The Psychology of Spiritual Experiences

Abstract

AbstractJames was world famous in his day but his legacy was eclipsed for several decades by figures in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and other subfields of psychology. The scientific study of spiritual experience followed a similar pattern, resurfacing only relatively recently as a viable topic of psychological research. This chapter describes several false starts in the field of psychology on the study of spiritual experience, followed by several conceptual and statistical advances that have made the contemporary scientific study of spiritual experiences possible. This chapter argues that only recently has the field of psychology become capable of fully pursuing James’s scientific vision as he described it in The Varieties.