Discourses of Abnormality: Psychology and Religion in the History of European Religion in the late 19th and early 20th Century
DFG Research Project
SOCIAL INNOVATION THROUGH THE
NON-HEGEMONIC PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE
Occult phenomena at the intersections of science, media history, and cultural transfer (1770-1970)
Discourses of Abnormality: Psychology and Religion in the History of European Religion in the late 19th and early 20th Century
Researcher: Stephanie Gripentrog, M.A.
This study aims at the description of the history of the realations between religion and abnormality in German-speaking countries in 19th and early 20th century form the perspective of discourse analysis. Debates over the definition of religions and abnormality are of special interest in understanding the history of the emergence of psychology as a science. The goal of this study is to describe the history of psychology as part of the European history of religion with special regard to discourses of abnormality. This will include attention to the role of such transformations and disruptions as the discovery of the unconscious, the popularization of spiritualism, and the founding of parapsychology. This study will show how these controversies over abnormality shifted and renegotiated the boundaries of established disciplines such as theology as well as emerging disciplines such as psychology. This project contributes to larger themes of the project through its analysis of occult phenomena, and especially psychics. Psychics' potential for innovation was important not only in the field of media or technology, but also in the field of religion. Their activities could be understood as beneficial (occultism as a “better” science or religion) or pathological phenomena with a destructive effect upon to existing religious traditions. Thus, discourses of abnormality can be described as processes that negotiated between dominant and non-dominant groups in religious, scientific and psychological contexts, redefining identifies and borders in the process.