Spirituality: Explicit and implicit. Hindrances to the scientific status of research on spirituality?
Keywords:
spirituality; theory; concept; transformation
Abstract
Although spirituality is a popular subject of research in many fields of science about man today, there still are problems with defining it. Their causes, at least in psychology, though unfounded, include distortions reflecting the scientist’s personal bias: apologetic on the one hand and anti-fideist on the other. Bias of the first type often stems from the beliefs, held by the author of a given concept, that go beyond the paradigm of science. This refers to two concepts recognizing the existence of the spiritual dimension of the human being as substantially different from the psychological dimension: V. E. Frankl’s logotheory, being a concept of the spiritual dimension as the source of the need for meaning, and D. Helminiak’s concept, according to which spirituality is the realization of the principle of authentic transcendence of the self. Such concepts are referred to as explicit. However, there are also explicit concepts of spirituality acceptable in academic psychology; the described example is the concept of spirituality developed by J. Averill. Bias of the second type dominated Western psychology for a long time. It may be the cause for the term “spirituality” not being used by the authors of the concepts whose distinctive features appear in this article. These are the implicit concepts of spirituality. Their three examples are: Terror Management Theory (developed by T. Pyszczyński, J. Greenberg, and S. Solomon), the Meaning Maintenance Model (authored mainly by T. Proulx and S. Heine), and Józef Kozielecki’s transgressive concept of man. They include similar elements, but the transgressive concept appears to be the most useful. The conclusion contains proposals of research using the ideas of meaning, coping with absurdity, and the form of transgression as ones that lead to spiritual transformation.
References
Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health, stress, and coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Aronson, E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance. A current perspective. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 4 (pp. 1-34). New York: Academic Press.
Averill, J. R. (1998). Spirituality: From the mundane to the meaningful – and back. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 18, 101-126.
Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15(1), 29-45.
Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: The Guilford Press.
Becker, E. (1973). Denial of death. New York: The Free Press. Division of Collier Macmillan Publishers.
Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1980). Psychology of religion – what do we know? Archive für Religionspsychologie, 14, 228-236.
Bielicki, T. (2001). On the zoological vision of man, or, a short essay on conceit. Znak, 551. Retrieved from http://www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl/bielicki_551.html, August 23, 2012.
Crumbaugh, J. C. & Maholick, L. T. (1964). An experimental study in existentialism: The psychometric approach to Frankl’s concept of noogenic neurosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology 20(2), 200-207.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow. The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Dobroczyński, B. (2009). The troubles with spirituality. Cracow: Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos.
Elkins, D. N., Hedstrom, L. J., Hughes, L. L., Leaf, J. A., & Saunders, C. (1988). Toward phenomenological spirituality: Definition, description, and measurement. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 28(4), 5-18.
Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns: Motivation and spirituality in personality psychology. New York: The Guilford Press.
Emmons, R. A. (2000). Is spirituality an intelligence? Motivation, cognition, and the psychology of ultimate concern. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10(1), 3-26.
Frankl, V. E. ([1946]1963). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. Boston: Beacon Press. Originally in German: Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Wien: Franz Deuticke.
Frankl, V. E. ([1950]1984). Homo patiens. Versuch einer Pathodizee. Wien: Franz Deutcke. Referred to after the Polish edition: Homo patiens. Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy PAX.
Frankl, V. E. ([1969]2010). The will to meaning. Foundations and applications of logotherapy. New York: Plume, the member of Penquin group. Referred to after the Polish edition: Wola sensu. Założenia i zastosowanie logoterapii. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca.
Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements, In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 29 (pp. 61-72). New York: Academic Press.
Grzegorczyk, A. (2006). The empirical identification of spirituality. In A. Grzegorczyk, J. Sójka, & R. Koschany (Eds.), Fenomen duchowości (pp. 29-34). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza.
Hay, D. (1994). “The biology of God”: What is the current status of Hardy’s hypothesis? International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 4(1), 1-23.
Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), 88-110.
Helminiak, D. A. (1996a). The human core of spirituality. Mind and psyche and spirit. Albany: SUNY Press.
Helminiak, D. A. (1996b). A scientific spirituality: The interface of psychology and theology. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 6(1), 1-19.
Heszen-Niejodek, I., & Gruszczyńska, E. (2004). The spiritual dimension of man, its significance to the psychology of health, and its measurement. Przegląd Psychologiczny, 47(1), 15-31.
Hill, Peter C., Pargament, Kenneth I., Hood, Ralph W. Jr., McCullough, Michael E., Swyers, James P., Larson, David B., & Zinnbauer, Brian J. (2000). Conceptualizing religion and spirituality: Points of commonality, points of departure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 30(1), 51-77.
Jędraszewski, M. (2006). Human spirituality as the ability to defy the maximization of fitness (MF) principle. In A. Grzegorczyk, J. Sójka, & R. Koschany (Eds.) (pp. 35-48). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza.
Jung, C. G. (1934-1954), The archetypes and the collective unconscious. Collected works. Vol. 9 Part 1 (2nd ed.), Princeton, NJ: Bollingen (published 1981).
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Navarette, C. D. (2006). Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated: A critique of terror management theory from an evolutionary perspective. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 288-298.
Kłoczowski, J. A. (2006). What is spirituality? The religious and cultural context. In A. Grzegorczyk, J. Sójka, & R. Koschany (Eds.) (pp. 13-19). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza.
Kozielecki, J. (1986). A transgressive model of man. New Ideas in Psychology, 4, 89-105.
Kozielecki, J. (1987a). A transgressive concept of man. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Kozielecki, J. (1987b). The role of hubristic motivation in transgressive behavior. New Ideas in Psychology, 5, 120-141.
Kozielecki, J. (2001). Psychotransgressionism. A new discipline of psychology. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Akademickie “Żak.”
Kruglanski, A., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivating closing of the mind: “Sizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103, 263-283.
Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2007). On the compatibility of terror management theory and perspectives on human evolution. Evolutionary Psychology, 5(3), 476-519.
Łukaszewski, W. (2011). The anguish of life. How do people cope with the death anxiety?. Sopot: Smak Słowa.
Maslow, A. H. (1964). Religions, values, and peak-experiences. New York: A Viking Compass Book.
Navarette, C. D., Kurzban, R., Fessler, D. M. T., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Anxiety and intergroup bias: Terror management or coalitional psychology. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 7(4), 370-397.
Nęcka, E., Orzechowski, J., & Szymura, B. (2007). Cognitive psychology. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Obuchowski, K. (1985). Creative adaptation. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
Pasek, Z. (2013). New spirituality. The cultural contexts. Cracow: Wydawnictwo Aureus.
Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. Theory, research, practice. New York: The Guilford Press.
Paszkiewicz, E. (1983). The structure of psychological theories. Behaviorism, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Płużek, Z. (no date). The Polish adaptation of the Purpose in Life Test (PIL) by J. Crumbaugh & L. Maholick. Unpublished manuscript.
Popielski, K. (1993). The noetic dimension of personality. Psychological analysis of the sense of meaning in life. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2006). Death and black diamonds: Meaning, mortality, and the meaning maintenance theory. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 309-318.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2008). The case of transmogrifying experimenter. Affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1294-1300.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2009). Connections from Kafka: Exposure to meaning threats improves learning of the artificial grammar. Psychological Science, 20, 1125-1131.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2010). The frog in Kierkegaard’s beer: Finding meaning in the threat-compensation literature. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(10), 889-905.
Pruyser, P. W. (1968). A dynamic psychology of religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. American Psychological Association.
Reich, K. H. (1989). Between religion and science: The role of complementarity in the religious thinking of young people. British Journal of Religious Education, 11, 62-69.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. London: Constable.
Rusaczyk, M. (Ed.) (2008). Terror management theory. Discourse in the American literature. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.
Spilka, B., Shaver, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1985). General attribution theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(1), 1-20.
Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. S. (1987). A theory of religion. New York: Lang and Toronto Studies on Religion.
Tatarowicz, J. (1988). The religiousness of young people and their life purpose and self-perfection. Warsaw: ANS.
Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Rye, M. S., Butter, E. M., Belavich, T. G. et al. (1997). Religion and spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 549-564.
Aronson, E. (1969). The theory of cognitive dissonance. A current perspective. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 4 (pp. 1-34). New York: Academic Press.
Averill, J. R. (1998). Spirituality: From the mundane to the meaningful – and back. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 18, 101-126.
Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15(1), 29-45.
Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings of life. New York: The Guilford Press.
Becker, E. (1973). Denial of death. New York: The Free Press. Division of Collier Macmillan Publishers.
Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1980). Psychology of religion – what do we know? Archive für Religionspsychologie, 14, 228-236.
Bielicki, T. (2001). On the zoological vision of man, or, a short essay on conceit. Znak, 551. Retrieved from http://www.miesiecznik.znak.com.pl/bielicki_551.html, August 23, 2012.
Crumbaugh, J. C. & Maholick, L. T. (1964). An experimental study in existentialism: The psychometric approach to Frankl’s concept of noogenic neurosis. Journal of Clinical Psychology 20(2), 200-207.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow. The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.
Dobroczyński, B. (2009). The troubles with spirituality. Cracow: Zakład Wydawniczy Nomos.
Elkins, D. N., Hedstrom, L. J., Hughes, L. L., Leaf, J. A., & Saunders, C. (1988). Toward phenomenological spirituality: Definition, description, and measurement. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 28(4), 5-18.
Emmons, R. A. (1999). The psychology of ultimate concerns: Motivation and spirituality in personality psychology. New York: The Guilford Press.
Emmons, R. A. (2000). Is spirituality an intelligence? Motivation, cognition, and the psychology of ultimate concern. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10(1), 3-26.
Frankl, V. E. ([1946]1963). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. Boston: Beacon Press. Originally in German: Ärztliche Seelsorge. Grundlagen der Logotherapie und Existenzanalyse. Wien: Franz Deuticke.
Frankl, V. E. ([1950]1984). Homo patiens. Versuch einer Pathodizee. Wien: Franz Deutcke. Referred to after the Polish edition: Homo patiens. Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy PAX.
Frankl, V. E. ([1969]2010). The will to meaning. Foundations and applications of logotherapy. New York: Plume, the member of Penquin group. Referred to after the Polish edition: Wola sensu. Założenia i zastosowanie logoterapii. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Czarna Owca.
Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1997). Terror management theory of self-esteem and cultural worldviews: Empirical assessments and conceptual refinements, In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 29 (pp. 61-72). New York: Academic Press.
Grzegorczyk, A. (2006). The empirical identification of spirituality. In A. Grzegorczyk, J. Sójka, & R. Koschany (Eds.), Fenomen duchowości (pp. 29-34). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza.
Hay, D. (1994). “The biology of God”: What is the current status of Hardy’s hypothesis? International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 4(1), 1-23.
Heine, S. J., Proulx, T., & Vohs, K. D. (2006). The Meaning Maintenance Model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(2), 88-110.
Helminiak, D. A. (1996a). The human core of spirituality. Mind and psyche and spirit. Albany: SUNY Press.
Helminiak, D. A. (1996b). A scientific spirituality: The interface of psychology and theology. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 6(1), 1-19.
Heszen-Niejodek, I., & Gruszczyńska, E. (2004). The spiritual dimension of man, its significance to the psychology of health, and its measurement. Przegląd Psychologiczny, 47(1), 15-31.
Hill, Peter C., Pargament, Kenneth I., Hood, Ralph W. Jr., McCullough, Michael E., Swyers, James P., Larson, David B., & Zinnbauer, Brian J. (2000). Conceptualizing religion and spirituality: Points of commonality, points of departure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, 30(1), 51-77.
Jędraszewski, M. (2006). Human spirituality as the ability to defy the maximization of fitness (MF) principle. In A. Grzegorczyk, J. Sójka, & R. Koschany (Eds.) (pp. 35-48). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza.
Jung, C. G. (1934-1954), The archetypes and the collective unconscious. Collected works. Vol. 9 Part 1 (2nd ed.), Princeton, NJ: Bollingen (published 1981).
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Navarette, C. D. (2006). Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated: A critique of terror management theory from an evolutionary perspective. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 288-298.
Kłoczowski, J. A. (2006). What is spirituality? The religious and cultural context. In A. Grzegorczyk, J. Sójka, & R. Koschany (Eds.) (pp. 13-19). Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza.
Kozielecki, J. (1986). A transgressive model of man. New Ideas in Psychology, 4, 89-105.
Kozielecki, J. (1987a). A transgressive concept of man. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Kozielecki, J. (1987b). The role of hubristic motivation in transgressive behavior. New Ideas in Psychology, 5, 120-141.
Kozielecki, J. (2001). Psychotransgressionism. A new discipline of psychology. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Akademickie “Żak.”
Kruglanski, A., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivating closing of the mind: “Sizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103, 263-283.
Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2007). On the compatibility of terror management theory and perspectives on human evolution. Evolutionary Psychology, 5(3), 476-519.
Łukaszewski, W. (2011). The anguish of life. How do people cope with the death anxiety?. Sopot: Smak Słowa.
Maslow, A. H. (1964). Religions, values, and peak-experiences. New York: A Viking Compass Book.
Navarette, C. D., Kurzban, R., Fessler, D. M. T., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2004). Anxiety and intergroup bias: Terror management or coalitional psychology. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 7(4), 370-397.
Nęcka, E., Orzechowski, J., & Szymura, B. (2007). Cognitive psychology. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.
Obuchowski, K. (1985). Creative adaptation. Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza.
Pasek, Z. (2013). New spirituality. The cultural contexts. Cracow: Wydawnictwo Aureus.
Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping. Theory, research, practice. New York: The Guilford Press.
Paszkiewicz, E. (1983). The structure of psychological theories. Behaviorism, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Płużek, Z. (no date). The Polish adaptation of the Purpose in Life Test (PIL) by J. Crumbaugh & L. Maholick. Unpublished manuscript.
Popielski, K. (1993). The noetic dimension of personality. Psychological analysis of the sense of meaning in life. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2006). Death and black diamonds: Meaning, mortality, and the meaning maintenance theory. Psychological Inquiry, 17(4), 309-318.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2008). The case of transmogrifying experimenter. Affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection. Psychological Science, 19(12), 1294-1300.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2009). Connections from Kafka: Exposure to meaning threats improves learning of the artificial grammar. Psychological Science, 20, 1125-1131.
Proulx, T., & Heine, S. J. (2010). The frog in Kierkegaard’s beer: Finding meaning in the threat-compensation literature. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(10), 889-905.
Pruyser, P. W. (1968). A dynamic psychology of religion. New York: Harper & Row.
Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. American Psychological Association.
Reich, K. H. (1989). Between religion and science: The role of complementarity in the religious thinking of young people. British Journal of Religious Education, 11, 62-69.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. London: Constable.
Rusaczyk, M. (Ed.) (2008). Terror management theory. Discourse in the American literature. Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Scholar.
Spilka, B., Shaver, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (1985). General attribution theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 24(1), 1-20.
Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. S. (1987). A theory of religion. New York: Lang and Toronto Studies on Religion.
Tatarowicz, J. (1988). The religiousness of young people and their life purpose and self-perfection. Warsaw: ANS.
Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Rye, M. S., Butter, E. M., Belavich, T. G. et al. (1997). Religion and spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 549-564.
Published
2019-04-04
Issue
Section
Articles
Copyright (c) 2013 Roczniki Psychologiczne
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
