Psychodynamic perspectives

According to Freud, people's religiosity can be explained as a regression back to a time in life that has been simpler. By projecting an almighty father into space, it is possible to resevere one's own responsibility. It's a way to escape the existential challenges or demands that come with growing up and having to deal with the world in all its complexity. (Ref)

Winnicott (2004, p. 196) writes in article, "The Manic Defense", originally published in 1934:

"And what about the radio that's always on? What about life in a city like London with its never-ending noise, with its never-extinguished lights? Both exemplify how people, by means of reality, defend themselves against inner death and apply a manic defense that can be described as normal."

McWilliams (2005, p. 61) describes that people who came to psychotherapy clinics in the 60s had problems that the existing psychological models could not explain well:

"They lacked an experience of inner orientation and reliable, guiding values and they started in therapy in the hope of finding meaning in life. They could superficially seem confident, but within they were constantly seeking confirmation that they were accepted or admired or valuable."

Those who had these people in treatment testified to special difficulties:

"Therapists who had this kind of patients in treatment told us that they felt unimportant, invisible, and either disparaged or idealized by them. They didn't feel appreciated as real concrete people trying to help, but instead seemed to be considered interchangeable causes of their clients' emotional oscillations between inflation and deflation."

Why are people religious?

Researchers from different diciplins have tried to explain this question. Sigmund Freud was early in his field. According to him, the individual is religious in order to escape the responsibility that comes with growing up. For him, religiosity was more or less unambiguously a bad solution.

Cost a sentence.

It can also be argued that one or another spiritual faith is a way of constructing a life perception, creating in impressions, portraying human challenges and the big questions, etc., that can be good for a human being. Several later psychoanalysts have argued for this (Rizzuto, yyy?,Winnicott, et al.

"Hardwired for God"

That this may even be natural, that we are cognitively prepared to imagine and arrange our thoughts and feelings according to such a form. A scientist like Beyer (yer?) imagines that this process is learned. Others, such as NN (yy?) see this tendency as biologically inherited: That man is " Other suggestions are that we should be cognitively prepared, even "hardwired" (ref) to be religious and imagine a reality hinsides our own, that – regardless of that there is something such metaphysical to relate to. That this is a kind of cognitive finesse trained in parallel with evolution. It could explain why people in, in short, all cultures and times had religious beliefs. Hardwired for God."

Psychologist Gordon Allport argued that "There's no atheists in foxholes", that is, when man is under great pressure or even danger to life, he will fall back on a deeply inherited tendency to think of a higher power. Other research has questioned this claim and shown, for example, with interviews with U.S. soldiers with an atheistic outlook on life during the Iraq War, that they did not at all fall into religious thinking (NN, yy?)

Even if there is something in this with a cognitive or neurological predisposition to religiosity, does it possibly not explain why the focus on the individual's spirituality can be different?

Magnetic stimulation of the brain.

Experiments have been done to use weak magnets on the head to try to evoke "mystical experiences", similar to those of some individuals, who have been able to strengthen their own faith, and partly served as a kind of merit for people who have come to serve as leaders of an organization or congregation. The results have been mixed. Granqvist (yy, referenced in Granqvist et al, 2014) has tested replicating these experiments with negative results.

Neurological factors.

Religious experiences are generally attributed great importance by religious themselves, as testimony that there exists a "spiritual dimension" in existence. This is regardless of whether it is the person himself or, for example, a spiritual authority who had them. Jaqueline Borg (yy?) at Karolinska Institutet has been researched on certain neurotransmitters that could possibly explain such "mystical experiences" in elevated doses.

A connection between the amount of serotonin receptors in the brain and openness to spiritual experiences etc (Borg). The difference here can be between different kinds of religiosity, rather than between religiosity in general and those who do not believe.

Compensatory and correspondence hypotheses, respectively.

Granqvist (2000, etc.) presents a possible hypothesis for this. That people with a secure connection, who grew up in a religious home, tend to become religious themselves could be explained by a "theory of correspondence". The fact that people with precarious attachment who grew up in a non-religious home become religious can often be explained by a "compensation theory".

Granqvist, most recently in 2014!

Compensation hypothesis & Correspondence hypothesis (Farias, Hanengraff, Granqvist?)

Correspondence and compensation hypothesis respectively (Granqvist/Kirkpatrick?)

(Farias, Hanengraff, Granqvist) Compensation hypothesis & correspondence hypothesis, two options

(Granqvist & Kirkpatrick) A development of the two hypotheses of how a religious interest can arise, with a third variant

The authors note that the studies conducted on the New Age and affiliation up to it (Farias &Granqvist, 2007), have "uniformly and strongly supported the compensation hypothesis. Individuals who, according to self-reports or independent judges, have experienced parental insensitivity while growing up are particulary inclined to endorse the New Age".

According to the correlation hypothesis (Kirkpatrick?), anyone who grew up in emotionally stable conditions in a religious home will take over their parents' faith, often with a loving image of God, etc. Anyone who has grown up in emotionally unstable or precarious conditions in a religious home will tend not to take over their parents' religion. If the individual nevertheless becomes religious, it either happens as a result of a life crisis (being "saved") later in life, or he or she becomes a supporter of the NA. This is called the emotional compensation hypothesis (Kirkpatrick, Granqvist?)

Later, scientists had to modify the theory so that it did not become (the word?). How can one explain that a person who has grown up in emotionally difficult conditions either has spiritual interests, or does not have spiritual interests? (Kirkpatrick, Granqvist & Hagekull etc.

Why the latter? Well, NA exhibits certain characteristics that are supposed to be familiar to those who have been accused of psychological and/or physical abuse, neglect, etc., during the formative years of childhood.

Is religion harmful?

Briefly present research done on traditional religion that shows that people who attend church generally feel better, etc. A couple of knockdowns…

There has also been research on destructive sects, which have been able to show that these individuals are not doing well, whether when they are in the sect, and even worse when they come out of it.

There has been some research on members of various new-age groups as well, including Hare Krishna, who has shown that these are on the line between being normal and having psychotic symptoms or signs of delusions (Peters, 2001; ref in Farias, Claridge & Lalljee, 2005).

What about the disorganized newness?

Are people religious in different ways?

This is an issue that seems to have been more vivid in the childhood of psychology. While Sigmund Freud (yy?) looked more unequivocally negatively at religiosity, William James, who was a contemporary of Freud, felt that it was possible to differentiate further in the phenomenon. James coined the terms "sick soul" and "healthy soul," respectively, where the former represented an adaptive, healthy religiosity (yyy?, p?). Similar divisions later occur in, for example, William Meissner, who speaks of "extrinsic" and "intrinsic" religiosity or spirituality, respectively.

Gordon Allport made a split into "mature" and "mature" religiosity, respectively. As a distinctive feature of the latter form, Allport emphasizes that the person is "able to maintain links between inconsistencies". About his book "The Individual and His Religion" writes Nielsen's RelPs?? (Oh? that the

"shows Allport's interest in people as individuals. It also illustrates how people may use religion in different ways. Mature religious sentiment is how Allport characterized the person whose approach to religion is dynamic, open-minded, and able to maintain links between inconsistencies. In contrast, Immature religion is self-serving and generally represents the negative stereotypes that people have about religion."

Humanistic psychology, with foreground figures such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers?, arose, among other things, as a reaction against reductionism in both psychoanalysis and behaviourism. The view of things like "spiritual experiences" was one of the areas where contemporary psychology was perceived to have too narrow a framework.

Abraham Maslow was interested in people's so-called "highlights", which possibly overlap with things that respondents tell about and think about. Maslow claimed to be able to distinguish a category of individuals he called "self-realization":

"In a brief summary, the most important characteristics of self-realization people can be said to be as follows: A more precise conception and acceptance of reality, including human nature; spontaneity, a healthy appreciation and creativity in everyday activities; relative seclusion from the immediate physical and social environment and from the culture at large; deeper, more satisfying personal relationships, most likely with a small number of other self-realization people; strong feelings of identification and sympathy with all other people; democratic (non-authoritarian) character structure; non-hostile, philosophical humor; centering around problems outside themselves that reflect a broad set of values; clear moral and ethical principles that are applied consistently as well as an experience of having dissolved prominent dichotomies and opposite pairs." (from Maslow, 1970; ref in Wulff, p.521)

This branch of humanistic psychology has now been transferred to what is now called Transpersonal Psychology (yyy?). As the name suggests, representatives of this branch of psychology envision a higher instance in the psyche, "beyond personality."

Lukoff & Co

Some believe that there are experiences that are at risk of being assessed such as psychotic reactions or such illness, which have a different etiology and often another (more favorable) prognosis. Prior to working on the DSM-4, psychiatrist Lukoff and more put forward arguments that an upcoming version of the manual should be able to differentiate these experiences. And mixed forms (Lukoff).

(Lukoff, ?) More pathologizing or dismissive in the DSM-3. Better in the DSM-4 (who writes about it? Rizzuto?) Lukoff and colleagues worked to introduce a "Spiritual emergency" category into the DSM-4, and partially succeeded

Assagioli.

An early representative of such a view was the Italian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Alberto Assagioli, who, like Carl Gustav Jung, early on taught Sigmund Freud but eventually, partly because of a lack of consensus on spiritual issues, broke with him. In an interview in Psychology Today (December 1974), with a Sam Keen, Assagioli explains how his approach differs from Freud's:

"We pay more attention to the higher unconscious and to the development of the transpersonal self. Freud said, "I am interested only in the basement of the human being." Psychosynthesis is interested in the whole building. We try to build an elevator which will allow a person access to every level of his personality. After all, a building with only a basement is very limited. We want to open up the terrace where you can sun-bathe or look at the stars. Our concern is the synthesis of all areas of the personality. That means psychosynthesis is holistic, global and inclusive"