Review - The Significance of Religious Experience

[rug]

by Howard Wettstein
Oxford University Press, 2012
Review by Sharon Packer, MD
May 28th 2013 (Volume 17, Issue 22)

In the sixties, when I was an undergraduate, "everyone" seemed to be reading William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. Along with Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, the somewhat later-appearing anthology, Sisterhood is Powerful, and perhaps a few Tibetan-themed titles by Leary and Alpert, James' Varieties ranked high among the books that shaped the era and reflected the zeitgeist.

Try as I might, I could not comprehend James' book on religious experience back then, not by a long shot. Sociology and proto-psychopharmacology could be digested, even if I disagreed with some basic premises. Yet James wrote about another realm, a realm that was unknowable (maybe ineffable) to someone whose worldview had been shaped by traditional Jewish educational systems and little else.

James trained as a physician and taught physiological psychology and went on to open America's first experimental psychology laboratory at Harvard, well before Wundt or Hall. He made his most permanent mark in philosophy. His last book about Varieties of Religious Experience perturbed his supporters, although it gained immortality through later generations. His early endeavors in experimental psychology would be entombed in the annals of history, remembered by those who cherish the roots of knowledge rather than its leaves and the flowers. For Freud scholars (or detractors), James' contact with Freud, during Freud's visit to America, ensured that his name would resurface in future studies of psychoanalytic history.

It bothered me that James' landmark book, which was hailed by so many members of my generation, eluded me. It was not until I taught a course on Psychology of Religion some decades later that I came to understand that James was not writing about universal religious experience. Rather, his primary point of reference was Protestant religious experience (even though he mentions Eastern religions in passing as well as ether-aided mystical moments and theosophy and other interesting ideas).

http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=6879&cn=0

[longship]

1. Bookmarking for later review.

In the meantime, an R&K.

[dimbear]

2. PSA: while ether is an abusable drug, it is a very dangerous one. Maybe back in

the day folk didn't realize the perils of it, and maybe James had plenty of brain cells he could spare, but nowadays stay away.

[On the Road]

3. Although I Think James Tried to be Universal,

his collection of religious experiences does seem to have been dominated by various Protestant incarnations. There is so much internal variety that I think James thought he was covering the field.

I also think James would argue that he was writing about the breadth of religious experience, and that this is primarily determined by human nature and personality rather than the religion itself. Both 'the sick soul' and the 'healthy minded' believer have representatives in every experience.

I think one thing that makes people uncomfortable nowdays is James's inclusion of nonreligious belief systems along with various faiths. For example, in the chapter on conversion, he prominently includes a conversion to atheism.

Maybe it's my psych major background, but it makes sense to me to look at how human belief systems function across faiths and non-faiths in the way that James did. It's certainly not the only way, but it helps distinguish what is human from what is part of the belief system itself. This is part of what is frustrating about the new atheists is their complete cluenessness that any traits or patterns common to adherents of a belief system apply to them despite how obvious it might be to anyone else. It is a syndrome common to everyone, but especially the young.

James's writings were groundbreaking a century ago. They are fascinating partly because they are such vivid period pieces, but they are also outdated. Belief sytems are universal. I wish there had been more development of James's basic approach by other people in the last hundred years.

[rug]

4. I was assigned to read that book in my last year of high school.

At 17, I didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about. Now, many years later, I should read it again.

I like this reviewer's description of it:

James wrote about another realm, a realm that was unknowable (maybe ineffable)