“A Part of Who I Am”: Material Objects as “Plot Devices” in the Formation of Religious Selves

What role do material objects play in the formation of religious subjects? Drawing from an ethnographic investigation of the evolving relationships between a group of Eastern Orthodox converts and their religious icons, this article develops a theoretical approach to this question that conceptualizes material artifacts as “plot devices” in the formation of religious identity narratives. Integrating insights from studies of material religious culture with narrative theories of identity, this article argues that religious artifacts become significant to religious identity construction to the extent they act as resources for the configuration of a narrative structure in which transcendent or sacred others play a part. As the empirical details of this study demonstrate, attending to how religious objects’ symbolic meanings (i.e., who or what they represent) are mediated by their unique material characteristics (how they make meanings physically present to social actors in embodied social interaction) is of vital importance for explaining the significant role material artifacts play in the religious emplotment of action and experience.     

No Ethics Without Things

Just as recognition and pursuit of the human good take place in language and action, so too do they unfold in encounter with the material and visual. The ethical crises, projects, and striving we see in everyday religious life are worked out not just in the intersubjective play and politics of language but also in encounter with, in dwelling with, material and visual substances and forms. This essay considers the material conditions that make possible the “ethical pleasures” sought by Indonesian painter A. D. Pirous in making and displaying contemporary works of “Islamic art,” most especially works that make “visual recitation” of passages from the Qur'an.     

On religious and cultural objects: Articulate and inarticulate bodies in Spinoza's philosophy of nature

Spinoza's philosophy is often overlooked when it comes to thinking about matters concerning art and culture. While recent work has done much to address this, his philosophy remains ambiguously related to the theorisation of things such as temples, poems, and paintings. This article argues that it is by turning to Spinoza's theorisation of the sacred in the Theological‐Political Treatise, that we can best derive his philosophical position on culture and its objects. I argue that Spinoza locates the sanctity of a religious object–what he calls its “articulateness”–in its particular use‐relation with a people. In a similar manner, Spinoza locates the “meaning” and articulateness of words in the use that people make of them, thereby secularising the sanctification process for cultural objects. I argue that this relation of “use” between cultural‐religious objects and human beings and their societies is the way in which we can best discern Spinoza's philosophical position regarding art and culture, as well as further develop his potential contribution to cultural and art theory.     

Native American Spirituality

ABSTRACT

Followers of the New Age movement and others have been exploiting and commercializing “Native American” spirituality. This exploitation is being fought by many Native people. Native American spirituality may be studied and appreciated, but use of Native American religious forms outside of Native American communities is considered misappropriation and cultural theft. Native spiritualities address the needs of present-day Native communities. A Native spirituality that ignores that need is no longer a religion of and for the community. Disconnected from a Native community, religious beliefs, ceremonies, and religious art forms lose their primary significance.     

Culturalized Religion: A Synthetic Review and Agenda for Research

Scholars have taken a growing interest in what we call “culturalized religion”—that is, forms of religious identification, discourse, and expression that are primarily cultural in character, insofar as they are divorced from belief in religious dogma or participation in religious ritual. This article aims to clarify our current thinking about these phenomena so as to facilitate future theoretical and empirical work. Drawing on recent work in the sociology of culture, we distinguish between culturalized religion as a form of constituted culture, a form of pragmatic culture, and a form of identity; and theorize three principal types of relations connecting each of these modalities: reinforcing relationships, resource relationships, and destabilizing relationships. In so doing, we develop an inclusive and dynamic approach to studying culturalized religion that clears the ground for further research into its diverse modalities and manifestations, as well as their points of intersection and interaction.     

Architecture and psychoanalysis. Nathaniel Kahn and the search for the father

Abstract

This text is intended as a contribution to the study of the profound mutual relations between architecture and psychoanalysis. Architecture creates representations that conceal unconscious forms of thought; psychoanalysis helps to explain the meanings of these representations – forms of construction and forms of the psyche. The multifaceted work of psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas – his thoughts on the relationships between psychoanalysis and architecture, on the vitality of objects, on the creative implications of the Oedipal relationship – serves as a critical and decisive instrument for the authors’ inquiry. The issue of the “vitality of objects” as described by Bollas also concerns – but only in part – the architectural “object.” One modern form of architecture with an inordinate capacity empathy has to be Louis Kahn’s. Kahn’s youngest son , Nathaniel, lost his father when he was still a child and hardly had a chance to get to know him. After becoming an adult and an established film-maker, he managed to recover his father in two ways: by discovering him in his works, with their powerful affective impact; and by drawing from those very works of his father to enhance his own creative process in his filmic art. As it turns out, it is this very process that has allowed for an emblematically positive resolution of the Oedipal relationship.     

Play as dynamic movement in an assemblage: A novel approach to the concept of “play”

As Johan Huizinga argued in Homo Ludens, “play” has not only been part of all human societies throughout history, it has also contributed to the development of numerous cultural, social and political activities, including structured games and sports, certain judicial and legal activities, war, and numerous forms of art. Despite its importance, “play”, with its various manifestations, is often relegated to being a children’s activity or an occasion of pure waste, and is a surprisingly marginalised topic in academic scholarship. In part to remedy this deficit, my aim in this article is to create a novel philosophical conception of “play” by adapting selected concepts from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as from the theories of Brian Sutton-Smith and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The concept of “play” that I propose is not only a useful heuristic for mapping various forms of “play”, it also highlights the creative and transformative potential that is inherent to “play” phenomena.     

The religiosity-psychoticism relationship and the two factors of social desirability: A response to Michael W. Eysenck (1999)

This paper is based upon an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which investigated the experiences of twelve people who had been sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests or religious. The premise of the research was based upon a perceived assumption that distinct forms of sexual traumatology generate unique trauma characteristics not accounted for within the existing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) conceptual frameworks (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems ((DSM-IVTR 2000;) ICD-10 R, 2007). Recent developments in psychodiagnostics to support the relevance of religious concerns where incorporated into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV edition (1994) which allowed a range of “religious” and “spiritual” problems to be explicitly identified as a focus for specific clinical attention. However, these appear quite vague in accounting for the range of trauma experiences experienced by this participant group. Evidence arose which indicated the majority of the research participants considered “God” to have been integral within the abuse, manipulated by design or default by the cleric or religious perpetrator. These idiosyncratic trauma characteristic created significant anxiety and distress in areas such as theological belief, crisis of faith, and fears surrounding the participant's own mortality. The IPA research identified six distinct, themed differences of which four will be discussed in more detail for the purpose of this paper. It will consider the attributes of these themes in relation to Roman Catholicism, celibacy and Canon law, and further question the sufficiency of the DSM-IV “V” Codes in accounting for the myriad of symptoms survivors of sexual abuse perpetrated by Roman Catholic Priests and Religious actually describe.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Efficacy of the Wisc in the Diagnosis of Organicity in Children of Normal Intelligence

The Jungian concepts of archetypes and psychic reality are utilized to explain the difference between illusory and real psychic phenomena. Myths are defined as unconscious projections of archetypal material upon the environment, which assume definitive shapes as objects or persons having an archaic character. Only by an analysis of the meaning and value of the various mythological heros, motifs, or ancient objects depicted in a myth can an approach be made in comprehending the original archetypes from which they emerged. The difficulty of applying external scientific criteria of validity and reliability to a psychic event is explored at some length. In accordance with Jungian theory, “mental illness” is described as a myth which tends to isolate the observer from the one observed in a significant manner. Another way of looking at the “mentally ill” person is offered in terms of a common bond of humanity that exists between that person and one that is labeled as “mentally healthy.”     

Book Review

Throughout different civilisations and historical epochs, anthropological and religious texts have been replete with accounts of persons who have reported anomalous experiences in the form of visions or voices. In these contexts, such experiences are considered to be a “gift” that can be spiritually enriching or life enhancing. One such group of individuals are mediums who claim to receive information from spirits of the deceased in the form of auditory or visual perceptions. This study explores how mediums come to interpret their experiences as mediumistic and how they describe their relationship with spirit voices. In-depth interviews were conducted with 10 Spiritualist mediums using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three themes were identified: “Childhood anomalous experiences”, “A search for meaning: Normalisation of mediumship”, and “relationship with spirit”. These themes illuminated aspects of the mediumistic experience that have therapeutic implications for individuals who have similar experiences but become distressed by them.     

What is the “front” of a simple geometric form?

A total of 670 undergraduate Ss were tested in three studies conducted in an attempt to define a set of cues that minimally specify perceived “frontness” and “backness” of objects. In Experiment I, Ss were instructed to identify the “front” and “back” of printed squares to which no, one, or two circles were attached. In Experiment II, different Ss made the same kind of judgment to a wider range of geometric forms. In Experiment III, different Ss judged the direction of “imagined” movement of forms from Experiment I. The results indicated that the “front” and “back” are asymmetric opposite sides, with “front” the side most different from the rest and the side toward which the form is imagined to be moving.     

Mathematics and the definitions of religion

In 2014, I published a proposal for a definition of “religion”. My goal was to offer a definition of this contentious term that would include Buddhism, Daoism, and other non-theistic forms of life widely considered religions in the contemporary world. That proposal suggested necessary and sufficient conditions for treating a form of life as a religious one. It was critiqued as too broad, however, on the grounds that it would include the study of math as a religion. How can one include forms of life based on non-theistic realities without including math? In this paper, I show the flaw in the previous definition and the weaknesses of two attempts to evade that flaw, before recommending a shift, first, to a Wittgenstein-inspired polythetic definition of “religion” and, second, to a certain kind of polythetic definition that I call “anchored”.     

“Out of the Broom Closet”: The Social Ecology of American Wicca

The fastest growing form of religious identification, spirituality, or “new” religious movement in American society over the last decade is Wicca and related forms of “Neo-Paganism.” However, with no national organization and minimal local organization, little is known about its distribution across a privatized religious landscape nor about the features of state social and cultural environments that are receptive or contrary to its spread. This study uses Internet data to create estimates of the comparative strength of Wiccan-Pagan identification across the 50 states and conducts multivariate analyses of the ability of variables suggested in prior research to explain its distribution. Not only are the findings consistent with expectations, but differences in correlates of Wicca using the Internet data in contrast to existing measures of “New Age” spirituality highlight the empirical importance of maintaining distinctions between the two.     

How to Begin A Therapy Group: Six Approaches

Japanese “groupism,” or the tendency to emphasize groups rather than individuals, often favors the use of group psychotherapy with Japanese patients. However, the author recommends that the clinician should be sensitive to other cultural phenomena, which are thought to be related to groupism that will influence the nature of group treatments. For example, the traditional Japanese relationship to authority may make it difficult for many patients to express negative attitudes and to share intimate material. Differences regarding confidentiality and gender, distinction between “miuchi” (families) and “tanin” (strangers), and attitudes toward silence may also influence the nature of group therapy. The author discusses these and related cultural differences and highlights implications for the therapist's style of intervention. Finally, the amount of influence that groupism has on group psychotherapy must be considered. The author suggests that it is greater for patients with mild neurosis than severe psychosis.     

Crafting Sacrality from the tensile life of objects: learning about the material life of prayer beads from a Khaksari Sufi <Emphasis Type="Italic">Murshid</Emphasis>

Sufi mystical experiences and practices are populated with objects. Objects exist among masters as well as disciples and followers regardless of the meanings and significations that practices impose on them. The life of these objects begins before they are enacted into sociocultural and religious relationships, as they are crafted or traded before they take on the overwhelming semiosis ascribed to them by religious-cultural codes or social networks. This article presents an apprenticeship ethnographic journey in which I follow an Iranian Sufi master and, along with him, the tensile life of Sufi prayer beads, or tasbihs. I address prayer beads as an object prior to their gaining of any religious meaning in the networks of everyday life. Tracing the material life of prayer beads reveals how the “objectness” of the rosary preexists the material practices that give it meaning in the Sufi order. Through the approach of speculative realism I examine what it means to study a religious-object-in-itself. I follow the religiously loaded object and its spiritual emergence by way of object-oriented ontology to forgo the meanings and relationships that shadow the objects.     

感数——它能告诉我们什么?

研究者在列举任务中发现,被试对3个以内项目的报告既快又准确（一般称之为“感数”）,而对3个以上项目的报告既慢又容易出错误（“计数”）,由此他们提出感数和计数属于两种不同性质的加工过程,一系列行为数据的反应时和正确率指标支持了这一假设。此外,最近的脑成像、电生理研究还发现,感数和计数在对注意的需求上同样存在着分离——感数无需注意,只有计数过程才需注意的参与。在此基础上,研究者从不同角度提出了一些解释感数现象的理论     

Concept Creep: Psychology's Expanding Concepts of Harm and Pathology

Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept's boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of “concept creep” are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.     

Consciousness as a logically consistent and prognostic model of reality

The work demonstrates that brain might reflect the external world causal relationships in the form of a logically consistent and prognostic model of reality, which shows up as consciousness. The paper analyses and solves the problem of statistical ambiguity and provides a formal model of causal relationships as probabilistic maximally specific rules. We suppose that brain makes all possible inferences from causal relationships. We prove that the suggested formal model has a property of an unambiguous inference: from consistent premises we infer a consistent conclusion. It enables a set of all inferences to form a consistent model of the perceived world. Causal relationships may create fixed points of cyclic inter-predictable properties. We consider the “natural” classification introduced by John St. Mill and demonstrate that a variety of fixed points of the objects’ attributes forms a “natural” classification of the external world. Then we consider notions of “natural” categories and causal models of categories, introduced by Eleanor Rosch and Bob Rehder and demonstrate that fixed points of causal relationships between objects attributes, which we perceive, formalize these notions. If the “natural” classification describes the objects of the external world, and “natural” concepts the perception of these objects, then the theory of integrated information, introduced by G. Tononi, describes the information processes of the brain for “natural” concepts formation that reflects the “natural” classification. We argue that integrated information provides high accuracy of the objects identification. A computer-based experiment is provided that illustrates fixed points formation for coded digits.