Ralph W. Hood

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Ralph W. Hood
Born
Ralph Wilbur Hood Jr.

(1942-07-12) July 12, 1942 (age 81)
Academic background
Alma mater
Thesis An Analysis of the Concept of Creativity (1968)
Doctoral advisorPaul Secord
Influences Walter Stace [1]
Institutions
Main interests
Notable ideasMysticism scale

Ralph Wilbur Hood Jr. (born 1942) is an American psychologist. He serves as Leroy A. Martin Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he specializes in the psychology of religion.

Contents

Life and career

Hood was born on July 12, 1942, in Denver, Colorado. [2] He married his wife, Betsy, in 1960. [3] Hood received his Bachelor of Science degree at University of California, Los Angeles (1964), a Master of Science degree at California State College at Los Angeles (1966), and a Doctor of Philosophy degree at University of Nevada, Reno (1968). [4]

Hood is a former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (1995–1999), and has been coeditor of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (1992–1995) [4] and Archiv für Religionpsychologie (2005–). Since 2014 he has been a member of the advisory board of Open Theology .

Hood was named a fellow of division 36 of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1980 and served as its president in 1992. [4] He was awarded the Mentor Award by the division in 1996. [4] Hood received the William James Award from the APA in 1995 "for sustained and distinguished research in the psychology of religion". [4] He was named a fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1994 and was awarded the society's Distinguished Service Award in 2000. [4]

Research topics

Hood's mysticism scale (M-scale), based on Walter Stace's distinction between "introverted" and "extroverted" mysticism, was developed in the 1970s, and is a well-known research instrument for mystical experiences.

Hood is also well-known for studying snake handling churches in the Appalachian Mountains. In 2008, he co-authored a highly-cited book with W. Paul Williamson covering this area of research in-depth. [5]

Criticism

Stace's work in mystical experience has received strong criticisms for its lack of methodological rigor and its perennialist pre-assumptions. [6] Major criticism came from Steven T. Katz in his influential series of publications on mysticism and philosophy [lower-alpha 1] and from Wayne Proudfoot in his Religious Experience (1985). [7] In defense of Stace, Hood (2001) cites Robert K. C. Forman, who argues that introverted mysticism is correctly conceptualized as a common core, since it lacks all content, and is the correct basis for a perennial philosophy. [8] [lower-alpha 2] Hood notes that Stace's work is a conceptual approach, based on textual studies. [7] He posits his own work as a parallel approach, based on an empirical approach, thereby placing the conceptual claims in an empirical framework, [10] assuming that Stace is correct in his approach. [11]

Jacob van Belzen criticized Hood, noting that Hood validated the existence of a common core in mystical experiences, but based on a conceptual framework which presupposes the existence of such a common core: "[T]he instrument used to verify Stace's conceptualization of Stace is not independent of Stace, but based on him." [12] Belzen also notes that religion does not stand on its own, but is embedded in a cultural context, which should be taken into account. [13] To this criticism Hood et al. answer that universalistic tendencies in religious research "are rooted first in inductive generalizations from cross-cultural consideration of either faith or mysticism", [14] stating that Stace sought out texts which he recognized as an expression of mystical expression, from which he created his universal core. Hood therefore concludes that Belzen "is incorrect when he claims that items were presupposed." [14] [lower-alpha 3]

Publications

Articles

Hood has published numerous articles on the psychology of religion and spirituality in professional journals. [16]

Books (author)

Books (editor)

See also

Notes

  1. Namely Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978), Mysticism and Religious Traditions (1983), Mysticism and Language (1992), and Mysticism and Sacred Scripture (2000).
  2. According to critics, Forman over-emphasizes the centrality of what he calls "pure conscious events" in mystical traditions, and also misunderstands its meaning in those traditions. [9]
  3. Robert Sharf has criticized the idea that religious texts describe individual religious experience. According to Sharf, their authors go to great lengths to avoid personal experience, which would be seen as invalidating the presumed authority of the historical tradition. [15]

Related Research Articles

The meaning of spirituality has developed and expanded over time, and various meanings can be found alongside each other. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world. The term was used within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perennial philosophy</span> All religions share a single truth

The perennial philosophy, also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown.

Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to the diverse contents of religious traditions as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. The various methods and frameworks can be summarized according to the classic distinction between the natural-scientific and human-scientific approaches. The first cluster amounts to objective, quantitative, and preferably experimental procedures for testing hypotheses about causal connections among the objects of one's study. In contrast, the human-scientific approach accesses the human world of experience using qualitative, phenomenological, and interpretive methods. This approach aims to discern meaningful, rather than causal, connections among the phenomena one seeks to understand.

The neuroscience of religion, also known as neurotheology and as spiritual neuroscience, attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms. It is the study of correlations of neural phenomena with subjective experiences of spirituality and hypotheses to explain these phenomena. This contrasts with the psychology of religion which studies mental, rather than neural states.

<i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i> 1902 book by William James

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature is a book by Harvard University psychologist and philosopher William James. It comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland between 1901 and 1902. The lectures concerned the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and used a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions.

A religious experience is a subjective experience which is interpreted within a religious framework. The concept originated in the 19th century, as a defense against the growing rationalism of Western society. William James popularised the concept. In some religions, this may result in unverified personal gnosis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marsh Chapel Experiment</span> 1962 psychological research study on religious experiences of psilocybin users

The Marsh Chapel Experiment, also called the "Good Friday Experiment", was an experiment conducted on Good Friday, April 20, 1962 at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, designed the experiment under the supervision of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and the Harvard Psilocybin Project. Pahnke's experiment investigated whether psilocybin would act as a reliable entheogen in religiously predisposed subjects.

Scholarly approaches to mysticism include typologies of mysticism and the explanation of mystical states. Since the 19th century, mystical experience has evolved as a distinctive concept. It is closely related to "mysticism" but lays sole emphasis on the experiential aspect, be it spontaneous or induced by human behavior, whereas mysticism encompasses a broad range of practices aiming at a transformation of the person, not just inducing mystical experiences.

Johannes (Jan) Maria van der Lans was a Dutch professor in the psychology of religion at the Catholic University of Nijmegen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walter Terence Stace</span> Philosopher and epistemologist

Walter Terence Stace was a British civil servant, educator, public philosopher and epistemologist, who wrote on Hegel, mysticism, and moral relativism. He worked with the Ceylon Civil Service from 1910 to 1932, and from 1932 to 1955 he was employed by Princeton University in the Department of Philosophy. He is most renowned for his work in the philosophy of mysticism, and for books like Mysticism and Philosophy (1960) and Teachings of the Mystics (1960). These works have been influential in the study of mysticism, but they have also been severely criticised for their lack of methodological rigor and their perennialist pre-assumptions.

<i>Cosmic Consciousness</i> 1901 book by Richard Bucke

Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind is a 1901 book by the psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke, in which the author explores the concept of cosmic consciousness, which he defines as "a higher form of consciousness than that possessed by the ordinary man".

Hjalmar Sundén (1908–1993) was a Swedish psychologist, known for his contributions to the psychology of religion and for his development of "role theory".

<i>Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion</i> Academic journal of religious studies

The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JSSR) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell in the United States under the auspices of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, dedicated to publishing scholarly articles in the social sciences, including psychology, sociology, and anthropology, devoted to the study of religion. It is not a theology journal, as its publications tend to be empirical papers in the aforementioned disciplines, rather than papers assessing the truth or falsity, or otherwise attempting to clarify, theological doctrines. However, the eminent theologian Paul Tillich wrote a preface to the first edition, published in 1961. A former editor, Ralph W. Hood, is a major name in the psychology of religion, having published scales to assess religious experience and mystical experience. Hood was succeeded as editor in 1999 by Ted Jelen, the first ever political scientist to edit the journal. Jelen was later succeeded as editor by sociologist Rhys Williams. The current editor of the journal is Korie Little Edwards.

Robert K. C. Forman, is a former professor of religion at the City University of New York, author of several studies on religious experience, and co-editor of the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Mystical psychosis is a term coined by Arthur J. Deikman in the early 1970s to characterize first-person accounts of psychotic experiences that are strikingly similar to reports of mystical experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oceanic feeling</span> A feeling of being one with the world

In a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud, Romain Rolland coined the phrase "oceanic feeling" to refer to "a sensation of 'eternity'", a feeling of "being one with the external world as a whole", inspired by the example of Ramakrishna, among other mystics. According to Rolland, this feeling is the source of all the religious energy that permeates in various religious systems, and one may justifiably call oneself religious on the basis of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one renounces every belief and every illusion. Freud discusses the feeling in his Future of an Illusion (1927) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1929). There he deems it a fragmentary vestige of a kind of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated itself from other people and things.

Spiritual crisis is a form of identity crisis where an individual experiences drastic changes to their meaning system typically because of a spontaneous spiritual experience. A spiritual crisis may cause significant disruption in psychological, social, and occupational functioning. Among the spiritual experiences thought to lead to episodes of spiritual crisis or spiritual emergency are psychiatric complications related to existential crisis, mystical experience, near-death experiences, Kundalini syndrome, paranormal experiences, religious ecstasy, or other spiritual practices.

Psychology encompasses a vast domain, and includes many different approaches to the study of mental processes and behavior. Below are the major areas of inquiry that taken together constitute psychology. A comprehensive list of the sub-fields and areas within psychology can be found at the list of psychology topics and list of psychology disciplines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mysticism</span> Practice of religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness

Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.

Scholarly studies have investigated the effects of religion on health. The World Health Organization (WHO) discerns four dimensions of health, namely physical, social, mental, and spiritual health. Having a religious belief may have both positive and negative impacts on health and morbidity.

References

Footnotes

  1. Hood et al. 2001, p. 692.
  2. Hood 2012, pp. 108, 110.
  3. Hood 2012, p. 110.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Hood, Ralph W. (2016). "Vita" (PDF). Chattanooga, Tennessee: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
  5. Hood, Ralph; Paul Williamson, W. (September 2008). Them That Believe. ISBN   9780520255876.
  6. Belzen 2010, p. 97; Gellman 2019; Katz 1978, pp. 22–32; J. M. Masson & T. C. Masson 1976; Moore 1973, pp. 148–150.
  7. 1 2 Hood 2001, p. 32.
  8. Hood 2001, pp. 32–33.
  9. Gellman 2019.
  10. Hood 2001, p. 33.
  11. Hood 2001, pp. 33–34.
  12. Belzen 2010, p. 97.
  13. Belzen 2010, p. 50.
  14. 1 2 Hood et al. 2015, p. 467.
  15. Sharf 1995; Sharf 2000.
  16. "Ralph Hood PhD". Chattanooga, Tennessee: University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Archived from the original on June 3, 2010. Retrieved June 17, 2010.

Bibliography

Further reading