Religion and psychological theory

pp. 123-139

in: Graham Richards, Psychology, religion, and the nature of the soul, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

In Chap. 3 I proposed that Psychology was jointly constituted by religious and scientific parties and interests rather than simply being a scientific development to which the religious had to respond. If this is the case we would predict that Psychological theories and concepts of its disciplinary goals would in some ways reflect the religious (and indeed anti-religious) convictions of those formulating them. It has long been acknowledged that Psychological theories vary in character along several dimensions. These include the perennial "nature versus nurture" axis, holism versus reductionism, "top-down" versus "bottom up", social constructionist versus positivist, individual (idiographic) versus generalist or normative (nomothetic) and so on. Psychology's goals are similarly diversely conceived as, for example, governmental/managerial, liberationist, therapeutic, "purely scientific" and medical. Psychologists have helped design bomb-sights, devised educational tests, sought to fight race prejudice, tried to rehabilitate criminals, helped individuals in quest of their "true selves", advised football teams on morale and a thousand other things. Our question here then is how far the explicit or implicit religious positions of Psychologists can be identified in that heterogeneity of both theory and practice.