Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality

This book examines what people mean when they say they are “spiritual”. It looks at the semantics of “spirituality”, the visibility of reasons for “spiritual” preference in biographies, in psychological dispositions, in cultural differences between Germany and the US, and in gender differences. It also examines the kind of biographical consequences that are associated with “spirituality”. The book reports the results of an online-questionnaire filled out by 773 respondents in Germany and 1113 in the US, personal interviews with a selected group of more than 100 persons, and an experiment. Based on the data collected, it reports results that are relevant for a number of scientific and practical disciplines. It makes a contribution to the semantics of everyday religious language and to the cross-cultural study of religion and to many related fields as well, because “spirituality” is evaluated in relation to personality, mysticism, well-being, religious styles, generativity, attachment, biography and atheism. The book draws attention to the – new and ever changing – ways in which people give names to their ultimate concern and symbolize their experiences of transcendence.

Heinz Streib (M.A. 1977, Tübingen University; Ph.D. 1989, Emory University, Habilitation 1995, Frankfurt University) has established the Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion at the University of Bielefeld and has conducted there a series of empirical studies – several of them in cooperation with Ralph Hood (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga). Streib’s major third-party funded research projects are the following: Fundamentalist Biographies (1996-1998, for an Enquete Commission of the German Parliament), Varieties of Deconversion in the USA and Germany (2002-2005), “Spirituality” in Germany and the USA (2009-2012), Xenophobia and Xenosophia between the Abrahamic Religions (2011-2015) and the study of religious development in longitudinal perspective in the USA and Germany (2014/2015 - current). Other research interests include: Theory and research in religious development in terms of religious styles and schemata, violence and inter-religious prejudice in school and adolescents’ readiness for mediation.

Ralph W. Hood Jr. is professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is a former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and a former co-editor of the Archive for the Psychology of Religion and The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion. He is a past president of division 36 of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of its William James award. He has published several hundred articles and numerous book chapters in the psychology of religion and has authored, co-authored or edited fifteen books, all dealing with the psychology of religion.

“The book’s chapters, most of which could be read as separate research articles, together address the question of what the word ‘spirituality’ is popularly understood to mean, especially when it is counterposed with the term ‘religion,’ as in the familiar phrase ‘spiritual but not religious.’ … this is an exceptionally comprehensive and often-technical book … . this book can be viewed as a catalogue of research methods and types of knowledge gained.” (Peter la Cour, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, August, 2016)