ISBN:
0691028761
,
0691010242
,
9780691010243
Language:
English
Pages:
xii, 449 Seiten
,
Illustrationen
,
23 cm
Additional Information:
Rezensiert in Ebersole, Gary L. Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. Ann Taves 2001
DDC:
291.4/2
Keywords:
Experience (Religion) History 18th century
;
Psychology, Religious History 18th century
;
Methodism History 18th century
;
Experience (Religion) History 19th century
;
Psychology, Religious History 19th century
;
Methodism History 19th century
;
Religiöse Erfahrung
;
Methodismus
;
Religionspsychologie
;
Geschichte 1740-1910
Abstract:
Fits, trances, visions, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, possession. Believers have long viewed these and similar involuntary experiences as religious--as manifestations of God, the spirits, or the Christ within. Skeptics, on the other hand, have understood them as symptoms of physical disease, mental disorder, group dynamics, or other natural causes. In this sweeping work of religious and psychological history, Ann Taves explores the myriad ways in which believers and detractors interpreted these complex experiences in Anglo-American culture between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Taves divides the book into three sections. In the first, ranging from 1740 to 1820, she examines the debate over trances, visions, and other involuntary experiences against the politically charged backdrop of Anglo-American evangelicalism, established churches, Enlightenment thought, and a legacy of religious warfare. In the second part, covering 1820 to 1890, she highlights the interplay between popular psychology--particularly the ideas of "animal magnetism" and mesmerism--and movements in popular religion: the disestablishment of churches, the decline of Calvinist orthodoxy, the expansion of Methodism, and the birth of new religious movements. In the third section, Taves traces the emergence of professional psychology between 1890 and 1910 and explores the implications of new ideas about the subconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, and dissociation for the understanding of religious experience. Throughout, Taves follows evolving debates about whether fits, trances, and visions are natural (and therefore not religious) or supernatural (and therefore religious).
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