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International Journal for the Psychology of Religion

ISSN 1050-8619

10 papers in the library · 129 citations · publishing 1995-2023

Papers

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Mystical and Ego-Dissolution Experiences in Ayahuasca and Jurema Holistic Rituals: An Exploratory Study

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion April 13, 2023 Robson Savoldi, Antônio Roazzi, Rita Clara de Oliveira Sales 6 citations

Mystical and even ego-dissolution experiences can be elicited from entheogens, like sacred potions of ayahuasca and jurema. Although composed of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and having met at a historical moment, ayahuasca and jurema have different rituals, symbolic references, and origins. This article aims to describe ayahuasca and jurema rituals, in psychometric measures of mysticism and...

Entheogenic Spirituality: Characteristics of Spiritually Motivated Psychedelics Use

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 2023 Petter Johnstad 13 citations

Investigations of the use of psychedelic or entheogenic drugs in spiritual contexts have focused on mystical experience. Arguing that entheogenic spirituality should be understood more broadly, this study recruited 319 individuals into an online survey. Respondents were predominantly from western countries, but reported a connection to an eclectic range of religious and spiritual traditions,...

Building Psychedelic Studies as an Interdisciplinary Academic Field: Its Urgency and Its Challenges

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 2023 Amy Bartlett, Anne Vallely, Monnica T. Williams et al. 9 citations

The field of psychedelic studies is expanding at a rapid pace and the need for academic institutions to engage more directly with this emergent field is growing. There have been some initial moves within the academy to begin tackling this evolving landscape, but these efforts have been relatively siloed along traditional disciplinary lines. Academic inquiry helps shape our collective engagement...

Altered States of Consciousness During Ceremonial San Pedro Use

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion December 5, 2022 Arne Bohn, Michiel H. H. Kiggen, Malin V. Uthaug et al. 10 citations

San Pedro, a mescaline containing cactus, has been used for thousands of years and is currently popular as a psychedelic substance in ceremonial retreats in Europe. The current research investigates the consciousness altering effects of San Pedro. Forty-two participants who joined ceremonial psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands were investigated with questionnaires probing 11 dimensions of...

Sweet Delight and Endless Night: A Qualitative Exploration of Ordinary and Extraordinary Religious and Spiritual Experiences in Bipolar Disorder

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion December 13, 2017 Eva Ouwehand, Hanneke Muthert, Hetty Zock et al. 20 citations

The authenticity of religious and spiritual experiences during mania is an important subject for bipolar patients. The exploration of such experience in bipolar disorder is the central point of this qualitative study. A psychiatrist and a hospital chaplain conducted 35 semi-structured interviews with recovered participants, recruited from mental health care institutions in the Netherlands, the...

Congruence Between Near-Death and Mystical Experience

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion October 1, 2013 Bruce Greyson 45 citations

AbstractNear-death experiences, altered states during a brush with death, may include mystical features like a sense of sacredness and divine union, timelessness/spacelessness, positive mood, noetic quality, and ineffability. We quantified mystical elements in near-death experience by comparing responses on the Mysticism Scale of 292 near-death experiencers and 34 persons who had come close to...

The Rasch scaling of mystical experiences: Construct validity and correlates of the Mystical Experience Scale (MES)

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 2007

Based on the data from 778 respondents, it was shown that mystical experiences as addressed by CitationThalbourne's (1991) Mystical Experiences Scale are Rasch scalable, and an unbiased set of 19 items was identified that yields intensity measures at an interval level of measurement. Construct validity was established by demonstrating that the Rasch dimension has unambiguous semantics that...

INVITED ESSAY: Mysticism, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Learning From Marion Milner

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion April 1, 2003 Kelley A. Raab 3 citations

The article explores the relationship between mysticism and creativity from a psychoanalytic perspective. First, it first surveys prominent psychoanalytic perspectives on mysticism and creativity, situating British psychoanalyst Marion Milner among them. Milner suggests that the same psychological processes are involved in both creative expression and mystical experiences. A state of paradox,...

The Content of Religious Experience: The Roles of Expectancy and Desirability

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion April 1, 1996 Bernard Spilka, Kevin L. Ladd, Daniel N. McIntosh et al. 17 citations

This study assessed the degree to which the contents of religious experiences agree with the expectations and rated desirability of various experiential contents. The respondents were 178 people who reported having had religious experiences, 57 without such encounters comprised an expectation group, and 112 persons who constituted a desirability rating group. Thirty-seven elements reported by...

The Religious Significance of Jung's Psychology

International Journal for the Psychology of Religion April 1, 1995 John Dourley 6 citations

Endemic to Jung's understanding of the psyche is an elaborate theory of the universal psychogenesis of religion. This theory, coextensive with his psychology itself, would contend that the ground movement of the psyche is one in which the unconscious and its archetypal energies seek realization in consciousness. These energies carry with them a numinous power that, when experienced, creates the...