion
Definition 1
Psychology of religion is the application of psychological research methods and interpretive models to different religious traditions, forms of spirituality, religious and non-religious individuals.
Religion is one of the forms of social consciousness, with the help of which a person tries to communicate with reality in illusory and fantastic images. This social phenomenon is associated with a special sphere of manifestation of the psyche and functions in the form of beliefs and practical actions.
Regarding the concept of “religion,” there are several equally valid theories. For example, Cicero considered religion to be a constant, vigilant and careful attitude towards everything “that concerns the cult of the gods.” True religion, he argued, is distinguished by sincere and selfless observance of the divine cult.
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Note 1
Religion is the basis of human morality and social relations.
The second theory belongs to the Christian apologist Lactantius, and its etymology has become traditional for most Christian thinkers and religious philosophers. Lactantius also distinguishes between the concepts of religion and simple piety, only he connects this distinction with the emphasis on faith in the “one and true God.”
According to S. Bulgakov, in religion, a person’s connection with that which is higher than him is established and experienced. Religion is the real life activity of a person; it is the forms and principles of organizing social life, based to some extent on a religious basis.
Religion is a worldview based on belief in the Divine. Religion is a cultural phenomenon, therefore some authors derive culture from cult, but the opinion that religion is one of the areas of spiritual culture is more justified.
Finished works on a similar topic
Coursework Psychology of religion 450 ₽ Essay Psychology of religion 260 ₽ Test paper Psychology of religion 250 ₽
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The relationship between culture and religion is an essential factor in personal, social, and state life that takes part in the formation of national identity, in resolving ethno-national conflicts, in establishing dialogues and intercultural ties.
The essence of religion is represented by sacraments, ways of personal relationships between man and God, and the affirmation of man in eternity. For religion, the ideas of fate, miracle, and higher meaning are important. For a believer, God is everywhere and in everything, in all being, in the entire human totality.
Michael Persinger
Then came Michael Persinger, who came up with the “helmet of God,” with magnets built into the temple areas. By turning on this amazing device, Persinger affected people's temporal lobes. Now we'll see what happens to a person when he puts this thing on - this is the editor of Skeptic Magazine and one of the world's leading atheists. Shermer felt a presence; he left his body. Thus, we can say with great confidence that the temporal lobes are to some extent responsible for hyper-religious feelings.
Cognitive psychology of religion
We have reached the cognitive psychology of religion - the most modern direction in its research. Cognitive psychologists decided that at some evolutionary stage, religious thinking for some reason turned out to be the most beneficial for cognition. Here the eternal debate about science and religion comes to a strange point, because at some stage religion was needed for knowledge, they made this postulate the main one: “Religious thinking is perhaps the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems” (Stuart Garty) . A lot of modern research is aimed at understanding how the image of a deity is fixed in the mind, how it works. A principle was derived that is called the principle of fixing a minimum of counterintuitive ideas. The meaning is very simple: we remember what, on the one hand, is intuitive and understandable to us at the everyday level, but, on the other hand, goes beyond the scope of our everyday life. That is, a memorable character must be, on the one hand, ordinary, and on the other hand, very unusual. This raises a question called the Mickey Mouse problem: why is Mickey Mouse not a god? Because this is quite an everyday thing - a mouse in pants, but one that talks. Everyone puzzled over this until the properties of the supernatural agent were experimentally deduced. The supernatural agent is not James Bond, but precisely our deity. It must be incomprehensible at the everyday level, it must have strategic information, that is, know everything about everyone, it must be able to act and motivate the people themselves to act (these are rites, rituals, etc.). Then another question arises: where did the old gods go? They were suitable for this agent position, but disappeared somewhere. Where did Zeus go? The fact is that there is one very important point - the moment of context. Some gods fall out of it. Zeus is no longer in our context and we now look at him as history. Maybe someday our confessions will also fall out of context, but something will replace them.
Continuing to study how a higher deity is perceived, cognitive psychologists decided to look at at what age this happens and how it happens: when a child begins to be dependent on something incorporeal. An experiment was constructed in which the researcher asked children to throw a ball with Velcro, but over their back. Naturally, the children did not succeed. They were left alone in the room, they had to throw this ball, but they didn’t do it well, and they started cheating. But one day the situation changed: they put a chair in this room and put the invisible princess Alice on it. The empty chair turned out to be very important. The funniest thing is that the children were asked: “Do you believe that Princess Alice is sitting here?” They're like, "No!" - and then they stopped cheating. This study shows at what age some dependence on a disembodied observing entity is formed.
Bibliography
"The Future of an Illusion", Sigmund Freud
"Psychoanalysis and Religion" by Erich Fromm
"Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis", Erich Fromm
Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Raymond F. Paloutzian, Crystal L. Park
"Brain Phantoms" by Vileyanur Ramachandran
Homo religiosus from the point of view of the psychology of religion
At the center of the psychology of religion is the religious person - homo religiosus (religious person) - in all the diversity of his inner world and its external manifestations. Many psychologists consider man to be an a priori religious being; this, however, does not mean that, in their opinion, a person always belongs to some religious community and recognizes some religious doctrine. Religious in this case is usually understood as spiritual; it is assumed that a person, unlike an animal, has not only material, but also spiritual needs. As Viktor Frankl said in The Doctor and the Soul: “Spirituality, freedom and responsibility are the three existential elements of human existence. They not only characterize human existence as specifically human, but also constitute it as such. In this sense, a person’s spirituality is not just his quality, but a constitutive characteristic: the spiritual is not simply inherent in man along with the physical and mental, which are also characteristic of animals. Spirituality is what distinguishes a person, what is inherent to him, and only to him. Believers, agnostics and atheists all have this spirituality. Carl Gustav Jung, in his article “Psychology and Religion,” stated that just as man has the gift of language independent of all historical forms of language, so he has the ability to believe independently of all historical religions. When we say that religion distinguishes man from beast, we mean the psychic faculty or disposition which enables man, independently of sense and reason, and sometimes even in spite of them, to comprehend the infinite under various names and in various forms; without this ability there would be neither world religions nor fetish worship. Jung wrote that in all religions we can feel the aspiration of the spirit, the desire to comprehend the incomprehensible, to express the inexpressible, the thirst for the infinite, the love of God. A person is looking for something beyond the limits of feelings and reason; moreover, he is looking for something that is denied by feelings and reason. Jung saw the source of religiosity in the collective unconscious, the archetypal images of which find their expression in mythology and symbolism. Jung believed that religiosity serves as the basis for human mental health; religion, with all its rituals, sacraments, symbols and myths, acted as a kind of buffer protecting humanity from its own unconscious, since it clothed it in a symbolic form that was accessible and safe for the human psyche.
