Post by Admin on Mar 30, 2024 21:21:52 GMT
William James was right about our strange inner experiences
psyche.co/ideas/william-james-was-right-about-our-strange-inner-experiences
Rather than Freud’s cynicism or Jung’s enthusiasm, we need an inquisitive approach to unusual forms of consciousness
In 1901, William James stood at the podium in a lecture hall at the University of Edinburgh and gave the first in a series of 20 lectures supposedly on theology. He had been invited to present the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at the Scottish university, but he introduced himself as a scientist and psychologist, not a theologian. He chose to ‘hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all’, he later wrote. Instead of discussing religious doctrine, he focused on altered states of consciousness reported by different people across time. He spoke of the visions, reveries and hallucinations of the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St Francis, the leaders of Christian sects, atheists and nonbelievers, as well as other historical figures and even people living in his time. For many, these experiences were unusual and profound personal encounters with the ‘divine’ but the contents of these experiences were diverse. James described these kinds of experiences as ‘religious’ or ‘mystical’ or ‘forms of consciousness’ but insisted the precise label didn’t really matter. Their causes were legion. Some were even initiated by drugs, he said.
It was to be an unusual series of lectures, which would alter the trajectory of psychology in the 20th century. Perhaps strangest of all was that throughout his Gifford Lectures, held over two years, James neither denounced these experiences as insane delusions nor encouraged their use as a revolutionary answer to personal problems or society’s ills. He simply sought to systematically understand them and hoped future scientific disciplines would do the same. ‘How to regard them is the question,’ James later wrote, ‘for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.’ But his question has now been mostly forgotten. Rather than seeking to understand these kinds of experiences, we turn toward a different problem: how useful are they?
I see the tension between understanding and use – between description and prescription – in my work as a research psychologist who studies experiences like those described by James, including experiences caused by psychedelics. I have come across many people who assume that research psychologists must be promoting or denouncing something, whether that is a drug, a treatment, an approach, a technique, a behaviour, a mental process, or an altered state. This kind of assumption creates an expectation that scientists must always be ‘for’ or ‘against’ the kind of unique experiences that interested James. These researchers must believe, or so the argument goes, that such experiences are either healing revelations of paranormal power or unhelpful illusions and delusions caused by chemical changes in the brain.
This kind of overly simplistic thinking is widespread. When I speak to audiences on the topic of spiritual experience, I am surprised by how many people struggle to accept that my motivation might be more like James’s: simple curiosity. As a society, we seem primed to suspect scientists of selling a particular view and, though there are good reasons for this, there are also real benefits to simply being curious and taking a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive approach. It is hard to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ so-called spiritual experiences, or to suggest that they ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ something when we learn that atheists interpret them in non-supernatural terms while still benefiting from them, or that religious people can have experiences in keeping with their faith tradition and still struggle with them tremendously, or that all kinds of experiences can create confusing, mixed results that defy easy interpretation. This complexity of content, interpretation and outcomes is what James wanted to show.
psyche.co/ideas/william-james-was-right-about-our-strange-inner-experiences
Rather than Freud’s cynicism or Jung’s enthusiasm, we need an inquisitive approach to unusual forms of consciousness
In 1901, William James stood at the podium in a lecture hall at the University of Edinburgh and gave the first in a series of 20 lectures supposedly on theology. He had been invited to present the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at the Scottish university, but he introduced himself as a scientist and psychologist, not a theologian. He chose to ‘hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all’, he later wrote. Instead of discussing religious doctrine, he focused on altered states of consciousness reported by different people across time. He spoke of the visions, reveries and hallucinations of the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, St Francis, the leaders of Christian sects, atheists and nonbelievers, as well as other historical figures and even people living in his time. For many, these experiences were unusual and profound personal encounters with the ‘divine’ but the contents of these experiences were diverse. James described these kinds of experiences as ‘religious’ or ‘mystical’ or ‘forms of consciousness’ but insisted the precise label didn’t really matter. Their causes were legion. Some were even initiated by drugs, he said.
It was to be an unusual series of lectures, which would alter the trajectory of psychology in the 20th century. Perhaps strangest of all was that throughout his Gifford Lectures, held over two years, James neither denounced these experiences as insane delusions nor encouraged their use as a revolutionary answer to personal problems or society’s ills. He simply sought to systematically understand them and hoped future scientific disciplines would do the same. ‘How to regard them is the question,’ James later wrote, ‘for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness.’ But his question has now been mostly forgotten. Rather than seeking to understand these kinds of experiences, we turn toward a different problem: how useful are they?
I see the tension between understanding and use – between description and prescription – in my work as a research psychologist who studies experiences like those described by James, including experiences caused by psychedelics. I have come across many people who assume that research psychologists must be promoting or denouncing something, whether that is a drug, a treatment, an approach, a technique, a behaviour, a mental process, or an altered state. This kind of assumption creates an expectation that scientists must always be ‘for’ or ‘against’ the kind of unique experiences that interested James. These researchers must believe, or so the argument goes, that such experiences are either healing revelations of paranormal power or unhelpful illusions and delusions caused by chemical changes in the brain.
This kind of overly simplistic thinking is widespread. When I speak to audiences on the topic of spiritual experience, I am surprised by how many people struggle to accept that my motivation might be more like James’s: simple curiosity. As a society, we seem primed to suspect scientists of selling a particular view and, though there are good reasons for this, there are also real benefits to simply being curious and taking a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive approach. It is hard to be ‘for’ or ‘against’ so-called spiritual experiences, or to suggest that they ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ something when we learn that atheists interpret them in non-supernatural terms while still benefiting from them, or that religious people can have experiences in keeping with their faith tradition and still struggle with them tremendously, or that all kinds of experiences can create confusing, mixed results that defy easy interpretation. This complexity of content, interpretation and outcomes is what James wanted to show.