Religious Mysticism and the Psychology of Religion: on the Question of the Limits of Reduction. Part 1

Relevance. Due to the departure from religious traditions that once mediated the content and interpretation of religious and mystical experience, in the situation of postmodern new religious and mystical quests, eclectic, and sometimes surrogate mystical psychologism, arises.

The purpose is carry out an understanding of the limits of the reductionist approach of the psychology of religion to religious and mystical experience.

Objectives: comprehend the subject field of the psychology of religious and mystical experience; reveal the dramatic relationship between reductionist and non-reductionist approaches to the content of mystical experience; substantiate the need for interdisciplinary interaction as a means of avoiding the absolutization of psychological reductionism and anti-reductionism in understanding the content of religious and mystical experience.

Methodology. The study uses methods of synthesis and analysis, which allow revealing the specifics of the content-based approach of the psychology of religion to religious mysticism. The comparison method made it possible to establish the differences between various research programs within the latter, which, to varying degrees of intensity, either absolutized or limited the use of reduction.

Results. An approach to religious mysticism from the position of a psychologist as an external observer, i.e. without penetration into its semantic fabric, characteristic of a particular religion, does not lead to an essential understanding of mystical experience and the discretion of its transpersonal ontology.

Conclusions. In the coordinates of a purely psychological approach, far from religious dogmatic subtleties and philosophical generalizations, there is a danger of reduction, which does not take into account the gradation of mystical experiences into genuine and inauthentic.

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