Psychology of Religion, Essay Example

Crapps’ 1986 text, An Introduction to Psychology of Religion, endeavors to formulate a highly rigorous account of the phenomenon of religion from a psychological perspective. However, what Crapps implies by psychology, is not some objectification of the phenomenon, whereby he would merely reduce religion to a series of practices that are taken out of their existential context. Rather, his initial theoretical maneuver is to approach religion from a certain phenomenological viewpoint, whereby Crapps would assess how individuals experience religion from their subjective stance. He attempts to apply the conceptual terminology of psychology to explain not only why religion exists, but why it continues to function and how it is experienced.

Crapps makes this crucial methodological approach clear at the very outset of his tome, in the first section addressing the “Psychology of Religion.” In this introductory section, Crapps attempts to outline both what he understands as psychology and what he understands as religion. These are basic orientating definitions, that will be fleshed out throughout the course of the work. Hence, at the beginning Crapps presents his view of psychology as inextricably bound up to the study of phenomenology, whereby the crucial questions Crapps phrases as follows: “The question is, “What do persons identify as their religion?” or “What functions as religion for persons?” (9) Hence, the author is attempting to understand how the human subject becomes enmeshed in religious convention, ritual and practice, an enmeshment that transforms how the subject correlates to the world around him/her. As Crapps underscores, this is not merely a notion of “normative statements”, (9), as though being a part of a religion was simply a case of rule-following. Rather, Crapps is intrigued by the question of how such religious framework engenders the unique viewpoint the subject has upon the world.

In part two, Crapps summarizes classical and contemporary psychological approaches to religion. What he views as the most crucial discovery of an approach, such as that of Freud’s is the following: “The most significant contribution of psychoanalysis, is the concept that factors outside the realm of awareness influence the formation and continuance of religious life.” (90) Hence, the subject’s belonging to a religion is not merely an issue of consciously conforming to a set of religious practices. Rather, psychology, insofar as it emphasizes the unconscious, stresses that such religious performances are ultimately unaware to the subject, yet they nevertheless inform the latter’s world. The key to the psychology of religion is to tease out how this unawareness creates the world-view of the religious subject: all variants of psychology cling to this basic insight, Crapps notes, although in various forms.

In Part 3, Crapps moves away from his summaries, to develop a more personal theory. He suggests that religious phenomena can be mapped onto psychological theories of subjective development, such as the commons stages of childhood, youth and adulthood. (163-179) this provides a means to integrate psychological concepts such as life-stages with respective approaches to the religious phenomena: we encounter religion differently, and religions structure the individuals in different manners, throughout our lives.

In part four Crapps switches to the forms of religion, as opposed to concentrating on the subject. This, of course, bears an importance for the subject, since these different forms of religion shape them in radically different ways. Categories such as religions of authority, becoming and spontaneity, evoke different forms of religion: for example, the religion of authority resembles psychological discourses that emphasize the importance of the father as determining the “law”, such as in Freud, who ties “the origin of religion with the Oedipal period.” (289) what is at stake in Crapps’ interpretation, however, is that religions themselves can come in diverse forms.

Crapps thus provides a logically developed summary of religions. He is not concerned with objectively re-constructing religion, since this strips religion of its very meaning: religions exist as world-views and thus should be examined from within the horizon of the subject. This phenomenological insight is further supplemented by his psychological approach, which emphasizes that what occurs in subjectivity, we are not always aware of. Accordingly, there are different forms in which subjectivity exists, as evidenced by the division of the subject’s growth into categories of age. At the same time, Crapps also emphasizes that religion itself can take different forms, and thus produce different subjective-world views. It is the thoroughness and lucidness of Crapps’ account that is the work’s greatest merit, serving as a valuable introduction to the precise questions psychology may ask about religion.

References

Crapps, R.W. (1986). An Introduction to the Psychology of Religion. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press.