Methodological concerns in the psychology of religion: Continuities, losses and transforming perspectives

This article seeks solutions to what has recently been called the ‘crisis’ in the psychology of religion by returning to the programs of its founding fathers. It explores some of the methodological debates that followed the translation of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience into German. More was at stake than the commonly drawn distinction between empirical and hermeneutical approaches to religion, or between quantitative and qualitative methods. What was at stake was the need for another kind of psychology in general. This article pays special attention to Wilhelm Wundt's fundamental criticism of James and of others in the psychology of religion. Despite the problems inherent in both James' and Wundt's aborted general psychology programs, each nonetheless contains approaches that may yet serve as an impetus to contemporary research on religion. Contemporary developments in cultural psychology in particular complement current research in the psychology of religion.     

Liberalism, the First Amendment and Religious Studies: a review of Stanley Fish's The Trouble With Principle

In The Trouble with Principle Stanley Fish argues that (1) there are no neutral principles; (2) that liberalism is intolerant, anti-religious and amoral; (3) that only politics, ideology and rhetoric ‘exist’ and that in politics and rhetoric, as in war, ‘anything goes’; (4) that the principles embodied in the First Amendment stand in the way of political responsibility; and (5) that religion, the primary victim of liberalism, should reassert itself in the public sphere and in academe by putting on the full armour of rhetoric and politics. Although in his book Fish distinguishes between professional experts and true believers, he recently has given up this distinction and instead advocates the creation of departments of religious studies staffed by ‘true believers’. Disagreeing with all of these positions, the reviewer argues that Fish's antifoundational attack on liberalism and advocacy of a neo-foundational fideism bespeak a singular lack of political wisdom.     

Monkey kings make havoc: iconoclasm and murder in the Chinese cultural revolution

This article explores the interplay between destruction of material icons and people during China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when authority figures—teachers, landlords, monks and nuns, bosses, intellectuals, doctors, Party leaders—were ‘struggled against’ by gangs of teenage revolutionaries called Red Guards. There is striking continuity in the rhetoric and the symbolic practices of the Red Guards as they destroyed statues and to a lesser extent, signs, buildings, and books, and as they killed people. Through techniques of demonisation—the affixing of negative iconic values—the rhetoric of destruction moved all too easily from image to body and from body to image. Yet just as iconoclasm is not always the utter annihilation of an iconic object but, more crucially, an attack on its iconicity, the violence against living people which tends to accompany iconoclastic movements often seems to be about stripping away the external signs of identity and then redefining the boundaries between categories of bodies. After a brief survey of four phases of Communist iconoclasm in China, I explore a number of aspects of Chinese iconoclasm which blur the distinctions between icons and bodies, related to conceptions of icons as living, the production of iconic bodies, and the ‘iconoclasm of the habitus.’ These themes are explored in commentary on two products of Cultural Revolution iconoclasm: Born Red, a memoir by Gao Yuan, and Qiao Dianyun's short story ‘The Blank Stele.’     

Dreams of passage:: An object-relational perspective on a case of a Hindu death ritual

By examining the case of a death ritual in a Surinam-Hindu community in the Netherlands, the authors want to demonstrate the usefulness of object-relations theory in the study of religion. Because it focuses on the dynamic interaction between individual and culture, this psychological theory embraces a truly cultural-psychological approach. D.W. Winnicott's idea of ‘transitional phenomena’ is central in this respect. Cultural activities, such as participating in rituals and myths, are said to have a transitional function, when they sustain identity formation and coping with crises. Based on Arnold van Gennep's famous term ‘rites of passage’ as well as on the psychoanalyst Geza Róheim's insights into rites and myths of passage, the new term rêve de passage (dream of passage) is coined. Dreams may also have a transitional function in situations of crisis and change. As an example, we discuss the dream of one of the mourners in the case discussed. By using cultural meanings from her social and religious context—in particular, the notion of the mahapatra—the dream helps the mourner to cope with a difficult situation and to make the transition back to ordinary life. The article concludes that the concept of rêve de passage, as developed within the object-relational framework, is a promising tool for dream research in both religious studies and anthropology.     

Thinking the ‘question’ of religion: The aporia of Buddhism and its democratic heritage in Sri Lanka

(If an abstract can ever be ‘abstract’?) Buddhism (and, more generally, religion) has never been thought as a question - that is, as a question inseparable from the question of the political. The academic study of Buddhism continues to be dominated by an empiricist, humanist, and even humanitarian project, shackled by modes of knowledge production, within the garrisons of colonialist area studies. No textualizing, anthropologizing, historicizing approach - however, critical it may be - can avoid the trap of humanism. To think the question of religion, one must begin to think it and its heritage as an aporia, an irreducible contradiction. In reading Qadri Ismail's Abiding by Sri Lanka, I argue that reflecting on the aporia of religion - whose legacy is not a ‘problem’ to be solved, inherited, or abandoned - might well enable us to imagine a notion of the political hitherto unheard of.     

‘At home in the uncanny’: Freud's account of das Unheimliche in the context of his theory of religious belief

This paper serves as an exploration of Freud's comment that one of the functions of religious belief is to make humanity feel ‘at home in the uncanny’ (heimisch im Unheimlichen). The first section examines the context of Freud's comment within The Future of an Illusion. Attention is then shifted to Freud's essay on ‘The “Uncanny”’, and to his conclusion that the ‘uncanny’ is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. A number of interpretations of the ‘at home’ remark are discussed, and it is suggested that religion might fruitfully be viewed as an attempt to come to terms with humanity's ‘transcendental homelessness’.     

The paradox of healing pain

Pain may be seen as a problem to be healed or as a means for healing. The secular biomedical view of pain is that it is to be avoided and alleviated; its only meaning is as a symptom of underlying disease. In contrast, there have been throughout history other views of suffering—as redemptive or as transformative, for example. This paper considers the disparity between these perspectives, examining the role of the emotions and the underlying neurobiological processes though which pain and suffering come to be experienced as meaningful, then analyzes interview material exploring how religion and religious beliefs help people cope with suffering or with pain. The experience of pain is subjective, enculturated experience; the meaning that pain or suffering holds within a given cultural context affects the experience of pain and suffering. In a context where pain and suffering are understood to be valuable, those experiences can be used for spiritual transformation and integrated within a meaningful identity. In contrast, in a context where pain and suffering are not understood to have value, that attitude can create more suffering, even in conditions meant to alleviate suffering, such as in biomedical situations.