When Psychology Turns to Spirituality

Abstract

Over the last few years, spirituality has been mentioned as a topic for psychological research, especially for the psychology of religion (cf., e.g., Paloutzian and Park 2005). Some colleagues even go so far as to declare the study of spirituality to be the core business of the psychology of religion, as from a psychological perspective spirituality would be the essence of religion. In this there is an orientation towards the so-called market (cf. Carrette and King 2005), which is not always wise and not always beneficial to our discipline. Since the so-called Enlightenment, religion has been a popular topic to criticize, and in many aspects correctly so. Within psychology, after an initial period in which all the founding fathers dealt with religion as a subject typical for the human being, the topic has become something of a taboo theme, usually out of disinterest or because psychologists no longer had the courage to talk about it (Farberow 1963). Craving for respect by the scientific community, it seemed to many psychologists wise no longer to do any research on religion. Many colleagues of the latter type are more than happy nowadays to notice that contrary to the great expectations of leading sociologists of religion, religion did not become extinct and is even returning to the headlines of the news, albeit in ways and for reasons that most people would never have wanted to become witnesses of (see, e.g., the religious or at least religiously legitimized terrorism covered in the media). The way out for many seems to be to talk no longer about religion or religiosity, but about spirituality. Spirituality would not have the negative connotations that religion and religiosity for many people have. However, it is doubtful whether we gain much by employing other words; indeed it is doubtful whether psychology has ever gained anything by orienting itself on any market other than its own striving toward insight into what the psychic realm is and how it can be investigated (cf. Fox and Prilleltensky 1997). Evidently, psychology is always practiced within a certain context, a context with creates, facilitates and conditions all research and training, but handing over to what any “market” urges psychologists to do research on, has never been a fruitful strategy. It only increases the number of projects and publications in which people with a degree in psychology are involved, but it does in no way lead to increase in psychological insight, as not everything that someone with a degree in psychology does, is by itself psychological.