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- Visuri, Ingela, fil. dr. 1976-
(författare)
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Religious experience among young, autistic adults
- 2022
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Ingår i: Autism and Religious Experience. - Zagreb : Grafomark. - 9789534948125 ; , s. 101-121
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter takes its departure in interviews with 17 young adults (16-21 years old), who are all diagnosed with autism (type 1) and who describe themselves as religious and/or spiritual. According to the naturalness hypothesis of religion, supernatural beliefs are underpinned by an intuitive propensity for mentalization. But what about autistic individuals who find mentalization difficult? The aim was to explore how these individuals – who all struggle to grasp social communication in their everyday lives – come to form intimate relationships with invisible, supernatural beings. The findings suggest that the absence of physical bodies facilitates mentalization, as autistic individuals often are challenged in decoding non-verbal, embodied language. Instead, the participants describe interpretation of emotions as key to understanding what their supernatural partners have in mind. Another finding concerns the fact that most of the participants grew up in families with secular worldviews, and their path towards developing supernatural interpretations seems to be mediated through anomalous experiences, rather than social learning or philosophical reasoning. While the study does not reveal to what extent autistic individuals generally are attracted to invisible agency and magical narratives, it illustrates that supernatural dimensions are central for the participants in this study, and that such beliefs support them in making sense of unusual experiences and to cope with difficulties in their everyday lives.
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| 2. |
- Visuri, Ingela, fil. dr. 1976-, et al.
(författare)
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The psychology of religion : Experiential dimensions
- 2022
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Ingår i: Bloomsbury Religion in North America. - : Bloomsbury Academic.
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we will look into some commonly used methods and theories in the psychology of religion. This research field dates back to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, when scholars such as Stanley Hall and William James directed attention toward the role of religious experiences and their relation to human nature. Such experiences are focused on here, and as we will see, there are various ways of approaching the interaction between psychology, religion, culture, embodiment, and cognition. This article provides examples of both qualitative and quantitative methods commonly used in the field, and the pros and cons these bring about. We will also examine some prominent schools of thought that differ in their approach to religion and psychology: cultural psychology, clinical psychology, and the cognitive science of religion. While some of these scholars emphasize the role of culture, others center the role of internal, psychological processes. In some cases, the role of embodied practices and collective emotions are seen as crucial for the understanding of religiosity, and in other cases, individual traits are highlighted. This variety of approaches makes up a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the complex and fascinating ways in which religion and psychology interact, and how the outcome of such processes differs between various cultures and contexts.
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