Jacob A. Belzen’s research while affiliated with University of Amsterdam and other places

As a scientific enterprise, the psychology of religion is vitally dependent on developments in psychology in general, sharing its strengths as well as its weaknesses. The article discusses psychology being haunted by a number of paradoxes that resonate in psychological research on religion as well. As a prominent specimen of such empirical psychology of religion, the oeuvre of R. W. Hood, a well-known contemporary US contributor to that field, is selected. Another stage in a long-standing cheerful dialogue with Hood, the article points out some remarkable parallels with the oeuvres of Hall and James, founding fathers of US psychology. While critically engaging with some of the core issues and tendencies in Hood’s publications, the article explains the sense in which his struggle to find a balance with regard to three paradoxical tendencies will be a major task for the field during the next few decades of the 21st century.

This deliberately essayistic paper deals with strengths of and limits to cultural psychology, especially in its application to research on religion. It is presented as only one possible approach, composite in itself and drawing on a variety of theories, insights, methods and techniques, but working on one of the fundamental aspects of human psychological functioning, and therefore as indispensable to efforts to explore and understand anything called religious as any other psychological approach may be. Furthermore, the paper makes an explicit plea for an interdisciplinary approach to psychology. Whether researchers will employ cultural psychology or another approaches from contemporary psychological sciences will depend on their personal preferences, their professional training, the type of context they are functioning and hopefully also on the kind of phenomenon pointed out to them as religious by a certain (sub)culture.

After reminding some of the historical relationships between psychology and religion, this chapter explains what is usually understood by psychology of religion in a proper sense, differentiating it from neighboring fields such as ‘psychology and religion’ and ‘pastoral psychology.’ The chapter continues to point out why it is more appropriate to speak of ‘psychologies of religions’ than of ‘psychology of religion,’ discussing in which sense one could speak about progress in psychological reasoning about religion. A typology for the diverse kinds of research in the psychology of religion is proposed, and cultural psychological approaches to the study of religion are shown to be indispensable for any comprehensive psychological analysis of religious phenomena and states of affairs.

This chapter supplies a response to some of the comments in the previous chapters, especially to some misunderstandings, criticisms, and controversies.

This chapter discusses whether, to which extent and in what way IAPR's history can serve as an empirical basis for reflection on some of the theoretic basic issues in the psychology of religion. Attention is given to some enduring problems facing the discipline and to some different types of psychology of religion. A new hypothesis is formulated about IAPR's founder suddenly leaving the field, followed by a brief introduction to the volume.

This article, based on extensive empirical research and occasioned by the centennial of both the present journal Archiv für Religionspsychologie (AfRp, Archive for the Psychology of Religion) and its owner, the International Association for the Psychology of Religion (iapr), deals extensively with the activities in the psychology of religion of Wilhelm Stählin (1883-1975), the prime force behind the iapr and founding editor of the AfRp. The article discusses Stählins profound methodological contributions to the literature. It analyses the rather informal “founding” of the iapr on June 10, 1914 and describes its aims and first activities. Sadly, what had started so promising was destroyed by World War I: the most active members of the board were drafted into the army and had no time left at all for any activities in the field of the psychology of religion. As a consequence of the economic misery in Germany after the war, there was even no paper available to print a next volume of the AfRp (which had been almost ready in summer 1914) until 1921. In the preface to that volume, Stählin articulated his inability to say anything about a possible future of both AfRp and iapr. Paradoxically, the beginning had become an end, and should only in 1928 be followed by a new start. (For a more extensive abstract, also in English: see at the end of the article.)

In 2014, the International Association for the Psychology of Religion (IAPR) will have its centennial, and so will its scientific journal, the present Archive for the Psychology of Religion [Archly fur Religionspsychologie, ARp]. This first article on IAPR's (pre)history analyses the fate of the forerunner of ARp, which was published from 1907-1913. When psychology in general began to develop as an empirical, research-based "scientific discipline" since the midst of the 19th century, the psychology of religion became a prominent application of that "new" science of psychology, involving many of the founding fathers of present day psychology. Shortly after evoking these beginnings, the focus of the present article turns to the development of early scientific infrastructure for the psychology of religion. While the psychology of religion was initiated by European scholars such as Fechner (1801-1887) and Wundt (1832-1920), it was the organizer of American psychology in general who started the first journal in this field, G. Stanley Hall (1844-1924). Through his European admirer Gustav Vorbrodt (1860-1929), Hall's journal may have been an inspiration to the founding of the first European journal for the psychology of religion, the German-speaking Zeitschrift fur Religionspsychologie. Most likely the psychiatrist Johannes Bresler (1866-1942) took the initiative to start this journal and had invited pastor Gustav Vorbrodt (1860-1929), who had already repeatedly and vigorously called for psychological study of religion, to join him as editor. Consequently, the subtitle of the journal was 'Grenzfragen der Theologie and der Medizin [Boundary Questions in Theology and Medicine].' The present paper discusses both Vorbrodt's and Bresler's work in the realm of the psychology of religion, as it does the contributions of two further editors; the philosopher-historian of religion Georg Runze (1852-1938), an honorary professor at Berlin University, and Otto Klemm (1884-1939), a collaborator of Wilhelm Wundt and later the director of the latter's psychological laboratory in Leipzig and the first to hold a professorship for applied psychology. Several reasons are discussed to answer the question why the Zeitschrift fur Religionspsychologie ceased publishing. Based on empirical-archival research, special attention is given to scholarly disagreements (and rivalry) behind the transition of the Zeitschrift Religionspsychologie to the new Archly fur Religionspsychologie.

Criticizing some psychological approaches that speak in too general terms about both music and religion, this article turns to a precise empirical observation and asks what psychology might possibly contribute to its understanding, after first necessarily questioning what terms such as 'religion', 'religious music', 'religious experience' encompass. Given the nature of the leading question, a cultural-psychological approach is chosen. After refuting a number of commonly heard assertions, and drawing on a number of psychological theories, the article then discusses several empirical observations and argues that contemporary psychology has indeed achieved some progress in dealing with classical questions.

Wer aus der Psychologie heraus sich bemüht etwas über das Verhältnis zwischen Musik und Religion vorzutragen, sieht sich, wie durchweg wenn ein einigermaßen interessantes Thema formuliert wird, vor ein mer à boire gestellt. Das Problem besteht nicht nur darin, dass es mehr Beziehungen zwischen Musik und Religion gibt als man sich vorstellt. Das größere Problem ist vor allem, dass mit den Bezeichnungen “Musik”, “Religion” und “Psychologie” äußerst heterogene Wirklichkeiten angesprochen werden, die jeweils den Bestrebungen zurKonzeptualisierung zu widerstreben scheinen.

I started out as a medical student; I wanted to become a physician. My hopes were dashed very early on, however: I decided after only a few semesters to change over to theology, but continued to study psychology and theology in tandem. In 1952 I obtained my PhD in theology, having written my dissertation on Johann Christoph Blumhardt (Scharfenberg, 1959). This study of Blumhardt’s importance to spiritual care was my first independent step toward the psychology of religion, although I had become acquainted to some extent with the subject during my studies. I studied in Jena, Halle, and Tübingen, in the last also with Eduard Spranger (1882–1963), who in his late years once again lectured and published on the psychology of religion in a most impressive way.