Psychologists interpreting conversion: two American forerunners of the hermeneutics of suspicion

History of the Human Sciences 12 (1):55-72 (1999)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Because of the importance of Puritanism in its history, one of the forms taken by religious Angst at the end of the 19th century in New England was uneasiness about the psychological nature and validity of the conversion experience. Apart from William James and G. Stanley Hall, the leading psychologists who investigated this phenomenon were Edwin Starbuck and James Leuba. Each had a different personal stance with regard to the plausibility of religious belief. In practice their differences of opinion over the psychology of conversion pivoted round the role of sexuality. In the first part of the 20th century their conflicting views brought to the fore themes that were eventually given full expression 40 years later in Paul Ricoeur’s account of the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion.Gonçalo Marcelo - 2011 - Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies 2 (1):204-209.
Renewing the senses: conversion experience and the phenomenology of the spiritual life. [REVIEW]Mark Wynn - 2012 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 72 (3):211-226.
Is there a hermeneutics of suspicion in being and time?Matheson Russell - 2008 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 51 (1):97 – 118.
A psychological study of religious conversion.Wilfrid Lawson Jones - 1937 - London,: The Epworth press (E. C. Barton).
Religious conversion, a bio-psychological study.Sante De Sanctis - 1927 - New York,: Harcourt, Brace & company. Edited by Helen Augur.
Gadamerian hermeneutics and irony: Between Strauss and Derrida.Robert Dostal - 2008 - Research in Phenomenology 38 (2):247-269.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-11-22

Downloads
15 (#809,553)

6 months
1 (#1,042,085)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Add more citations

References found in this work

The Principles of Psychology.William James - 1890 - London, England: Dover Publications.
Psychology as the behaviorist views it.John B. Watson - 1994 - Psychological Review 101 (2):248-253.
The Principles of Psychology.William James - 1891 - International Journal of Ethics 1 (2):143-169.
The Varieties of Religious Experience.William James - 1903 - Philosophical Review 12 (1):62-67.

View all 24 references / Add more references