Psychology, religion and spirituality

In January 2002 The Psychologist published a masterly review article by the late distinguished social psychologist Michael Argyle, entitled 'State of the art: Religion'. Nine years later, following the events of 7 July 2005 and the rise of 'new atheism', religion and the related concept of spirituality have become more prominent in public consciousness. There are now more British psychologists involved in the study of religion, as researchers, teachers or practitioners. It is therefore timely that the field is reviewed, this time by several writers in this single issue of The Psychologist

BRINGING THE ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE OF PSYCHOLOGY TO BEAR ON THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE

This article is a wide-ranging consideration of the role that contemporary academic psychology might play in the study of the Bible. I begin by examining the historical reasons for suspicion of psychology within the community of biblical scholarship, focusing on several perennial objections. Having addressed these objections, I go on to set out a framework for the legitimate use of psychology in enhancing understanding of the process of production and reception of the biblical texts, and of elucidating their meaning. Finally, I suggest that some contemporary methodological quality-control systems from psychology might inform the question of what constitutes a good reading of a particular text. I explore this issue further by using the example of trauma processing in relation to the New Testament, suggesting that if the text is to be received as transformative, a good reading is likely to be dissonant, challenging, or ugly. © 2012 The Author

Religious/Spiritual Well-Being, Coping Styles, and Personality Dimensions in People With Substance Use Disorders

Religiosity and spirituality have been found to be negatively associated with a range of addictions. It has been suggested that religious/spiritual well-being might play an important role in the development, course, and recovery from addictive disorders. A sample of addiction in-patients (N = 389) was assessed using the Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being (MI-RSWB) and compared with a matched group of nonaddicted community controls (N = 389). RSWB was found to be substantially lower in people with substance use disorders compared to the normal sample. Discriminate functional analysis showed that Experiences of Sense and Meaning, General Religiosity, and Forgiveness were the dimensions of RSWB that strongly distinguished the groups. Within the group of people with substance use disorders, RSWB was strongly positively associated with the personality dimensions of Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness as well as Sense of Coherence and positive Coping styles. The study suggests that therapeutic intervention programs focusing on building a positive and meaningful personal framework, akin to that of a religious/spiritual orientation, may contribute to positive outcomes in addiction treatment

Dimensions of religious/spiritual well-being and schizotypal personality

Dimensions of religious/spiritual well being (RSWB; such as hope, forgiveness, or general religiosity) have been examined comprehensively, and its positive relation to subjective well-being has been confirmed. However, there also might be facets of RSWB linked to mental illness (e.g. delusional ideas). The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between different dimensions of RSWB, magical thinking as an indicator of schizotypy and Eysencḱs three personality factors (psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism), as there might be facets of RSWB also linked to mental illness (e.g. delusional ideas). One hundred and two undergraduate students (53 female, 49 male) completed the Multidimensional Inventory of Religious/Spiritual Well-Being (MI-RSWB), the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire in short version (EPQ-RK) together with the Magical Ideation Scale. Results indicate that facets of RSWB based on magical thinking could also be understood as neurotic symptoms. This underlines the hypothesis, that there might be pathogenetic as well as salutogenetic aspects of religiosity/spirituality associated with personality and subjective well-being. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd

Mindfulness in positive psychology: the science of meditation and wellbeing [Itai Ivtzan and Tim Lomas (eds.): Routledge, London, UK, 2016, 348]

This publication is the latest volume to bring together two prominent themes in contemporary psychological science: mindfulness and positive psychology. The editors, Ivtzan and Lomas 2016, based at the University of East London, are well versed in both. Over the last 10 years, the group of academics associated with the London-based Masters in Applied Positive Psychology have maintained a relentless output of publication. Their expanding list of authored and edited volumes, which now amounts to a small library of leading texts, is governed by two complementary intentions: to disseminate positive psychology through introductory textbooks (Hefferon and Boniwell 2011; Lomas et al. 2014), and to challenge the field in various directions. Previous works have challenged the tendency in positive psychology to ignore embodiment (Hefferon 2013), its frequent failure to acknowledge the darker side of life (Ivtzan et al. 2015), and its acritical adherence to some of its most prominent theories (Brown et al. 2017)