Degree project from the Psychology course. If you want to read the essay from beginning to end, you can do so. Click here then the different sections come in a row. Or you can jump around. Each section has a link back to this overview. (Here is it possible to download the essay as a PDF from Stockholm University.)
Degree project from Stockholm University, Department of Psychology:
NEW SPIRITUALITY, BUT OLD CHALLENGES1
At the same time as the interest in traditional religion has faded in the Western world, there has been a growth of a holistic, individualistic and progress-optimistic spirituality, so-called new spirituality or new age. Psychological research has shown that followers of this group-level spirituality have a profile that possibly correlates with ill health. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the followers related to the existential conditions of man, as these can be formulated based on psychoanalysis. Interviews with eleven followers were conducted in the fall of 2009. The analysis showed that the informants largely rejected these conditions or limitations, which can be interpreted in the same direction as previous research results. Alongside a possible individual disposition, an influence that originates from the thought system itself is suggested to be a not insignificant factor in these results. Models for how to differentiate between partly the type of commitment, partly different kinds of spirituality, are sketched.
1 A big thank you to my supervisor Björn Edlund and to the eleven respondents who made the survey possible through their generous participation.
Several independent surveys in recent years have been able to show that the Swede harbors a multitude of ideas about existence that science cannot substantiate. The acceptance or interest in such things as reincarnation, omens, astrology, telepathy and communication with deceased relatives is great (Boström, 2008, July 16; Centrum för Samtidsanalys, 2009, February; Sjödin, 2002). The results are similar in other Western countries, such as the USA (Harris Interactive, 2013, December) and the UK (Ipsos MORI, 2012).
While several of the beliefs and phenomena addressed in these investigations overlap with what is usually called superstition and should have been able to coexist with the long-dominant religion, reincarnation, for example, is a comparatively exotic notion in a Christian cultural circle. In the surveys mentioned above, the idea that the individual should be reborn in a new physical body is supported by about one in four respondents. Hammer (2004) writes that "[i]n just forty years, reincarnation has gone from being an idea spread among members of some theosophical and occultist circles to becoming one of the most widely held religious beliefs of our time" (p. 203).
It is probably possible to confirm the claims in these surveys with varying degrees of seriousness, conviction or colouring. For some, such thoughts constitute parts of a more or less coherent philosophy of life, with which they identify and are prepared to argue, while for others they do not have the same central importance. Geels and Wikström (2006) propose a division into customers, applicants and core troops, where the latter to a greater extent include certain beliefs such as a well-thought-out worldview. When the idea of reincarnation and the like are parts of a coherent thought system, it touches on what is usually called new age and parts of the so-called new spirituality (Frisk, 1998). There are divided opinions on how this area should be defined or named. Frisk (2007b) suggests that researchers start from scratch and use statistical means to arrive at appropriate categories.
In the present study, "new spirituality", "the new spirituality", "new age", with several names, are used synonymously. What is meant is a largely disorganized spirituality with an individualistic, progressive view of reincarnation and karma, as well as with a notion that man progresses step by step toward emotional and cognitive perfection.
Hammer (2004) writes that the religious or spiritual influences can be traced back to Romanticism, which was a counter-movement to the Enlightenment. Mesmerism, romantic pantheism, spiritualism and occultism are phenomena from that era which in various ways have contributed to this modern spirituality. Sjödin (2002) also highlights the connection to romanticism in the early 1800th century. Kärfve (1998) believes that the new age has even picked up or manages schools of thought that go back to Gnosticism, a movement that was alive at the time of the rise of Christianity.
However, it is common (Frisk, 2007a; Rotstein, 1997; Wikström, 1998) to place the starting point for the new age at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Different religious and psychological currents were then united with the utopian and socially critical youth movement that arose on the American West Coast with, among other things, the fight for the rights of blacks, the hippie culture, the opposition to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War and a questioning of the ideals that existed for family formation. The era was portrayed in Milos Forman's film "Hair" (Butler, Greenhut, Persky & Forman, 1979). The title of the song "Age of Aquarius" that opens the film refers to the astrological notion that humanity is on the threshold of the Age of Aquarius. Ferguson (1982, cited in Wikström, 2008) believes that two thousand years of war and darkness will then come to an end and that an equally long period of peace and love awaits.
An often used metaphor to describe the new age is that it would be like a smorgasbord from which those interested pick up their own world view (Granqvist & Hagekull, 2001; Vitz, 1977; Wikström, 1998). The new spirituality may be syncretistic, that is to say that it has drawn influences from many different directions, but is it therefore formless or impossible to define? In order to investigate the degree of homogeneity, Granqvist and Hagekull (2001) developed the New Age Orientation Scale (NAOS) which contained about twenty statements about thoughts and practices that the researchers perceived were represented in this field, including: "People live more than one life , so that when they die they will be reborn after some time in another body (reincarnation)”; "I believe that a person's deeds are stored in his and her 'karma'", as well as "Spirituality to me is above all about realizing my true nature or becoming one with cosmos".
The study included partly high school students from the higher classes, partly young people from various Christian youth organizations and partly people recruited from places in Stockholm with activities of a new age character. The responses were statistically processed using factor analysis, which produced a one-dimensional result. If the respondent agreed with one of the statements, it was likely that she or he also agreed with the others.
Granqvist and Hagekull (2001) were able to show that there was a large consensus around the statements they presented. That is, a shared worldview. Did the followers share something more than certain interests and a collection of ideas about how existence worked?
In the same study (Granqvist & Hagekull, 2001), the above questionnaire was combined with a survey based on attachment theory. The researchers wanted to see if people who were positive about new age also excelled in terms of so-called attachment patterns. The hypothesis was that the test subjects would show a higher degree of so-called "insecure attachment", which indicates that the individual experienced the early, close relationships in life as insecure. The result of this part of the study also gave it a positive result. People who scored high on the NAOS scale distinguished themselves for such an "insecure" attachment pattern. In comparisons (Granqvist, Ivarsson, Broberg & Hagekull, 2007) with people who had a traditional religious faith, these rather showed a "secure" attachment. At the group level, there seems to be something that unites those interested in new spirituality even on a deeper level. In the latter survey, those with high scores on the NAOS were judged to have experienced more rejection and role reversals during their upbringing than those with low scores.
The group of neo-spirituals has also been examined with various cognitive tests and personality tests. For example, researchers have investigated such things as a tendency towards magical thinking, thin-walledness and cognitive looseness (Farias, Claridge & Lalljee, 2005). Here too, people with a new spiritual interest have shown a common and deviant profile in comparison to the control groups (often traditionally religious and non-religious). All of these variables deal in one way or another with heightened sensitivity or associative/perceptual mobility. In a study by Farias and Lalljee (2006, cited in Farias & Granqvist, 2007), test participants were asked to comment on some stories with everyday events based on the question: "How would you interpret this situation?" The stories could, for example, describe a meeting with a person who felt very familiar. Instead of suggesting that it was someone the test subject might run into at the store one day, or even that "God wanted us to meet," people with a neo-spiritual orientation often explained situations like this using paranormal or supernatural arguments: " Our souls have probably met before”, or “We have the same energies that make us feel drawn to each other”. In an experiment by Farias et al. (2005) had the subjects sit in front of a computer screen in a dimly lit room. On the screen, 100 dots were projected which changed at high speed in a random manner for ten minutes. The instructions were that motifs would be interspersed with random images and that the test subjects would say when something recognizable appeared. The newly spiritually oriented saw significantly more motifs (eg animal motifs, dancing people and angels) than the other groups. People with a traditional religious orientation saw no more than average.
People with a neo-spiritual interest are thus not only united by certain thoughts or relationship patterns, but they also seem to share a cognitive disposition that makes them seek meaningful connections between seemingly distant and unrelated things and events. Farias and Granqvist (2007) believe that this psychological tendency also lies behind the fact that these individuals change groups and activities often without forming close ties, in contrast to people with a traditional religious faith who more often find themselves at home in a congregation. In another study (Farias & Lalljee, 2005), it was concluded that individuals with a neo-spiritual orientation are characterized by something the researchers chose to call "holistic individualism". This represents a combination of two tendencies that do not normally occur in the same person, more precisely an individualistic orientation, which is about self-actualization and striving towards one's own goals, rather than as part of a group, while at the same time the person expresses universalistic ideals of solidarity, equality, not wanting to compete, but even wanting to join a larger unit. In addition, the newly spiritual test subjects had a peculiar way of describing themselves. On the question "Who am I?" they gave extremely abstract answers. Individuals with a collectivist orientation usually, when asked to describe themselves, do so with judgments that are concretely connected to their social reality (for example, "I am a daughter" or "I am a baker"), while those with a more individualistic orientation use comparatively more abstract judgments about themselves (for example “I am cheerful”). Those newly interested in spirituality described themselves with expressions such as "I am a bridge", "I am united" or "I am an illusion".
The new spirituality also differs from traditional religion in that it often lacks a personal God with whom the individual can have a relationship, and seek comfort and understanding from when needed (Granqvist, 2014). People with a secure attachment take over their parents' religion to a greater degree and they then transfer their good experiences to the image of God. Even if these individuals choose a different religion than their parents, they tend to find a loving God there. People who adopt a neo-spiritual worldview, with an impersonal or absent deity, are also assumed to be influenced by their earliest experiences. Granqvist (2014) emphasizes how God is used as a symbolic attachment object by the secure attachment in a way that lies deeper than just being a conscious representation. In subliminal experiments, it has been possible to demonstrate that these individuals have access to a "safe haven" within themselves from which they automatically seek support in a stressful situation.
For Sigmund Freud, religion was more or less unambiguously a bad solution. He explained people's religiosity as a regression back to a simpler time in life. By projecting an all-powerful Father into space, life became more bearable and the believer could shed some of his own responsibility and relieve his existential anxiety. Religion was for him (Freud, 1927/2008) "a treasure of ideas born of the need to make human helplessness bearable, built on material from memories of childhood helplessness, his own and that of the human race" (p. 362). Freud saw the abandonment of religion as an "education to reality":
Certainly man will then find himself in a difficult situation; she is forced to admit all her helplessness, her insignificance in the world's bustle, as she is no longer the center of creation, no longer subject to the tender care of a benevolent Providence. She will find herself in the same situation as the child who left the father's house, where it was so warm and pleasant. But infantilism is there to be overcome, isn't it? Man cannot remain a child forever, he must finally venture out into the "hostile life" (Freud, 1927/2008, p. 390).
After Freud, there have been psychoanalysts who have been more conciliatory towards religion. Winnicott (1971) speaks of the child's middle area where inner and outer reality can best meet and he writes that this significant sphere is then "maintained throughout life in the intense experiencing associated with art and religion, an imaginative way of living and creating scientific work” (p. 37). Not much has been written about the new spirituality specifically from a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic perspective. Wikström (1998) writes that new age and the like are possibly the ideal religion for a "borderline society". Faber (1996) highlights and exemplifies what he perceives as infantile traits in this new spirituality and his analysis reminds a lot of how Freud characterized the religion of his time.
According to psychoanalysis, the small child is raised by his parents or guardians and, in the most fortunate case, gets a pleasant and privileged start in life: "His Majesty the Baby", Freud (1914/2003, p. 92) characterizes this existence. This, together with its limited resources in many respects, means that for a period the child will not have to confront the grim realities, but is allowed to be in a state of infantile omnipotence. However, at some point during her journey towards adulthood, the individual must abandon, tone down or at least supplement these infantile and in relation to her real capacities and the expectations of the outside world, unrealistic fantasies or desires. Within psychoanalysis, a favorable resolution of this conflict is seen as the very gate to a balanced and healthy adult life (Freud 1996b). For example, Werbart (2000) has described this challenge in a number of points which can be seen as a summary of the predicaments of human life. He writes that we are "irretrievably doomed to live as separate 'in-dividuals', dependent on each other, divided into two sexes and several generations, vulnerable and mortal" (p. 37).
The mental operations called defense mechanisms fulfill a buffer function for the individual. According to psychoanalytic theory, these are used to keep unpleasant impulses or insights out of consciousness and protect against anxiety. The defense mechanisms are divided hierarchically from primary/immature to secondary/mature depending on how large restrictions or distortions these entail for self-image and world perception and also based on the periods of development when they are natural. Immature defenses make life more bearable by placing the individual's problems on others and other things "out there".
Psychoanalysis talks about regression of various kinds. What is common is that the individual then falls back on a type of experience or a way of relating to the environment and the duties or conditions of life which, with respect to the individual's chronological age, actually belongs to a passed stage of development. Not infrequently the word is used with a negative meaning, but regression also plays a natural and life-enhancing role in our lives, for example in love, play and creative activities. Furthermore, it is normal to regress to simpler and more familiar strategies in very stressful situations, in the face of stresses that the individual does not know how to handle or that may even exceed what most people can cope with, for example natural disasters, severe accidents, imprisonment and threats to even survival. This may include then wanting to imagine a higher, caring entity watching over the individual. The saying that there are no atheists in the trenches ("There's no atheists in foxholes") has been questioned, but can still serve as an illustration from folk psychology. In normal cases, the individual will eventually be able to return to their normal level of functioning. The individual's normal state can be said to be how he manages to function under pressure from an average environment. The PDM Task Force (2006) describes this as “a person's center of psychological gravity” (p. 23).
The path to the individual acquiring a private inner world of a kind that is also accompanied by a reasonably realistic perception of and participation in the outside world goes through many steps. Jemstedt (1993) describes this as a dialectical process between union and separation that eventually establishes a healthy separation. Previous functional levels will remain as sources of power and possible places of retreat. Adult life would be a duller time and the term "adult" might not even be adequate if the individual did not also have access to these other sides of himself.
James W. Fowler (Bergstrand, 1990; Fowler, 1981/1995) has differentiated seven types of religiosity based on interviews with mainly Christian believers. These follow each other as levels in a kind of maturation process, with some connection to the individual's age. To find authors who based on some kind of psychodynamic frame of reference investigated individual differences within new spirituality and new age, one probably needs to go to Jungian, humanistic or even transpersonal psychology. However, this would fall outside the scope of this study to investigate and try to account for.
Farias and Granqvist (2007) suggest that biology and early relationship experiences, individually or in combination, can explain why many people turn to new age. The neo-spiritual worldview simply exhibits certain characteristic features that may feel familiar to those who have been neglected or insensitively treated during the formative childhood years or who have a genetic predisposition to, for example, magical thinking. People with this background do not therefore need to adopt such a world view, but the probability is greater. Due to the lack of longitudinal studies, however, it cannot be ruled out that it is not in fact the interest in the neo-spiritual thoughts and activities that shaped the adherents, the authors add.
Based on psychoanalysis, it is possible to hypothesize that what can be attractive about this spiritual worldview is its similarity to infantile thinking and experiencing (Faber, 1996). The commitment provides the opportunity for a regressive retreat which can be both malignant and benign and driven by external pressure as well as the individual's own allure. In all cases, this enables liberation from the complexity or demands of adulthood via a simpler and even more energy-saving way of living, experiencing and relating. Wikström (1998) raises this to a societal level and writes that a focus on inner transformation is something that belongs to the late 1900th century and that it is an idealization of "the individual man's 'spiritual ability' to influence his destiny and the romanticization of man's inherent goodness. Evil, disease and suffering are rather a delusion" (Wikström, 1998, p. 8).