The Biographical Process

The Biographical Process
Author: Frank E. Reynolds
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2014-01-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110805839

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

History of Psychology in Autobiography

History of Psychology in Autobiography
Author: Leendert P. Mos
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2009-06-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0387884998

Since the 17th century, autobiography has an honorable place in the study of history. In 1930, the preeminent historian of psychology, Edwin Boring, writes that a science separated from its history lacks direction and promises a future of uncertain importance. To understand what psychology is and what it is becoming, the autobiographies of famous psychologists is history at it best. Here we find model inquirers of the science who offer a personalized account of themselves and their vocation in the context of the history of the science. What is characteristic of many of those who have contributed to an alternate vision of psychological science is that they never considered themselves, or were considered by others, as belonging to the mainstream of the discipline. In considering an alternative history of psychology in autobiography, the editor invited contributors whose research and writings have pushed the discipline in other directions, pushed its limits, and whose scholarship finds its philosophical framework outside the discipline altogether. If these contributors may not be model inquirers, their scholarship is very much a matter of consequence for those who wish to understand psychology. Among the outliers included here are those who devoted themselves to the writing of psychology, examining its history, theories, research and professional practices, and who enthusiastically embraced, over the course of their lives, the discipline as a human science. Their influence has been subtle as has been their appeal to many students who affection for the discipline finds its promise in a discerning self-awareness and a critical understanding of others and their worlds. This volume is not simply a collection of personal chronologies which might inspire or lend appreciation to a younger generation. Our contributors write from their personal and professional experience, of course, but they write of their thinking and understanding of the psyche as an aspect of human life, of psychology as an academic form of human sciences’ inquiry, and so bring to bear their scientific and philosophical imagination to their personal challenges in their chosen vocation as psychologists. Our contributors cover a broad swath of the second half of the 20th century, the century of psychology. Nurturing the discipline from within various philosophical, social-political, and cultural roots, their autobiographies exemplify marginality, if not alienation, from the mainstream, even as their professional and personal lives give expression to engaged scholarship, commitment to vocation and, straightforwardly and reflectively, a love of the heart. From Germany, Carl Graumann, from France, Erika Apfelbaum, from Canada, David Bakan and Kurt Danziger, and from the United States, Amedeo Giorgi, Robert Rieber, and Joseph Rychlak, relate their lives to the larger contexts of our times. Their personal stories are an integral part of the historiography of our discipline. Indeed, a contribution to historiography of our discipline is constituted in their autobiographical self-presentations, for their writings attest as much to their lives as model inquirers as they do to the possibility of psychology as a human science.

The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad

The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad
Author: Jonathan E. Brockopp
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages:
Release: 2010-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 113982838X

As the Messenger of God, Muhammad stands at the heart of the Islamic religion, revered by Muslims throughout the world. The Cambridge Companion to Muhammad comprises a collection of essays by some of the most accomplished scholars in the field exploring the life and legacy of the Prophet. The book is divided into three sections, the first charting his biography and the milieu into which he was born, the revelation of the Qur'ān, and his role within the early Muslim community. The second part assesses his legacy as a law-maker, philosopher, and politician and, finally, in the third part, chapters examine how Muhammad has been remembered across history in biography, prose, poetry, and, most recently, in film and fiction. Essays are written to engage and inform students, teachers, and readers coming to the subject for the first time. They will come away with a deeper appreciation of the breadth of the Islamic tradition, of the centrality of the role of the Prophet in that tradition, and, indeed, of what it means to be a Muslim today.

Psychological Analyses and the Historical Jesus

Psychological Analyses and the Historical Jesus
Author: Bas Van Os
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2010-12-23
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567380432

Since Albert Schweitzer's monumental work, nearly a century ago, psychology has been banned from Historical Jesus research. But both disciplines have advanced and it is time to review the contribution that psychology can make. Bas Van Os examines the problems which surround both the historical and the psychological study of Jesus, such as the fact that we can only work with the surviving traditions that some of his early followers left us. Following this, Van Os proposes a theoretical framework that combines sound psychological theories and critical biblical scholarship to explain how Jesus' life and religious experience impacted the beliefs of his friends and family after his death.

Sacred Biography

Sacred Biography
Author: Thomas J. Heffernan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1992-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 019536001X

Though medieval "saints' lives" are among the oldest literary texts of Western vernacular culture, they are routinely patronized as "pious fiction" by modern historiography. This book demonstrates that to characterize the genre as fiction is to misunderstand the intentions of medieval authors, who were neither credulous fools nor men blinded by piety. Concentrating on English texts, Heffernan reconstructs the medieval perspective and considers sacred biography in relation to the community for which it was written; identifies the genre's rhetorical practices and purposes; and demonstrates the syncretistic way in which the life of the medieval saint was transformed from oral tales to sacred text. In the process, Heffernan not only achieves a more contextually accurate understanding of the medieval saints' lives, but details a new critical method that has important implications for the practice of textual criticism.

Psychohistory in Psychology of Religion

Psychohistory in Psychology of Religion
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2021-11-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004496181

Psychology of religion is one of the rare fields in psychology where an interdisciplinary approach has been preserved. Psychohistory especially, understood as the systematic application of psychological knowledge in explorations of the past, has enjoyed substantial attention. Traditionally, the emphasis in such studies has been on biographical research. This volume attempts to broaden the horizon and to include studies of phenomena as well on a group or subcultural level. The volume contains chapters on such subjects as apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Belgium, attitudes towards suicide in seventeenth-century Sweden, the pillarization of Dutch Calvinists. There are also studies of famous individuals such as Hitler, Stalin, Freud, Van Gogh and J.H. Newman. Among the contributors are well-known authors like Donald Capps, Michael P. Carroll, William W. Meissner, Ana-Marìa Rizzuto and Antoine Vergote.

Spiritualism and the Foundations of C. G. Jung's Psychology

Spiritualism and the Foundations of C. G. Jung's Psychology
Author: F. X. Charet
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2015-04-17
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0791498786

Charet uncovers some of the reasons why Jung's psychology finds itself living between science and religion. He demonstrates that Jung's early life was influenced by the experiences, beliefs, and ideas that characterized Spiritualism and that arose out of the entangled relationship that existed between science and religion in the late nineteenth century. Spiritualism, following it inception in 1848, became a movement that claimed to be a scientific religion and whose controlling belief was that the human personality survived death and could be reached through a medium in trance. The author shows that Jung's early experiences and preoccupation with Spiritualism influenced his later ideas of the autonomy, personification, and quasi-metaphysical nature of the archetype, the central concept and one of the foundations upon which he built his psychology.