Richard A. Hutch

Are psychological studies of religion on the right track

Abstract Researchers in psychology of religion in America and Britain have inherited the theoretical and research traditions established by W. James, S. Freud and J. Dittes. New nomothetic or theoretical frameworks have been called for in order to organize a plethora of idiographic data. A response to the call has been slow, but Paul Pruyser designated at least six areas in which the development of psychology of religion might most fruitfully occur; and the suggestion has been that altered states of consciousness research is perhaps the most important item of all six to consider for research methodology. This particular item, it was broadly suggested, may possibly serve as a bridge between East and West, thereby bringing psychologists of religion out of the darkness of Western methodological ethnocentrism, and into the light of cross-cultural, universally-applicable concerns sought in the spirit of the scientific study of religion. Psychologists of religion must rely on the tradition of Religion-swissensc...

Health and Healing: Spiritual, Pharmaceutical, and Mechanical Medicine

Modern medical practice is identified as a relatively recent way of approaching human ill health in the wide scope of how people have addressed sickness throughout history and across a wide range of cultures. The ideological biases of medical or “allopathic” (disease as “other” or “outsider”) practice are identified and grafted onto other perspectives on how people not engaged in modern medicine have achieved healing and health. Alternative forms of healing and health open a consideration of ethnomedicine, many forms of which are unknown and, hence, untested by modern medical research. Ethnomedicine the world over and throughout human history has displayed unique spiritual (vitalism), pharmaceutical (herbs/drugs), and mechanical (manipulation/surgery) approaches to treating illness. The argument is that modern allopathic medicine would do well to consider such “world medicine” as having valuable alternative and complementary therapies, the use of which could enhance contemporary medical advice and practice.

Mortal Losses, Vital Gains: The Role of Spirituality

Grief and its management constitute the general topic of this paper. A personal dynamic of reframing is articulated and defined as a major experiential source of human spirituality. The argument is that exercises in the comparative free association of loss activate dynamic reframing amidst mourning and its associated work of depression. Counselling that involves imagining “worse case scenarios” may invoke conventional religious belief and practice as constructive “tactics of make-believe,” ones that actually enlarge perspective and cast past losses into widening horizons of future gains. In effect, human spirituality is an individuals achieved capacity to affirm time and again that his or her great personal losses could have been far worse, in spite of the emotional turmoil and woe surrounding such events.

An essay on psychotherapy and religion.

Cultural innovation by thinkers of the early twentieth century created an intellectual impasse between competing understandings of religion. Religion was understood as either transcendence and the sacred (e.g., Otto) or as fantasy and projection (e.g., Freud). Whether a cooperative symbiosis of these orientations toward religion can be achieved is the central and unresolved issue of this paper. “Examined experience” is considered within religious studies and psychotherapy. Although not conclusive, the argument is that examined experience is a means by which the desired symbiosis can be achieved. The essay is personal in that it reflects the authors struggle for understanding, especially as Western (e.g., Christian) and Eastern (e.g., Zen) experiences are examined.

Dominance Hierarchies and Health: Constructing Personal Zones of Spiritual Power and Healing in Modern Medicine

Ethological studies of animals in groups and sociobiology indicate that hierarchies of dominance amongst some species ensure the survival of the group. When transferred to human groups, dominance hierarchies suggest a crucial role played by recasting the scope of such hierarchies of dominant and subordinate members to included “hyper-dominant beings.” A recognition of such beings as even more dominant than the socially dominant members of a hierarchy facilitates the empowerment of the socially subordinate members. Religious belief and practice works to establish such hyper-dominant beings (“gods,” “goddesses,” and so forth) as superior members of human groups. Doing so is a means of ensuring the survival of the species and, thus, enhancing healing and human health. The “doctor–patient” relationship is examined from such a point of view, with an emphasis on whether the hierarchy created by the relationship allows consideration of alternative and complementary forms of medical treatment.

Character and Cure: “Patient, Heal Thyself”

Human spirituality is a source of healing and health. Accessing this depends on a persons ability to assume an active rather than a passive attitude toward healing. The argument is that such an ability depends on the nature of a persons character or personality, and whether that nature is able to undergo change and transformation into a higher key. Several typologies of personality are described and evaluated in so far as they provide useful access to human spirituality for health and healing.

Review and Critique of Jesus

A review and critique of the psychological biography of Jesus by Donald Capps underscores in the life and times of the founder of Christianity the management of narcissism and acute melancholia by males who would rise to deeply heartfelt religious leadership, but find themselves filled with frustration and personal anguish in the process. Jesus had a self-identity that was forged in such psychological trials. His personality was neither that of an other-worldly apolcalypticist nor one of a this-worldly social reformer. Rather, Jesus had a utopian-melancholic personality, which noticeably characterizes many men in contemporary times who would engage in a spiritual quest.

The Healer's Mandate: Seeing “Things Unseen”

The challenged posed to modern scientific medicine by alternative and complementary therapies is described, lines of thought drawn from the history and psychology of religions are used to focus discussion on rituals of healing, and a process of understanding illness as a spiritual event with lifestyle lessons to teach is articulated and illustrated.

The Uses and Misuses of Attribution Theory

This article is based on the view that attribution theory in the psychology of religion does not offer for use, or imply, the evaluative methodological position of “misattribution” that is assumed by Stephen Kent in his study of the Children of God in the Spring, 1994 issue of this journal. Members of the Children of God, or The Family, have not, the writer thinks, been duped in their struggle to construct meaning, control and esteem together. That members of this new religion have successfully attributed these values to their communal religious life is especially evident given the courage and patience with which they have endured and met allegations of child (sexual) abuse, all of which have proven false in courts world-wide. Thus, the use of “misattribution” in such studies in the psychology of religion is unwarranted and methodologically fallacious in the view of this author.

Strategic Irony and Lytton Strachey's Contribution to Biography

Lytton Stracheys use of strategic irony opened the door to post-World War II interest in possible connections between psychology and biography. Recent discussions in psychology and literary criticism serve as background for demonstrating the dynamic of strategic irony in Stracheys life and work, and for suggesting that his accomplishment is a powerful personal legacy available to todays working biographer.