INTRODUCTION: SECTION ONE
xxxvii
such as the works of Joseph Marechal, Robert Forman, Huston
Smith, or G. William Barnard.
44
In the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual (DSM-IV), psychiatric medicine has at least recognized the
category of religious and spiritual emergencies — that is, the pres-
ence of psychotic-like symptoms which do not need medication,
but are the function of spiritual conflicts about belief that require
only some kind of religious counseling to get through the crisis.
Mind/body medicine, such as that put forward by Herbert Benson,
clearly associates the relaxation response and the healing effects
of the placebo with interior mystical experience, particularly in
advanced Buddhist meditators.
45
With the exception of a few entrepreneurial, lights such as Walter
H. Clark,
Wilson van Dusen, or Walter Pahnke;
depth psychologists,
such as Carl Jung; or some of the modern day transpersonalists such
as Charles Tart or Stanislav Grof, or neurotheologists such as the
late Eugene D’Aquili and Andrew Newberg,
46
mainstream academic,
scientific psychology has stayed remarkably insulated from the
subject of mysticism. And while radical changes continue out in
the psychotherapeutic counter-culture, an arena where just such a
spiritual psychology of comparative mystical states is flourishing,
47
the direction mainstream academic psychology is going in —
44
Marechal, J., Studies in the psychology of the mystics. Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1964;
Forman , RKC (ed). The Problem of pure consciousness: Mysticism and philosophy. New York;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990; Smith, Huston, Why religion matters: The fate of the
human spirit in an age of disbelief. San Francisco, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
45
Lukoff, D., & Lu, F. (1988). Transpersonal psychology research review: Mystical
experience.
Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 21(1), 161–184; Taylor, E. I., The perfect
correlation between mind and brain: The Varieties and mind/body medicine. Journal of
Speculative Philosophy. Centenary issue celebrating
The Varieties. Guest edited by James
Anderson. 2002. In press.
46
Clark, Walter H., The psychology of religion: An introduction to religious experience and
behavior. New York, Macmillan, 1958; Van Dusen, Wilson,
Beauty, wonder, and the mystical
mind. West Chester, Pa.:
Chrysalis Books, 1999; Barnard, G. William,
Exploring unseen worlds:
William James and the philosophy of mysticism. Albany: State University of New York Press,
1997; Charles T. Tart (ed). Altered states of consciousness. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Harper,
1990; C. G. Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga. Edited with an introduction by Sonu
Shamdasani. Bollengin Series. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press; London: Routledge,
1996; Grof, Stanislav, Psychology of the future: Lessons from modern consciousness research.
Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2000; D’Aquili, Eugene G. & Andrew B.
Newberg The mystical mind: Probing the biology of religious experience. Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 1999.
47
Taylor, E. I. Shadow Culture: Psychology and spirituality in America. Washington DC:
Counterpoint Press, 2000.
xxxviii
INTRODUCTION: SECTION ONE
toward cognitive neuroscience and the medical model — remains
reductionistic and exclusionary.
We may predict, however, that the humanistic implications of
the neuroscience revolution are already pervasive enough that the
revolution itself has now passed out of the hands of the reductionists
who started it, making its eventual outcome completely unknown.
48
All we know now is that the heart of this revolution is a biology
of consciousness and that it is having tremendous philosophical
effects on a re-examination of the way science itself is conducted.
Into such a breach a new generation of psychologists may step who
are more philosophical — meaning in this case more realistic —
about how science is carried on, more phenomenological in under-
standing the person, more existential about their absolute assurance
of method, more cognizant of the reality of transcendent experiences,
more cross-cultural and comparative, and more visionary in the
way they conceive the agenda of their discipline. At that point,
we may see a revival of the field called the psychology of religion
within psychology as James originally conceived it in The Varieties.
48
Taylor, E. I. William James on the demise of positivism in American psychology.
In Rieber, R. and Salzinger, K. (eds)
Psychology: Theoretical and historical perspectives
(pp. 101–134). Wash. DC: American Psychological Association, 2nd ed., 1998.
INTRODUCTION: SECTION TWO
xxxix
Introduction: Section Two
The Return to James:
Psychology, Religion and
the Amnesia of Neuroscience
1
Jeremy R. Carrette
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience.
T. S. Eliot ‘The Dry Salvages’, Four Quartets
2
In the one hundred years since the publication of William James’s
The Varieties of Religious Experience (hereafter
VRE) the psychologi-
cal study of religion has been endlessly transformed by the “varieties”
of psychological theory. Psychoanalytical, behaviourist, humanis-
tic, cognitive, social, evolutionary and neuro-scientific theories have
all had their turn in shaping the subject since James delivered his
seminal Gifford lectures in Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902. In each of
the various theoretical fashions of psychology, religion has been
subject to examination and been positively and negatively scruti-
nised. The space of the academic study of psychology and religion
has in this time been neglected and resurrected, critiqued and
refashioned, and, even, refined and obscured. It has been pulled
between the demands of scientific endeavour and the socio-political
1
The idea of a “return to James” is taken from J. M. Barbalet, who saw how a return to
James’s theory of emotion was necessary for a more comprehensive appreciation of his work
within contemporary social psychology. See Barbalet, J. M., “William James’ Theory of
Emotions: Filling in the Picture” in Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, Vol. 29, No. 3,
1999, pp. 251–266. The “return to James” in the present essay is in order to appreciate what
is forgotten about James and to overcome “disciplined” readings, which ignore the archive
and the complexity of his texts.
2
“The Dry Salvages” from Four Quartets from Collected Poems 1909–1962, by T. S. Eliot,
London, Faber & Faber Ltd., 1974, p. 195. © 1941 by T. S. Eliot and renewed by 1969 Esue
Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc., I would like to thank to Faber &
Faber and Harcourt for permission to use this quotation.