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The Cultural Psychological Approach to Religion

Contemporary Debates on the Object of the Discipline

University of Amsterdambelzen{at}hum.uva.nl

Although psychology has taken an interdisciplinary approach to religion, at present most studies are aligned with mainstream psychology, which largely disregards the constitution of psychic functioning by cultural forces. After a brief overview of historical psychologizing positions and a discussion of the background of contemporary proposals to consider religion as naturally rooted in human beings, the paper suggests that a cultural psychological perspective may give an impetus to psychological analyzes of religion by providing a religiously neutral starting point. Some contemporary approaches compatible with this perspective are briefly sketched: activity and habitus theory; narrative psychology; Lacanian psychoanalysis. Acknowledging religion as first and foremost a cultural phenomenon, the paper proposes to conceive of religiosity as its subjective-personal counterpart, that is, as (a) a multi-dimensional phenomenon constituted by specific religious (sub)cultures about whose features and functions other scholarly disciplines can inform us, and (b) involving many kinds of psychic functions (instead of being rooted in a single psychological feature). Collaborating interdisciplinarily, a cultural psychological perspective renders superfluous any discussions on the material object of psychology of religion.

Key Words: cultural psychology • habitus • narrative psychology • psychoanalysis • religions

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 2, 225-229 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/095935439992004


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