DOWNLOAD MY CLASSNOTES IN PDF:PP 15 Recent developments
Author: selvam
Appendices: Assorted Resources on PP
1. Online Resources on Positive Psychology : Follow website up to the bottom: see links to video and textbooks.
2. Positive Psychology Questionnaires: All are available for use, pay attention to cited material.
6 Evolutionary Psychology of Religion
7 Psychology of Anomalous Experiences
Anomalous Experiences are ‘abnormal’ experiences that exhibit some altered consciousness or liminal states. These experiences may range between psychotic experiences and religious experiences.
The present lecture describes some of these experiences (Religious Conversion, Possession, Hearing voices and Speaking in tongues) by exploring the possible variety of experiences that could be present. Finally offers some common criteria for discernment. Pretty long lecture.
DOWNLOAD MY LECTURE NOTES>>PR07 Anamalous Experience
8 Fowler’s stage model of faith development
Stage 0: Primal Faith (Age: 0-2). Actually a “pre-stage” since the various structures of the subsequent stages are not available for the same empirical verification as the remaining stages. Fowler sees the mutual interaction between infant and primary caregiver during the first, pre-verbal year of life as providing a foundation for faith in the emergence of basic trust vs. mistrust (Erikson 1968). (It could be suggested that a fundamental sense of hope emerges here, since for Erikson that is the outcome of negotiating the conflict between trust and mistrust!)
Stage 1: Intuitive-Projective Faith (Age 2-7). The acquisition of language marks the emergence of the first true stage which is characterized by the abundant imagination of the pre-school child. This emotional and idiosyncratic faith involves powerful images and a fluidity of thought not bound by the logic of later cognitive structures (cf. Piaget 1970). For Piaget, God “God” is a powerful creature of the imagination, not […]