Religion, Personality, and Mental Health PDF
Preview Religion, Personality, and Mental Health
Recent Research in Psychology Laurence B. Brown Editor Religion, Personality, and Mental Health Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest Dr. Laurence B. Brown, Alister Hardy Research Centre, Westminster College, Oxford OX2 9AT, United Kingdom With 3 Illustrations. Library of Congress Cataloging-in.Publicat ion Data Religion , personality. and mental health I [edited by[ Laurence B. Brown. Ph.D. p. cm.-(Recent research in psychology) Indudes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN- 13: 978- 1-4612·1631-9 e· ISBN·13: 918·1-4612-2696-3 001: 10.10011978-1-4612-2696-3 I. Mental health-Religious aspects. 2. Psychology, Religious. 3. Personality- Religious aspttts. I. Brown . Laurence Binet. 1921- II. Series. BL65.M45R47 1993 200'.1 '9- dc20 93-15258 Printed on acid-free paper. © 1994 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. Sofkover reprint of the hardcover I 5t edition 1994 Copyright is not claimed for works by U.S. Government employees. All rights reserved. This work may not be translated in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York. Inc .. 115 Fifth Avenue, New York , NY lOOlO. USA). except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storagc and retrieval. electronic adaptation. computer software, or by si milar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden . The use of general descriptive names. trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade MaTh and Merchandise Marks Act. may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Production coordinated by Chernow Editorial Services, Inc . . and managed by Francine McNeill ; manufacturing supervised by Jacqui Ashri. Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong. 9 8 1 6 5 4 321 Acknowledgments Meetings held in Sydney at the time of the XXIV International Congress of Psychology enabled a core of the group whose papers are presented here to discuss them, both before and after they had been read at that Congress. This group was drawn from Europe, North and South America, and Australia. The meetings were not only agreeable social occasions, but they allowed an exchange of ideas and experience, which emphasized that friendship with others working in the same field is an important feature of good scientific communication. Those who were unable to attend those meetings but whose papers are included here have, however, broadened the scope of this set of papers. They are to be thanked for that. Another outcome of those meetings in Sydney has been the establishment of the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, edited by L.B. Brown and H. Newton Malony, Volume 1, Number 1, of which appeared early in 1991. Many arrangements for the meetings in Sydney were made by the late Louise Kahabka. The final preparation of the manuscripts was most capably done by Maxine Mackellar. v Contents Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix 1 Introduction............................................ 1 Laurence B. Brown 2 The Uses of Religious Assessment in Counseling. . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 H. Newton Malony 3 Psychology in the Phenomenology of Religion: A Critical Essay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Owe Wikstrom 4 Religion and Mental Health: A Case Study of the Finnish-Swedish Popular Writer Joel Pettersson ............. 42 Nils G. Holm 5 Happiness and Religious Belief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Jocelyn Delbridge, Bruce Headey, and Alexander J. Wearing 6 Religious Life-styles and Mental Health 69 Allen E. Bergin 7 Personality and Religious Development during Childhood and Adolescence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Leslie J. Francis 8 Steps towards a Psychology of Prayer ...................... 119 Emma Shackle and Laurence B. Brown 9 The Social Representations of Death: A Study with Cancer Patients, Family Members, and Healthy Individuals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 130 Clelia Maria Nascimento Schulze vii Vlll Contents 10 Rigid Religiosity and Mental Health: An Empirical Study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 138 Hans Stifoss-Hanssen 11 Religious Experience, Loneliness, and Subjective Well-being. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 144 Kathleen V. O'Connor 12 Some Correlates of Well-being and Distress in Anglo-Jewish Women ................................. 154 Kate Loewenthal, Valerie Amos, Vivienne Goldblatt, and Sean Mullarkey 13 Women Religious Professionals and Stress. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 167 Carole A. Rayburn, Lee 1. Richmond, and Lynn Rogers 14 Welfare Policies, Religious Commitment, and Happiness ... " 174 Thorleif Pettersson 15 Conclusion............................................. 193 Laurence B. Brown Author Index ............................................. " 205 Subject Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 213 Contributors Valerie Amos, B.A., Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom Allen E. Bergin, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA Laurence B. Brown, Ph.D., Alister Hardy Research Centre, Westminster College, Oxford OX2 9AT, United Kingdom Jocelyn Delbridge, B.A., Deceased Leslie J. Francis, Ph.D., Trinity College, Carmarthen, Dyfed SA31 3EP, United Kingdom Vivienne Goldblatt, B.A., Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom Bruce Headey, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3052, Australia Nils G. Holm, Ph.D., Department of Comparative Religion, Abo Akademi, 20500 Abo, Finland Kate Loewenthal, Ph. D., Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom H. Newton Malony, Ph. D., Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA 91182, USA ix x Contributors Sean Mullarkey, B.A., Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, United Kingdom Kathleen V. O'Connor, Ph.D., University Counselling Service, University of Sydney NSW 2006, Sydney, Australia Thorleif Pettersson, Ph. D., Department of Social Sciences of Religion, Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden Carole A. Rayburn, Ph.D., 1200 Morningside Drive, Silver Spring, MD 20904, USA Clelia Maria Nascimento Schulze, Ph.D., Federal University of Santa Catarina, Universitario-Trinidad-Caixa Campus, Postal 476, Cep. 88049-Florianopolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil Lee 1. Richmond, Ph.D., Education Department, Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore, MD 21210, USA Lynn Rogers, M.A., Department of Counseling and Education, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA Emma Shackle, Plater College, Oxford, United Kingdom Hans Stifoss-Hanssen, Ph.D., Institute of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry, Ostmarka Psychiatric Hospital, Trondheim, Norway Alexander 1. Wearing, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3052, Australia Owe Wikstrom, Ph.D., Faculty of Theology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden 1 Introduction LAURENCE B. BROWN Nearly all the papers in this collection were prepared initially by a group of psychologists interested in the social scientific study of religion. They included some working with the mentally ill in medical, religious, or secular contexts, as well as teachers and researchers in psychology or theology. Their papers aim to test, or to reflect on, common prejudices about the links between mental health and religion, especially when they are thought to be mediated by personality characteristics. All the papers have been revised for this collection. A clear consensus emerged that religion has many positive effects, despite Wulff's (1991" p. 307) unguarded assertion that, "without ques- tion the mentally disturbed are frequently attracted by religion." Any assumption that religion is necessarily a "danger" to health, or closely related to mental illness, is not supported by the evidence from carefully controlled studies that follow a social science perspective. Malony's paper, page 16 in this collection, therefore emphasizes that we must take account of the ways in which anyone's religion is integrated into their life, the functions it serves for them and their acceptance by other members of the religious and other groups to which they belong. Each of those factors must be considered before any conclusion about a person's immaturity, or mental state, can be reached; it is not enough to refer only to their religious stance. That is so because interactions between any individual and their environment are so close that it is unusual for religious beliefs and practices to express inner states or psychological traits directly, if only because competent members of a social group will be constrained by the demands imposed on them by others in that group. The next paper, by Wikstrom (page 29), argues that any approach to the psychology of religion must be built from a social perspective on both religion and psychology. It is only when support from a particular tradition, culture, or social group is lacking that a person's religious claims might signify or help to diagnose a "mental illness." 1 2 L.B. Brown Psychiatry and Religion There is a continuing dance between psychiatry and religion, with the DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) using religious examples to illustrate such psychiatric categories as catatonic posturing, delusions, and depression. But in Psychiatry and Religion, Robinson (1986) stresses the therapeutic value of religion, noting that "healing and religion have been separated for only a few centuries" (p. ix). Wide differences in the public and private expressions of religion, and in its overt and covert alignments, make it hard to know how much of a person's hidden religious beliefs or practices conform to an accepted orthodoxy. Single case studies, such as Holm's (page 42) biographical account of the Swedish-Finnish writer Joel Pettersson, do not overcome those problems, nor do they show that a psychiatric illness alone destroys a person's religion. Furthermore, such psychobiographies as Erikson's (1958) analysis of Young man Luther, which was built to support his theory of psychosocial development, and the varied interpretations of St. Augustine's Confessions (1991) gathered by Capps and Dittes (1990), set out the uneasy balance between the sociopolitical pressures and personal needs or goals that are so often identified with a religious perspective. Any conclusions about individuals do not easily generalize to other people, and when the results are averaged across individuals they inevi- tably obscure their specific characteristics. Figure 1.1 shows this elo- quently with reference to recordings of cortical evoked potentials. When closed response categories are used to gather the data from groups of individuals, details of the responses of individuals are further obscured. Idiosyncratic responses from the members of any social or religious group are therefore located behind the forms of expression that are judged appropriate for particular settings or activities, except among those who are specially recognized for their creativity, insight, or leadership. Idiosyncratic constructions of religious meaning are illustrated in the paper by Delbridge, Headey, and Wearing (page 50), who interviewed 20 people selected by their answers to a social survey, to contrast the reactions of satisfied and dissatisfied religious or nonreligious people. Those interviews show some of the detailed opinions and explanations that are concealed behind the consensus that social surveys aim for. Religious Belief and Practice Like a grammar, most of our social knowledge is taken for granted. Talking to others about religion could therefore be more a matter of getting the linguistic "register" correct, than of making factual remarks or disclosures about oneself. In that sense, Kroll and Sheehan's (1989)
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