What why and how? Meta-Reflections on Cultural Psychological Approaches to the Scientific Study of Phenomena Called Religious

摘要

This deliberately essayistic paper deals with strengths of and limits to cultural psychology, especially in its application to research on religion. It is presented as only one possible approach, composite in itself and drawing on a variety of theories, insights, methods and techniques, but working on one of the fundamental aspects of human psychological functioning, and therefore as indispensable to efforts to explore and understand anything called religious as any other psychological approach may be. Furthermore, the paper makes an explicit plea for an interdisciplinary approach to psychology. Whether researchers will employ cultural psychology or another approaches from contemporary psychological sciences will depend on their personal preferences, their professional training, the type of context they are functioning and hopefully also on the kind of phenomenon pointed out to them as religious by a certain (sub)culture.