Jacob A. v. van Belzen 
Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion 
Principles, Approaches, Applications

The aims pursued in this book are quite modest. The text is not an introduction in the traditional sense to any psychological subdiscipline or field of application, nor does it present anything essentially new. Rather, it shows ‘work in progress’, as it attempts to contribute to an integration of two differently structured, but already existing fields within psychology. In order to explain this, it is probably best to say a few words about how the book came into being and about what it hopes to achieve. As a project, the volume owes very much to others. While lecturing in places ranging from South Africa to Canada and from California through European co- tries to Korea, colleagues have often urged me to come up with a volume on ‘c- tural psychology of religion’. For reasons that should become clear in the text, I feel uncomfortable with such a demand. To my understanding, there exists no single cultural psychology of religion. Rather, there are ever expanding numbers of div- gent types of psychologies, some of which are applied to understanding religious aspects of human lives or to researching specific religious phenomena, while others are not. Within this heterogeneous field that is, correctly or not, still designated as ‘psychology’, there are also many approaches that are sometimes referred to as ‘cultural psychology’ or as ‘culturally sensitive psychologies’. It would be wor- while applying many of these to research on religious phenomena, but at present not too many are in fact so applied.

Table of Content

Introduction. 1. Introducing cultural psychology of religion.- Part I: Principles of cultural psychology of religion. 2.The need for a hermeneutical approach to the study of ‘religion’. 3. Cultural psychology of religion: perspectives, challenges, and possibilities. 4. The way out of contemporary debates on the object of the discipline.- Part II: Approaches to cultural psychology of religion. 5. Methodological issues: towards a new paradigm in psychology of religion. 6. When psychology turns to spirituality: recommendations for research. 7. The question of the specificity of religion: the contribution of psychology. 8. On the ‘Dialogical Self’ as a cultural psychological promise to the study of religiosity.- Part III: Applications of cultural psychology to religion. 9. Religion as embodiment: cultural-psychological concepts and methods in the study of conversion among ‘bevindelijke’ mystics. 10. Religion, culture and psychopathology: cultural-psychological reflections on a classic case of religious ‘murder’. 11. Psychopathology and religion: a psychobiographical analysis. 12. Religion and the social order: psychological factors in pillarization of society. Bibliography. Index.

About the author

Having received several international awards and distinctions, Jacob A. Belzen is one of Europe’s best-known psychologists of religion. As he has obtained doctorates in social science, history, philosophy and sciences of religion, his numerous publications are characterized by a strong interdisciplinary approach. He is a full professor at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He worked on this book while he was a visiting Fellow at Cambridge University (UK).