COMMENTARY: Mysticism, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Still Crazy After All These Years?
Kelley Raab (this issue) takes on a tough challenge in her article on mysticism and creativity. To begin with, despite the fact that the topic of mysticism and religious experience has been the object of much research (e.g., Hood, 1995) and has occupied an important place in the work of several foun...
| Published in: | The international journal for the psychology of religion |
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| Authors: | ; |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
2003
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| In: |
The international journal for the psychology of religion
Year: 2003, Volume: 13, Issue: 2, Pages: 97-109 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Kelley Raab (this issue) takes on a tough challenge in her article on mysticism and creativity. To begin with, despite the fact that the topic of mysticism and religious experience has been the object of much research (e.g., Hood, 1995) and has occupied an important place in the work of several founding fathers of the psychology of religion, such as James (1902), Otto (1917/1950), and Freud (1930), this research domain remains characterized by much conceptual and empirical confusion. This state of affairs should not surprise us. Mysticism and religious experience in general are private experiences that therefore pose tremendous theoretical and methodological problems for researchers. This was only recently illustrated by two discussions in this journal, one on the well-known model of religious experience of Batson, Schoenrade, and Ventis (1993) (Boyatzis, 2001; Edwards & Lowis, 2001; Hay, 2001; Schoenrade, 2001), the other on the role of the self in mystical experience (Baumeister & Exline, 2002; Hood, 2002; Keortge, 2002). Also, Raab doesn't make things easier when she, apart from mysticism, also tackles the problem of creativity and its relationship with mysticism and religious experience in general. Just as is the case for religious experience, creativity is difficult to investigate, which is probably one of the main reasons why it has been so long neglected by mainstream psychology. And finally, approaching the relationship between mysticism and creativity from a psychodynamic point of view doesn't make things easier. Psychoanalytic approaches toward religious behavior and experience, however interesting and encompassing they may be, are often considered overly reductionistic, simplistic, and not empirically supported (e.g., Wulff, 1997). |
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| ISSN: | 1532-7582 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The international journal for the psychology of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1207/S15327582IJPR1302_02 |