Well, it’s a few days after Halloween, so I’ve been watching and re-watching the Ghostbusters movies for the year.
All of this “paranormal activity” has put me a bit in the mood of talking about one of my academic fields: transpersonal sociology. Now, I’ve talked about it before here and here. However, I was thinking about disambiguating between the general approaches of a few different social scientific fields with regard to spiritual/religious phenomena.
So, let’s work through an example —
For instance, let’s say that a person prays and prays for her cancer to be healed, and – lo and behold! – she is healed. From a theological perspective, this type of healing is right within the flow of what is expected (though, of course, not guaranteed). Praise is offered to God, and this story might be told over and over to demonstrate the power of God to heal and the power of prayer to effect change.
Yet, what would social scientific approaches make of this event?
Well, “traditional” (i.e., methodologically atheist – trying to explain the human aspect of things without any reference to God) psychology might approach this type of prayer and healing through investigations and examinations of what areas of the brain “light up” in prayer. Explanations of this phenomenon might use phrases like the “power of suggestion” or “placebo effect.”
Similarly, “traditional” (i.e., methodologically atheist – trying to explain the human aspect of things without any reference to God) sociology might approach this type of prayer and healing through an investigation of how this story impacts the social group. How is the faith of the person, her church, her larger denominational group, etc. increased or decreased by this event (or telling of the event)? Are any dynamics with regard to this private religious ritual (i.e., prayer) impacted that show change in the dynamics of public religious rituals (i.e., religious services)?
Sounds fun, right?
Well, some sub-fields of social science are interested in investigating and examining spiritual/religious phenomena while retaining the possibility that the events themselves have more-than-human involvement. These sub-fields are divided according to their approach.
First, let’s take a look at parapsychology and psychical research. These areas are primarily concerned with the objective existence of paranormal/spiritual/religious phenomena. However, these two fields are separated by their preferred research methods. Parapsychology is concerned with lab-based experimental methods. So, a parapsychologist would attempt to re-create the “prayer heals cancer” experiment in a controlled laboratory setting. Conversely, the psychical researcher would prefer a case study approach in which the research tries to examine, investigate, and substantiate the event “in the wild,” so to speak.
As an aside, all of the current “ghost hunting” fervor is really a skewed presentation of the psychical research approach, but they do tend to muddy the waters by throwing around the term parapsychology quite often.
Next, let’s talk about transpersonal studies, particularly transpersonal psychology and transpersonal sociology. In transpersonal studies, the event and person are studied through a case study, interview-based, and/or grounded theory approach. The point in these fields is not to determine the “objective” reality of the experience as much as the “subjective” reality of the experience. In other words, how are people changed spiritually as a result of the experience? For the transpersonal psychologist, examination focuses on the spiritual development and patterns of the individual who has had the experience. Similarly, the transpersonal sociologist (like me) is concerned with the impact the experience has for the spiritual development and patterns of the group of which the individual experience-er is a part.
Fascinating, right?
I study these developments with regard to mystic practices, to the borrowing of mystic practices between religions or intra-religious divisions, and to mystical experiences.
My most recent book, Thinking Spiritually in Small Groups, is a book for general audiences on how the mystical experience of one person could potentially (and respectfully) lead to the spiritual development of an entire group. I’ve also written articles and books from a transpersonal sociological perspective concerning mystic practices here and here.
So, when you hear strange noises in the middle of the night, who ya gonna call?