H.A. Alma

Bridge over troubled water: Further results regarding the receptive coping scale

article, we describe research on the Receptivity Scale we developed in response to some of the problems we met when using Kenneth Pargaments religious coping-scales in the Netherlands (cf. Alma, Pieper & Van Uden, 2003). The main problem with Pargaments three- fold conceptualisation of religious coping (self-directing, deferring and collaborative) is the underlying view of aan active, personal God. The Receptivity Scale does justice to the idea of a more impersonal God, which is probably more common in the secularised Netherlands. Furthermore, the scale takes into account that people are not always directly focused on the solution of problems, either with or without God. The scale is administered to two populations in Belgium and two populations in The Netherlands. We compare a) the scores of the respon- dents on the scale with their scores on other measures of religiosity and other psychological measures, and b) the scores of theology students with the scores of psychology students. We come to the conclusion that between the attitudes of basic trust on the one hand and trust in a personal God on the other hand, there are different degrees of relating to the transcendent in times of trouble.

Religious pluralism as an imaginative practice

To understand the complex religious dynamics in a globalizing world, Arjun Appadurais view on imagination as a social practice, Charles Taylors view on social imaginaries, and John Deweys view on moral imagination are discussed. Their views enable us to understand religious dynamics as a “space of contestation” in which secular and religious images and voices (sometimes embodied in the same person) interact, argue, and clash. Imagination can be used in violent ways in service of extremist world images that spread over the world by the intensive use of social media. This raises an urgent question for psychology of religion: what enables people psychologically to engage in religious pluralism, understood as negotiating and perhaps stimulating diversity in non-violent, constructive ways? It is argued that dialogical psychology helps us to understand the self as the anchor point and navigational system of the social imaginaries that are at play in religious dynamics.

‘Bildung’ and Intercultural Understanding: A Dialogical Approach

In this introduction to the special issue on Bildung and dialogical self theory (DST), I explain why the notion of Bildung warrants elaboration in a special issue of the Journal of Constructivist Psychology. The concept of Bildung—for some, too apolitical and individualistic—gains significance by relating it to intercultural understanding as a prime challenge for plural societies in which cultural and religious diversity easily leads to confrontation and even violent conflict. The special issue offers an interdisciplinary discussion of the relevance of DST for this topic, of Bildung and humanism, and of the practice of intercultural adult education. In three articles, arguments for dialogical self as a prerequisite for intercultural adult education are placed within the broader context of pivotal discussions conducted within psychology, philosophy, and religious studies on the subject of our globalizing world.

An Agonistic Model of Dialogue

In this article, Schellhammers statements that learning is only possible in tension and that difference and diversity are prerequisites for tension are discussed in light of a certain event that occurred at a Summer School on Pluralism, Development, and Social Change. The article aims to explore Bildung, and especially learning in tension, through a concrete case study in which cultural diversity is a key issue. Reflecting on the case, psychological, philosophical, and sociopolitical perspectives are presented, each of which casts a different light on what happened. In the final reflection, we turn to the question of what dialogical self theory (DST) can offer when it comes to learning in tension, and how DST can be enriched and challenged by other approaches. We argue that DST facilitates the development of intercultural competence through dialogue with the unknown other in the self. Philosophical notions of cosmopolitanism and Socratic self-examination can shed further light on resistance to and conditions for transformative dialogues. They also place these in a historical and global perspective. We introduce an agonistic model of dialogue, in which the structural power inequalities and privileges people bring into dialogical spaces are explicitly addressed, thereby sowing the seeds of postdialogue transformative action in a personal and professional sense—for example, in transformative justice initiatives.

IMAGINATION AND EMPATHY AS CONDITIONS FOR INTERPERSONAL UNDERSTANDING IN THE CONTEXT OF A FACILITATING WORLDVIEW

Some philosophers of science and social scientists disapprove of using empathy in human inquiry. Empathy would be neither sufficient nor necessary for understanding another person. In this article the insufficiency of empathy will be recognized, but the necessity of empathy for interpersonal understanding in everyday life, situations of professional care, and certain forms of human inquiry, especially qualitative research, will be supported. However, empathic understanding should not be conceived as pure psychic identification, but rather as putting oneself imaginatively into the experiential world of another person with the aim to understand the other. Emotional resonance is not only an early phase of it, but also a basic facet. A comprehensive conceptualization of empathic understanding is developed which makes empathy more worthwhile in professional contexts. Empathic understanding is conceived as a two-dimensional concept. The mental dimension refers to affective, cognitive and interpretive facets or phases of empathic understanding and the social dimension refers to expressive, responsive and interactive facets or phases of empathic understanding. These two dimensions are crosswise combined and the most optimal form of empathic understanding is called ‘dialogical-hermeneutical empathic understanding’. Furthermore, the importance of imagination and the development of it for optimal empathic understanding is elaborated, as well as its relationship with a worldview.

Bridge over Troubled Water

SummaryBridge over troubled water. Results of research on receptivity In this paper, we describe research on our Receptivity Scale, developedin response to some of the problems we met, when using Kenneth Pargament’s religious coping scales in the Netherlands (cf. Alma, Pieper, & Van Uden, 2003). The main problem with Pargament’s threefold conceptualisation of religious coping (self-directing, deferring, and collaborative) is theunderlying view of an active, personal God. The Receptivity Scale does justice to the idea of a more impersonal God, which is probably more common in the secularised Netherlands. Furthermore, the scale takes into account that people are not always directly focused on the solution of problems, either with or without God. The scale was administered to two samples in Belgium and two samples in The Netherlands. We compare (i) the scores of the respondents on the scale with their scores on other measures of religiosity and other psychological measures, and (ii) the scores of theology students with the scores of psychology students. We come to the conclusion that between the attitudes of basic trust on the one hand, and trust in a personal God, on the other hand, there are different degrees of relating to the transcendent in times of trouble.