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POR336
Glossary and Notes
| Term | Definition | Relative to the Book | Relative to Lectures | Associated People | Test | Def. Cont. | Comments/Questions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aetiological myth | A story explaining the origin of a particular phenomenon. | ||||||
| Agnosticism | The withholding of belief (e.g., in the existence of God) on the grounds that the evidence for it is insufficient. Unlike the atheist, the agnostic remains open to the possibility of the existence of a supreme being. | Objective, Biological, Life of Hall | Hall | Part of Hall's self described religious maturation. | |||
| Ahimsa | The Hindu principle of non-injury, expressing the view that all life is sacred. | ||||||
| Albedo | In alchemy, an intermediate stage and first goal, represented by the coagulation of a white substance on the material level and resurrection on the spiritual. | ||||||
| Alchemy | An ancient system of scientific, religious, and philosophical speculation that, conjoined with laboratory experimentation, centers on the simultaneous transformation of matter and spirit. | ||||||
| Alpha rhythm | An EEG brain wave pattern typical of a relaxed, wakeful state. The waves vary from 8 to 13 cycles per second. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Altruism | Selfless concern for or devotion to the well-being of others. | Ch 1-3, 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Amnesia | Partial or total inability to recall past events when such recollection would ordinarily be expected. | ||||||
| Amulet | An object thought to secure benefits for the person who wears it. | ||||||
| Anal stage | The second of Freud's four psychosexual stages, in which the focus of bodily pleasure is on the retention and expulsion of feces. | ||||||
| Analysand | A person who is undergoing psychoanalysis | ||||||
| Analysis of variance | A statistical procedure for determining whether or not the observed variability in scores on some measure (e.g., conservatism) is consistently related to variation on some other measured variables (e.g., age and education). | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Analytical psychology | The expression chosen by Jung to designate his own approach in psychology in contradistinction to Freud's and Adler's. | ||||||
| Androcentric | Centering on the male; favoring male interests and points of view. | ||||||
| Androgynous | Possessing both male and female characteristics and thus not clearly belonging to one sex or the other. | ||||||
| Aniconic | Without the characteristics of an icon, or literal image, hence nonrepresentational or abstract. | ||||||
| Anima/Animus | In Jungian psychology, the archetype of the soul, which, because it bears a compensatory relation to consciousness, takes on the characteristics of the opposite sex. For men, the anima personifies femininity; for women, animus personifies masculinity. | ||||||
| Animistic | Representing objects of the natural world as animated by spirits. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Anlage | A natural tendency or disposition that shapes the subsequent development of an organism. | ||||||
| Anorexia nervosa | An eating disorder characterized by severe loss of appetite, a dread of becoming fat, and a distorted body image. | ||||||
| Anthropomorphic | 1. Described as or thought of as having the attributes of human beings. 2. Ascribing human qualities to nonhuman objects. | ||||||
| Anticathexis | As postulated by Freud, a psychic mechanism that opposes the formation of a cathexis, or pleasure-giving object choice, and thus promotes repression. | ||||||
| Antinomy | An apparently irresolvable conflict between two ideas, tendencies, or principles. | ||||||
| Anti-Semitism | The expression of prejudicial or hostile attitudes towards Jews. | ||||||
| Apocalyptic | Foreboding imminent catastrophe if not also ultimate victory over evil. | ||||||
| Apocryphal | 1. Scriptural in form or content but excluded from the canon. 2. Lacking a known reliable source. | ||||||
| Apologetics | Systematic discourse in defense of particular fundamental doctrines. | ||||||
| Apostasy | Falling away from or renunciation of a particular religious faith and tradition. | ||||||
| Archetypes | Inherited structural elements in the collective unconscious postulated by Jung to account for recurring themes in myths and fairy tales as well as in contemporary dreams, fantasies, and delusions. | ||||||
| Ascetic | Given to practicing systematic self-denial of bodily pleasure, if not also self-imposition of displeasure, as a means of attaining a higher spiritual state. | ||||||
| Ashram | The secluded dwelling place of a Hindu ascetic or sage, typically with accommodations for disciples. | ||||||
| Associationism | An 18th century doctrine that explains the mind's activity in terms of the association of elementary sensations, images, and ideas. | ||||||
| Assurance | In the Protestant Christian context and especially the Methodist tradition, the deep feeling of certainty that personal salvation will be attained. | ||||||
| Atavistic | Relating to the recurrence in an organism of a form or characteristic typical of a remote and less evolved ancestor, usually as a result of genetic recombination; hence, primitive. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Athletic | One of Kretschmer's three body types, characterized by a muscular, heavily boned physique. | ||||||
| Attribution theory | The view that the experience of self, others, and the natural world is shaped to a large degree by the cognitive need to make sense of inner and outer events and to exercise control over them. | 2/17 | |||||
| Authoritarianism | A personal disposition to submit unquestioningly to some authority and to be suspicious of and hostile toward all persona outside one's own circle of associates; said to be marked by rigidity, conventionality, and intolerance of ambiguity. | ||||||
| Autistic | Characterized by illogical, self-centered, and utterly private mental activity (e.g., dreaming, reverie, hallucinating) that is untempered by external reality or cultural forms. | ||||||
| Automatisms | Actions that are carried out without awareness or at least without the attention that is usually required for their successful performance. | ||||||
| Autosuggestion | Deliberate self-induction of certain beliefs, feelings, or course of action in order to improve physical or psychological well-being. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Axis mundi | (Latin, "world axis") Any of a variety of vertically oriented objects, such as a pillar, tree, ladder, or mountain, that is taken to mark the center of the world and to connect it with heaven above if not also the underworld below. | ||||||
| B.C.E. | "Before the common era"; a non-Christocentric equivalent to B.C., "Before Christ." | ||||||
| Behavior theory | Any approach in psychology that seeks to explain observable behavior in relation to environmental stimuli. | Ch 4 | |||||
| Behavioral | Pertaining or limited to observable behavior. | ||||||
| Behaviorism | 1, views psychology as a natural science strictly limited to the study of objectively observable behavior, 2, assumes such behavior results from invariable and lawful consequences of environmental events. Methodological behaviorism holds 1, not 2. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Behaviorist | (noun) A proponent of behaviorism; (adjective) characteristic of behaviorists or of behaviorism. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Behavioristic | Resembling the behaviorist perspective in some but not all respects. | Ch 4 | Hall | 2/17 | |||
| Bicameral mind | A two-chambered mind; in contrast to today's conscious, unitary mind seated in the left-hemisphere, a bicameral mind has two (non-reflective) seats, and is dominated by the right-hemisphere god-like voice, particularly in times of stress or crisis. | Julian Jaynes; postulated bicameral mind was characteristic of humans as recently as 1000 BCE and with recurrences since then. | 2/17 | ||||
| Biofeedback | A procedure for facilitating certain mental or physical states by providing continuous feedback to the subject regarding one or another physiological variable, such as alpha rhythm or blood pressure. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Blocking | The disruption of a particular brain wave pattern by introducing an incompatible stimulus. | ||||||
| Bodhisattva | In the Buddhist tradition, a revered or worshiped "being of enlightenment" who is qualified to enter nirvana but compassionately chooses instead to work for the salvation of others. | ||||||
| Borderline | Personality disorder: 1. marked changeability in mood and attitude, with anger and self-destructiveness 2. instability of the sense of identity, and excessive dependence on others and dread of loss 3. recurrent setbacks interpersonally and goals. | ||||||
| Brahmacharya | In the Hindu tradition, the practice of strict sexual continence, along with other forms of ascetic self-denial, in order to concentrate the energies int he direction of spiritual attainment. | ||||||
| Brahman | In the Hindu tradition, the the impersonal and indescribably ultimate reality, to which all other deities may be assimilated. | ||||||
| Brahmin | A Hindu of the highest caste, or hereditary social class. | ||||||
| C.E. | "Common Era"; a non-Christocentric equivalent to A.D. (anno Domini, "in the year of the Lord"). | ||||||
| Cain jealousy | Suttie's designation for an older child's hostility toward a younger sibling for usurping the mother's attention and acre. It is the dominant recurring theme in mother cults, according to Suttie. | ||||||
| Canonical | Officially accepted as part of the canon, the authoritative list of writings constituting a religious tradition's scriptures. | ||||||
| Castration complex | In psychoanalytic theory, the intense fear of genital mutilation (in the boy) or the resentful conviction of having already been mutilated (in the girl) that is at the center of the Oedipus complex. | ||||||
| Catalepsy | A sustained bodily state of muscular rigidity. | ||||||
| Catatonic | Characterized by pathological symptoms of marked reduction in motor activity, even to the point of stupor or catalepsy, or alternatively, of excitement and heightened motor action; a form of schizophrenia. | ||||||
| Catharsis | The alleviation of tension and anxiety by reliving, often with the aid of hypnosis, the originating circumstances; a method antecedent to psychoanalysis. | ||||||
| Celibacy | Abstention from marriage or sexual intercourse, usually as an expression of some higher principle or religious commitment. | ||||||
| Cerebellum | The "little brain" projecting backward from the brain stem and mediating coordinated movements. | ||||||
| Cerebral cortex | The highly intricate outer layer of neural cells of the cerebral hemispheres. It is the area of the brain most critically involved in higher mental processes. | ||||||
| Cerebral lateralization | The tendency of the two hemispheres of the brain to develop specialized functions. | ||||||
| Cerebrotonia | The component of temperament said by Sheldon to correspond to the ectomorphic body type. It is marked by restrained inhibition, overly quick reactiveness, love of privacy, and mental over-intensity. | ||||||
| Chastity | Abstention from sexual intercourse, either categorically or apart from the circumstances under which it is sanctioned by the society. | ||||||
| Choleric | Said of a person who is quick-tempered or easily aroused to anger; one of the four basic temperaments identified by Hippocrates and Galen. | Hippocrates and Galen | 2/17 | ||||
| Circumambulation | The ritual of walking around a revered object or sacred space, usually with the right side oriented toward the object. | ||||||
| Circumcision | The excision of the foreskin of the male. The term is sometimes broadly used to designate genital mutilation of either sex. | ||||||
| Clairvoyance | The direct perception of objects or events that are not present to the senses. | ||||||
| Clark School | The group of American researchers, who joined with Stanley Hall, the school's founder and president of Clark University, to study religious development, conversion, and other such phenomena by means of questionnaires and statistical analysis. | Stanley Hall, James Leuba, Edwin Starbuck | |||||
| Cognition of being | Maslow's term for the receptive, purposeless, and holistic form of awareness that accompanies peak, or mystical, experiences. | Abraham Maslow | |||||
| Cognitive | Having to do with the process of becoming aware or gaining knowledge of the objects of experience. | ||||||
| Cognitive dissonance | The discomforting awareness of inconsistency between what we know or believe and what we do. It is assumed to motivate efforts to reduce the inconsistency or to avoid information or situations likely to increase the dissonance. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Cognitive psychology | A behavioral psychology that emphasizes the role of internal, mental processes, usually conceived in mechanistic terms, in the determination of behavior. | ||||||
| Collective unconscious | The deeper-lying portion of the unconscious postulated by Jung to be the repository of universal dispositions toward certain forms of experience, represented by the archetypes. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Comparative psychology | Usually, the branch of psychology that studies human and other species in relation to each other; used earlier to refer to the study of individual differences among human beings. | Objective, Biological, Life of Hall | Hall | ||||
| Complex | According to Jung, a psychic fragment or representation in the personal unconscious that is a disturbing factor in, and yet an essential stimulus for, conscious activity. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Compulsion | A persistently recurrent and often irresistible impulse to carry out certain stereotyped actions. | ||||||
| Conative | having to do with purposeful striving or acting. | ||||||
| Concrete operational thinking | Mode of thinking to 7-12yrs children. Although capable of transcending immediate visual impressions and carrying out logical manipulations, such children continue to require concrete objects on which to perform these operations. | Piaget | See Formal operational thinking. | ||||
| Constancy principle | Freud's principle according to which internal and external stimulation are so adjusted that the level of excitation in the nervous system is held constant. | Freud | |||||
| Constitution | An individual's particular configuration of enduring physical characteristics, including height, weight, bodily proportions, sexual differentiation, and facial features. | ||||||
| Consubstantiality | The quality or state of being of the same substance, hence intimately related or continuous with. | ||||||
| Contiguity | The condition of occurring together in time or space. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Contingencies of reinforcement | The pattern of relation existing between a certain behavior and the reinforcing stimuli that follow it. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Control group | The subjects in an experiment who are not exposed to the independent variable and to whom, then, the subjects in the experimental group are later compared to assess the effects of that variable. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Conversion | A definite and frequently sudden change in essential outlook or allegiances, accompanied by the usually joyful conviction that the new beliefs or attitudes accord with reality. | ||||||
| Coprophilia | Abnormal interest in excrement or in sensory experience reminiscent of it. | ||||||
| Correlation | The tendency of two or more variables to vary together and thus to serve as predictors of each other. The term is also used to designate the statistical produced by which this tendency is assessed, as well as the coefficient (r) that is obtained. | ||||||
| Cosmic narcissism | In Kohut's theory, a higher and relatively rare form of narcissism in which libido is transferred from the self to self-transcending ideals. The outcome is a timeless cosmic perspective that make personal mortality acceptable. | Kohut | |||||
| Cosmology | Speculations or teachings regarding the nature of the universe. | ||||||
| Countercontrol | A pattern of responses aimed at counteracting or defeating an agency's aversive efforts at control. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Cover memory | In psychoanalysis, an indifferent or unimportant memory, often from childhood, recalled in the place of associated but far more significant impressions that have been repressed; also called screen memory. | ||||||
| Creationism | The view that takes the account of creation in the book of Genesis as literal history. It vigorously opposes the evolutionary theory of the origin of animals and plants. See Evolutionism. | ||||||
| Critical symbolism | French theologian Auguste Sabatier's theory of religious knowledge, according to which religious doctrines are transient symbols, the inadequate secondary expressions of abiding primary religious experience. | Auguste Sabatier | |||||
| Cross tolerance | The immediate appearance, after taking an initial dose of some drug, of the diminished responsivity that has developed over time to another substance, which is then presumed to be similar in its action. | ||||||
| Cumulative tradition | The totality of the observable practices of religious life that are transmitted from one person or generation to another. | ||||||
| Curvilinear | Represented by a curved line; said of relationships, such as that of prejudice and church attendance, that vary in strength or direction over the range of the two variables. | ||||||
| Cybernetic religion | The worship of the machine and hence of destruction, said by Fromm to typify the alienated and technique-enslaved character type common today in the Western world. | ||||||
| Cyclothymic | Said of the person who is subject to alternating periods of elation and depression, of uninhibited gregariousness and social withdrawal, but without psychotic proportions. | 2/17 | |||||
| Darshan | (Sanskrit) "Seeing" the divine by being in the presence of and beholding a holy person or a sacred image or place. | ||||||
| Dasein | (German, "being there") The term used by existential psychologists and philosophers to designate the uniquely human mode of self-aware existence. | ||||||
| Decantration | The realization that a person's own, egocentric view of the physical and social worlds is but one perspective among a multitude of others. The decentering of cognitive constructions is a prerequisite for the development of mental operations. | Piaget | |||||
| Deicide | The killing of a divine being in human or animal form. | ||||||
| Deja vu | (French, "already seen") The sudden experiencing of a situation as intensely familiar while yet knowing that one has not been in that exact situation before; a phenomenon distantly related to mystical experience, according to James. | James | |||||
| Delusion | A mistaken conviction that is resistant both to reasoning and to compelling contradictory evidence. | ||||||
| Demiurge | In the Gnostic tradition, the inferior deity who created and guards over the material world we inhabit. | ||||||
| Demythologizing | The interpretive process of divesting some text of its mythical elements in order to reveal the underlying meaning. | ||||||
| Depersonalization | A psychological state in which a person loses the ordinary sense of his or her own reality. | 2/17 | |||||
| Depression | An incapacitating state of sadness and despondency usually accompanied by loss of appetite, diminished self-esteem, and indecisiveness. | ||||||
| Dharana | Concentration of thought on a single point or object; one of the last stages of yogic technique. | ||||||
| Dharma | In the Hindu tradition, an individual's duty or the totality of actions required according to his or her station and stage in life. | ||||||
| Dhikr | (Arabic, "recollection") Sufi tradition, the spiritual exercises by which the devotee draws near to God. 1. solitary type of dhikr entails breath control and other ascetic practices, 2. collective type proceeds by way of music and ecstatic dance. | ||||||
| Dhyana | Yogic meditation, properly so-called; a lucid state in which the essence of the object of concentration is magically penetrated and assimilated. This stage of yogic technique immediately precedes samadhi. | ||||||
| Dialectic | Dynamic interaction among opposing ideas, values, or points of view, sometimes resulting in synthesis or resolution. | ||||||
| Dialectical theology | The highly influential Christian theology put forward early in the twentieth century by Karl Barth, who maintained that the radically transcendent nature of God requires that every statement regarding God be balanced by the affirmation of its negation. | Karl Barth | |||||
| Dionysian | Possessing the frenzied or orgiastic character of the rites associated with Dionysus, the Roman god of wine. | ||||||
| Discriminative stimulus | In operant conditioning, a stimulus that allows an organism to discriminate between when an operant response will be reinforced and when it will not. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Discursive | Systematic and rational in character rather than intuitive. | ||||||
| Disinterested | Devoid of self-interest or partiality; unbiased. | ||||||
| Displacement | In psychoanalytic theory, a defense mechanism whereby an impulse is redirected from its proper object to a less dangerous or threatening one. | ||||||
| Dissociation | The splitting off from the rest of the personality of certain processes that then function more or less independently. | ||||||
| Divided self | As used by James, the discordancy or heterogeneity of personality that is the psychological origin of the sick soul's suffering. | ||||||
| Doctrine of scriptural inerrancy | The conviction of Fundamentalists that the Bible is in every respect free of error and thus may be relied on as the literally true word of God. | ||||||
| Dogmatic | 1. Pertaining to the dogma, or authoritative teachings, of a particular tradition, 2. Inclined to dogmatism. | ||||||
| Dogmatism | Rigid and unquestioning adherence to a belief system most likely derived from some authority other than reason, with a corresponding unwillingness to consider opposing views. | ||||||
| Dorpat school | The international group of researchers who, under the leadership of Karl Girgensohn at Dorpat University, Estonia, and later in Greifswald and Leipzig, applied the Wurzburg school's method of experimental introspection to religious experience. | Karl Girgensohn | |||||
| Double-blind | Said of an experimental procedure in which neither the experimenters nor the subjects know to which group - the experimental or control - each subject has been assigned. | ||||||
| Dream work | According to Freud, the complex mental operations carried out by the ego to transform the unconscious thoughts and wishes of the id into well-disguised and more coherent dream fantasies. | ||||||
| Driving | The occurrence of an electrical brain wave pattern of the same frequency as the rhythmic stimulus that is producing it. | ||||||
| Dustbowl empiricism | The opportunistic collecting and analyzing of quantified data, often on a large scale, without a guiding theoretical framework. | ||||||
| Ecclesiastical | Pertaining to a church or other formal religious institution. | ||||||
| Eclectic | Composed of the best or most serviceable elements drawn from a variety of perhaps conflicting sources, no one of which is considered adequate in itself. | ||||||
| Ecstasy | Strictly, a trance-like state of profound emotionality in which awareness is limited to the object of contemplation. Also loosely used to refer to any exalted state of emotion. | 2/17 - Trance | |||||
| Ectomorphy | The component in Sheldon's model of body types that reflects the individual's degree of slenderness, delicacy, and fragility. | ||||||
| Kinesthetic | Pertaining to the sensory experience produced by bodily movements and tensions. | Ch 3, Objective, Biological, Bodily States | Dance of particular interest to Dr. Oberman | Leuba, Vorbrodt, Flournoy | 2/17 | ||
| Personal Equation | The totality of individual peculiarities in outlook and experience that influence any undertaking, including the conduct and evaluation of psychological research. | Objective, Biological, Hall and the Objective Approach | G. Stanley Hall | 2/17 | |||
| Pantheism | The doctrine that equates God with the whole of the universe. | Objective, Biological, Life of Hall | Hall | Part of Hall's self described religious maturation. | |||
| Materialism | The philosophic theory that takes physical matter to be the only kind of reality. | Objective, Biological, Life of Hall | Hall | 2/17 | Part of Hall's self-described religious maturation. | ||
| Positivism | View that sensory experience and their logical and mathematical treatment yields all worthwhile information. | Objective, Biological, Life of Hall | Hall | Part of Hall's self-described religious maturation. | |||
| Evolutionism | The view that all forms of life and even the universe itself are products of a continuous, progressive development. | Objective, Biological, Life of Hall | Hall, Darwin | Apparently as old as earliest Indian and Greek speculation. Darwing provided scientific basis. Challenged on the "all or nothing" part, and rejected entirely by Creationism. See also creationism. | |||
| Ego | 1. In psychoanalytic psychology, the largely conscious portion of the psyche that is reality-oriented. 2. In analytical psychology, the center of the field of consciousness. | ||||||
| Ego Functions | 1. psychoanalytic; adaptive activities of the ego 2. Dorpat; total personal responses to objects of experience 3. Girgensohn (See My Comments) | Girgensohn's three groups of ego functions: a. appropriation of the thought as one's own; b. taking of a stand toward the realities represented in the thought; c. transformation of the ego, or self, in proportion to the dominance of the religious objects. | |||||
| Egocentric | Viewing events exclusively from one's own point of view or in terms of one's own interests and needs. | 2/17 | Egocentrism | ||||
| Eidetic image | A mental image nearly as vivid and detailed as an actual perception, though the subject - most often a child - usually realizes that the object is not literally present. | ||||||
| Eigenwelt | In existential thought, the aspect of the personal world that is constituted by a person's relation to his or her self. | ||||||
| Electroencephalogram (EEG) | The linear tracings produced by an electroencephalograph as a graphic representation of the electrical activity in an individual's brain. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Empathy | Imaginative participation in the experience of another person; an essential element in the process of understanding. See also Verstehen. | ||||||
| Empirical | Related to or based on experience rather than speculation. In contemporary psychology, the meaning of this term is commonly narrowed to include only objectively observable and measurable events. | ||||||
| Enantiodromia | In analytical psychology, the eventual emergence of the unconscious opposite of some conscious psychic tendency, especially if it is one-sided and extreme. | ||||||
| Endomorphy | The component in Sheldon's model of constitutional types reflecting the relative prominence of the digestive viscera and thus the tendency to become fat. | 2/17 | |||||
| Endorphins | A group of opiate-like neurotransmitters occurring naturally in the brain and serving under certain conditions to reduce pain and produce euphoria. | ||||||
| Epicureanism | Experience-centered philosophy of Epicurus (341-270 BCE), who viewed the calm and lasting pleasure derived from activities of the intellect and from friendship to be the highest good; gods should serve as perfect examples, not to be feared. | ||||||
| Epigenesis | The emergence, in the course of an organism's development, of characteristics or properties that were not earlier apparent. | ||||||
| Epilepsy | A disorder of the central nervous system characterized by episodic disturbances of consciousness during which convulsions of varying severity may occur. | ||||||
| Epiphenomenon | An event derived from an accompanying phenomenon and possessing no causal efficacy of its own. | ||||||
| Epistemology | The study of the nature and limits of human knowledge. | ||||||
| Epistemophilia | The impulse to gain knowledge, a component of the sexual instinct thought by Freud to be most evident in the phallic-stage interest in the parents' sexual life. Some psychoanalysts regard philosophy and mysticism as sublimations of this drive. | ||||||
| Ergotropic arousal | Increased activation of the sympathetic nervous system with attendant emotional excitement; the outcome of various ecstatic practices. | 2/17 | |||||
| Erotogenic zone | Any area of the body that yields distinctly pleasurable sensations when appropriately stimulated. | ||||||
| Error variance | The variability in a set of scores that is the result of conditions irrelevant to the purposes of the measuring instrument. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Eschatology | Teachings regarding events expected to occur at the end of the world or of human history. | ||||||
| Ethnocentrism | The tendency to consider the members, values, or ways of one's own group as superior to those of others. | ||||||
| Ethnology | The study of the origins, distribution, and culture of various ethnic, or racial, groups. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Eucharist | A central Christian ritual, also known as Holy Communion/Lord's Supper, in which bread and wine, conceived either symbolizing or even having become the body and blood of Christ, ingested to commemorate the Last Supper and Christ's sacrificial crucifixion. | ||||||
| Eugenics | The application of the science of genetics to improve the hereditary qualities of a species, especially the human one. | ||||||
| Euphoria | An intense feeling of well-being or elation. | ||||||
| Evangelical | (From the Greek evangelion, "good news, gospel") A term designating any of a variety of Protestant views that emphasize the divinity and teachings of Christ. | Although applicable to the liberal proponents of the Social Gospel movement early in the twentieth century, today it mainly applies to conservative Protesants who stress the sinful nature of humankind and the importance of being "born again." | |||||
| Exegesis | The systematic interpretation of a text through the application of a body of general hermeneutical principles. | ||||||
| Existential psychology | A phenomenologically oriented psychology that takes as its object the structure of fundamental character of human existence as it is manifest in individual lives. | ||||||
| Exorcism | The expelling of an evil spirit from a possessed person (or an object or place) by means of ritual formulations invoking the name of a more powerful spirit or deity. As a rule, exorcism must be applied repeatedly, even over a period of months or years. | ||||||
| Experimental introspection | The method of controlled self-observation by trained laboratory subjects that was adopted from the Wurzburg school by Karl Girgensohn and other members of the Dorpat school to study religious experience. | Wurzburg and Dorpat schools | Girgensohn | ||||
| Expiation | Action carried out in reparation for some offense. | ||||||
| Extinction | The process by which a conditioned response ceases to occur as the result of moving the reinforcing stimulus event. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Extraversion | In the context of Jung's system of personality types, the directing of psychic energy toward the objects of the outer world. In ordinary usage, this term is understood as social extraversion, an orientation toward other persons. | C.G. Jung | 2/17 | ||||
| Extravertive mystical experience | The usually spontaneous and uncontrollable form of mystical experience in which a person vividly perceives and ultimate unity shining through the multiplicity of material objects that are apparent to the physical senses. | ||||||
| Extrinsic religious orientation | An instrumental or utilitarian relation to various aspects of religious tradition, which are selected and shaped by an individual as a means of promoting his or her personal and social well-being. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| F (fascism) scale | The 30-item scale developed by Theodor Adorno and his colleagues (1950) to measure authoritarian, or antidemocratic, personality tendencies. Also called the California F Scale. | Theodor Adorno | |||||
| Factor analysis | A complex statistical procedure for identifying the relatively few underlying factors responsible for the pattern of correlations among a large number of variables. | ||||||
| Faith | A person's fundamental orientation or total response to the objects of experience, including oneself, other persons, and the natural world. | ||||||
| False positive | In statistical analysis, the relatively rare though theoretically predictable misidentification of some difference as statistically significant when in fact it is the result of chance variation. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | According to theory, the probability of such an occurrence is five in a hundred at the .05 level of significance, the usual minimally acceptable level. See also Significance level. | |||
| Fetishism | Reverence for an inanimate object perceived as having magical powers. | 2/17 | |||||
| Fixation | In psychoanalytic theory, an arrest in psychosexual development, usually in a pregenital stage. | ||||||
| Flagellation | The infliction of bodily pain, commonly by whipping and often self-administered, as penance for a sin. | 2/17 | |||||
| Folk psychology | The historically and ethnographically based psychology that Wundt maintains is essential for understanding the higher mental processes and their expressions, including religion. | Wundt | 2/17 | ||||
| Formal operational thinking | The thinking that is characteristic of persons who have reached the final stage in Piaget's schema of cognitive development, a level that is normally attained around the age of 12. (cont.) | Such persons are able to perform logical operations on concepts and propositions - that is, to think about thinking. See Concrete operational thinking. | |||||
| Free association | The "basic rule" or fundamental technique in orthodox psychoanalysis, according to which the analysand relates whatever comes to mind, perhaps beginning with some dream element or casual remark. (cont.) | From the course of associaitons, and especially the moments of inevitable reisstance to the task, the analyst infers the nature of the analysand's unconscious conflicts. | |||||
| Functional autonomy | Allport's name for the principle that psychological processes may in time become ends in themselves, persisting independently of the needs or motives in which they originated. | Allport | |||||
| Fundamentalism | The strict adherence to a set of basic doctrines that are taken to be literally true. When capitalized, the term refers to the twentieth-century Protestant movement from which the expression derives. (cont.) | The "fundamentals" of this movement include the inerreancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, his bodily resurrection, and his imminent second coming. | |||||
| Galvanic skin response (GSR) | A measured change in the skin's resistance to a weak electrical current, reflecting a change in the organism's level of arousal. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Geisteswissenschaften | (German, "sciences of the spirit/mind"( The firelds of study, including psychology, that Dilthey sharply distinguished from the natural sciences in terms of both methods and goal. (cont.) | Dilthey | Whereas the natural sciences gather data through sensory observation toward the end of causal explanation, the human sciences are founded in lived experience and aim at empathic understanding. | ||||
| Generativity | Erikson's epigenetic theory, the productivity and creativity entailed in establishing and guiding the next generation. It is the ego quality that under favorable conditions emerges in the seventh, adulthood stage. | Erikson | |||||
| Glossolalia | Speaking in an incomprehensible, apparently self-invented "language," usually in religious settings and while in an altered state of consciousness; also known as speaking in tongues. | 2/17 | |||||
| Gnosticism | A group of pre-Christian religious movements synthesizing Greek and Oriental elements and centering on secret knowledge (gnosis) regarding salvation. | ||||||
| God representation | The frequently complex and highly personalized image of God that is said by the psychoanalysts to be derived from a person's early experiences and fantasies of his or her parents as well as from evolving self-representations and religious instruction. (c) | It may contradict the invidiual's later concept of God and be the object of disbelief. | |||||
| Grandiose self | Self-psychology; inflated self-image that serves in early childhood as an adaptive replacement for primary narcissism. Normally, it gives way to a realistic sense of self-esteem and pleasurable engagement in purposeful activity. | Kohut | |||||
| Graves' disease | A disturbance in the body regulation system resulting from over-activity of the thyroid gland and frequently accompanied by serious mental disorder. | ||||||
| Guru | (Sanskrit, "venerable") In the Hindu tradition, a deeply respected teacher or spiritual guide to whom individuals give their allegiance. | ||||||
| Gynandromorphic | Possessing physical characteristics usually associated with the opposite sex. | ||||||
| Habituation | The reduced responsiveness to a stimulus that usually results from repeated presentation of the stimulus. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Hallucination | Complex false perceptions seen with open eyes and experienced as real. | ||||||
| Hallucinogenic | Serving to produce extraordinarily vivid, hallucination-like experiences. | 2/17 | |||||
| Hasidic Judaism | An ecstatic mystical sect established in Poland in the middle 1700s by Israel the Baal Shem-Tob (1700-1760). Embraced by nearly half of the world's Jewish population in the early 1800s, Hasidism remains influential today in Israel and the United States. | Shem-Tob | |||||
| Healthy-minded | Of James's two temperamental types, the one that is disposed to see everything in this life as good and, accordingly, to respond to the divine with grateful admiration and desire for union. See Sick soul. | James | |||||
| Heliotropism | A reflexive tendency, found in many living organisms, to orient themselves toward the sun. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Hermaphroditic | Possessing both male and female reproductive organs. | ||||||
| Hermeneutical circle | The interpretive principle that emphasizes the circularity of understanding; every act of understanding begins with something already understood, a "pre-understanding" that is then reciprocally altered through the new act of understanding. | ||||||
| Hermeneutics | The science of the methodological principles that underlie interpretation. | ||||||
| Heuristic | Said of an idea or method that is justified by its capacity to stimulate further discovery. | ||||||
| High-plateau experience | The enduring sense of illumination that Maslow says eventually replaces peak experiences in self-actualizing persons. | Maslow | |||||
| Hippocampus | The curved, elongated structures within the brain's limbic system that mediate memory processes. | ||||||
| History of religions | The equivalent in English of the German Religionswissenschaft, the science of scholarly study of the world's religious traditions. It is both historical, in the narrower sense, and systematic. | ||||||
| Homo religiosus | (Latin, "religious man") In Erikson's writings, the rare, gifted, and melancholic individual whose public enactment of a cataclysmic identity crisis and subsequent ideological breakthrough serve to resolve the larger society's crisis as well. | Erikson | |||||
| Humanism | Any system of thought in which the potentialities and fate of human beings are central. | ||||||
| Humanistic psychology | Any of a variety of psychologies sensitive to human subjectivity and emphasizing the positive character of human potentialities, the progressive realization of which is considered essential for psychological well-being. | ||||||
| Hyperphrenia | Greatly accelerated mental activity. | ||||||
| Hypersuggestibility | An exceptional state of heightened suggestibility or openness to external influences. | 2/17 | |||||
| Hyperventilation | Abnormally rapid and deep breathing, resulting in carbon dioxide depletion and such symptoms as reduced blood pressure, constriction of the blood vessels, and sometimes fainting. | ||||||
| Hypnagogic image | A peculiarly vivid image occurring as a person is falling asleep. | ||||||
| Hypochondriacal | Marked by excessive preoccupation with bodily well-being, with a tendency to exaggerate or imagine symptoms of illness. | ||||||
| Hypomanic | In a mild state of mania, thus exhibiting heightened activity, self-confidence, and good spirits, all of which might be taken as normal were it not for the attendant discontinuity in actions or ideas and intolerance of the slightest frustration. | ||||||
| Hypoventilation | Abnormal reduction in the amount of air in the lungs, resulting in oxygen depletion and retention of carbon dioxide. | ||||||
| Hysteria | An emotional disorder known from antiquity and first systematically studied by French psychopathologists in the nineteenth century, when this puzzling syndrome had become particularly prominent. (cont.) | Conspicuous among the symptoms are blindness, hearing impairment, and bodily paralysis, none of which can be traced to organic disturbances. The study of hysteria contributed to the rise of modern psychiatry. | |||||
| I-Thou relation | A relation of genuine and mutual encounter that engages a person's whole being and opens it to reciprocal influence from the other, whether a person, an aspect of nature, or a spiritual being. | ||||||
| Id | (Latin, "it") In Freud's model of the psyche, the unconscious and enduringly influential reservoir of life and death impulses. | Freud | |||||
| Idealized parental imago | Self psychology, a psychic representation formed in infancy and cathected with narcissistic libido as a means of preserving the original impression of parental perfection. Under favorable circumstances, this configuration reinternalizes as the superego. | Kohut | |||||
| Ideal type | An abstracted representation of some fundamental trend or disposition, the structural essence of which is thereby made clearer to the understanding. Ideal types are not intended for classifying individuals. | ||||||
| Identification | The process of taking on the fundamental character of a deeply respected person and making it one's own. According to the psychoanalysts, it is the means by which the superego is formed at the end of the phallic stage. | ||||||
| Identity | In Erikson's usage, the feeling of an enduring and integrated inner sameness that is affirmed by others with whom the person has a sense of solidarity. | Erikson | |||||
| Identity crisis | The uncertainty or confusion regarding who one is and to what one should commit oneself that Erikson says is characteristic of adolescence. | Erikson | |||||
| Ideology | An integrated system of ideas and values that serves to define reality and to unite individuals in a common cause. | ||||||
| Idiographic | Directed toward an understanding of particular individuals or events. Contrast with nomothetic. | ||||||
| Illusion | 1. In general, the perceiving of something in a manner that gives a mistaken impression of its true nature. 2. According to Freud's usage, a belief derived from human wishes but not necessarily false. | ||||||
| Illusionistic world | Pruyser's term for the realm established between the autistic and realistic worlds by playful and creative imagining. It is the world of transcendent objects and thus of religion. | ||||||
| Imago | In psychoanalysis, the unconscious inner representation of a person, usually a parent, that is formed early in childhood. | ||||||
| Immanence | The condition of existing within a particular realm, for example, the mundane world. | ||||||
| Inclusive fitness | The sociobiological principle according to which traits such as altruism are selected if they contribute to the fitness either of the organism or of relatives who also carry the trait's gene. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Individuation | Jung's term for the process of attaining psychic wholeness and balance. It consists in the differentiation of the diverse contents of the unconscious and the integration of them into consciousness by means of archetypal symbols. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Ineffable | Incapable of being described or expressed in words. | ||||||
| Infantile amnesia | The ordinary inability to recall the feelings and experiences of early childhood, the result, according to the psychoanalysts, of active repression. | ||||||
| Inferior function | In Jung's psychology, the least developed and most nearly unconscious of the four functions, the particular modes a person uses in perceiving and judging inner or outer events. | ||||||
| Innate releasing mechanism | The postulated inherited mechanism that is engaged by instinctual display activities of another member of the same species, resulting in a series of repetitive exchanges that serve to coordinate movement, control aggression, or effect pair-bonding. | ||||||
| Instinct | An inherited tendency in an organism to carry out certain complex, species-specific patterns of behavior under particular environmental conditions. | ||||||
| Instinctive drift | The tendency for behavior artificially shaped in the laboratory to give way to more natural, species-specific behavior, especially when the organism is placed in a situation more closely resembling its natural environment. | A term coined by Breland and Breland (1961). | |||||
| Intentional object | The term used by phenomenologists to specify the object or content to which a psychic act refers; also called intentional correlate. | ||||||
| Interpretive psychology | Any psychology that seeks to comprehend human experience by means of empathic understanding rather than causal explanation. | ||||||
| Intrinsic religious orientation | The consistent harmonizing of all aspects of one's life with some religious ideal or set of precepts. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Introjection | In psychoanalysis, the process of incorporating some attribute of another person and making it one's own. Identification constitutes a wholesale introjection of the other's character. | ||||||
| Introspection | Observation of one's own experience. (cont.) | Although literally meaning "to look within," in reality one's focus is not on the "contents of one's mind" but on the objects of one's experience, including "subjective" images or feeling states and "objective" events in the outer world. | |||||
| Introversion | in the framework of Jung's personality types, the withdrawal of psychic energy from objects of the outer world and redirection of it inwardly, toward the subject's own thoughts and feelings. | C.G. Jung | 2/17 | ||||
| Introvertive mystical experience | The systematically cultivated form of mystical experience in which the usual multiplicity of externally perceived objects vanishes, along with all other mental contents, leaving a void that is experienced as the One, or the Absolute. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Ipsative | Pertaining to a scoring procedure that requires the respondent to divide a limited number of points among the various scales, so that scoring high on one will mean scoring lower on another. (cont.) | The resulting scores because they are relative to the others rather than absolute, must be interpreted and compared with exceptional caution. | |||||
| Ithyphallic | Possessing a perpetually erect penis; an attribute represented in images of such gods as Shiva and Priapus. | ||||||
| Kabbala | (Hebrew, "tradition") The sum medieval and modern Jewish mysticism, the esoteric teachings of which maintain that the historical experience of the Jewish people is symbolic of the cosmic process. | ||||||
| Karma | (From Sanskrit kr, "do" or "act") Hindu/Buddhist traditions, the absolutely binding moral law of cause and effect, whereby an individual's present circumstances are the result of his or her past actions, including those in previous lives. | It perpetuates the ceaseless round of birth and rebirth. | |||||
| Kin selection | The sociobiological principle according to which a trait such as self-sacrifice will be selected if it increases the reproductive potential of relatives who also carry the gene for the trait. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Koan | A seemingly absurd and insoluble problem given by a Zen master to a student as a way of freeing the mind from sheer reason and preparing it through concentration for the moment of sudden illumination. Example: What is the sound of one hand clapping? | ||||||
| Kundalini | "Serpent power" that yogic practice seeks to awaken and progressively raise through the seven chakras, or bodily centers, the successful completion of which represents the uniting of the opposites of experience as well as the transcending of them. (cont.) | Hindu trantric tradition. | |||||
| Laius jealousy | Suttie's designation for the father's regressive jealousy of the child's nurtural favors from the mother. | ||||||
| Latency | In Freud's account of psychosexual development, the uneventful interval between the phallic and genital stages. | Freud | |||||
| Lateral geniculate | A subcortical nucleus of brain cells that transmits visual signal to the cortex. | ||||||
| Law of parsimony | The general scientific principle according to which an explanation is to be kept as simple as the phenomenon will allow. | 2/17 | |||||
| Leptosomic | Of Kretschmer's three bodily types, the one characterized by a lean an narrowly built physique. | Kretschmer's | |||||
| Levitation | The rising into the air of an object or person by means thought to be supernatural. | ||||||
| Liberalism | Approach that grounds the quest for truth in reflection on human experience rather than in authority based on divine revelation. Prominent in 19th-20th-century theology, liberalism manifested its disposition toward change in the Social Gospel movement. | ||||||
| Libido | Sexual energy (Freud) or, more generally, psychic energy (Jung). | Freud and Jung | |||||
| Limbic system | A collection of subcortical structures of the brain that are the chief regulators of emotional states. | ||||||
| Limbo | In Roman Catholic theology, an abode for virtuous souls excluded from heaven by the lack of baptism. While thus forever deprived of the beatific vision of God, souls in this realm are said to know God and to enjoy a perfect natural happiness. | ||||||
| Liminal | (From the Latin limen, "threshold") Used by Victor Turner to refer to the reversals, reconciliations, and imaginings that characterize the transition period in a rite of passage. | ||||||
| Linga | (Sanskrit, "phallus," "characteristic") A stylized phallic symbol, usually rendered in stone or metal, representing the Hindu god Shiva and serving as the focus of his worship. See also Shiva, Yoni. | ||||||
| Lobectomy | Surgical removal of one of the temporal lobes of the brain. | ||||||
| Locus coeruleus | A small nucleus in the brain stem widely connected to other brain cells and serving to modulate emotional states. | ||||||
| Locus of control | A construct issuing out of social learning theory and assessed by a scale that measures an individual's generalized expectation of internal versus external control of reinforcement. | ||||||
| Logotherapy | The meaning-centered therapeutic approach derived by Frankl from existential and phenomenological sources. | Frankl | |||||
| Madhurya bhava | (Sanskrit, "mood, or emotional state, of sweetness") Of the several traditional ways of relating to divinity in the Hindu tradition, the one in which the devotee relates to God as a woman to her lover. | ||||||
| Mandala | (Sanskrit, "circle") A predominantly circular design, often highly elaborated, that Jung took to be a symbol of psychic wholeness or totality. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Mantra | A sacred or mystical formula used as an aid to meditation in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. | ||||||
| Masochistic | Taking pleasure in being subjected to pain or in being mistreated or dominated. | ||||||
| Materialism | The philosophic theory that takes physical matter to be the only kind of reality. | ||||||
| Matriarchal | Under the control of or dominated by women, for example, as pertaining to family organization. | ||||||
| Mechanism | The doctrine that the experience and behavior of all living organisms are mechanically determined and can be wholly explained in terms of physical and chemical principles. | ||||||
| Mediating variable | A third, perhaps hypothetical variable that serves to explain the observed relation between two other variables. | ||||||
| Medical Materialism | A term used by James for the assumption that identification of a religious phenomenon's psychophysiological correlates serves to invalidate any claims for its genuineness. | James | 2/17 | ||||
| Megalomania | A mental disorder marked by delusions of grandeur and feelings of personal omnipotence. | ||||||
| Melancholic | Tending toward sadness or depression; one of the four basic temperaments put forward by Hippocrates and Galen. | Hippocrates and Galen | 2/17 | ||||
| Mesomorphy | The component in Sheldon's model of constitutional types that indicates the degree of muscularity and bone development. | 2/17 | |||||
| Messianic | Possessing inspiration and a crusading spirit to bring about the fulfillment of some foreseen ideal. | ||||||
| Metaneed | In Maslow's usage, one of the higher needs motivating the self-actualizing person. | Maslow | |||||
| Metaphysics | The division of philosophy concerned with the nature of existence. | ||||||
| Method of serial study | James's technique of placing a phenomenon in a graduated series of related occurrences, a procedure he considered essential to the process of interpretation. | James | |||||
| Methodological behaviorism | The perspective in psychology that shares behaviorism's exclusive commitment to quantitative and experimental methods but not its mechanistic and reductionistic emphasis on environmental determinants. | ||||||
| Muzuzah | (Hebrew, "doorpost") In the Jewish tradition, a small parchment scroll inscribed with biblical passages and placed in a case attached to the doorpost, where it serves as a reminder of God. | ||||||
| Mimetic | Imitative; descriptive of religious images, objects, and practices that represent the natural and social worlds in literal rather than abstract terms. Contrast with Aniconic and Nonmimetic. | 2/17 | |||||
| Mind-body problem | The philosophical question regarding the ultimate relationship between mental activity and the brain. | ||||||
| Mitwelt | In existential thought, the aspect of the personal world that is constituted by a person's relation to his or her fellow human beings. | ||||||
| Mnemonic | Aiding the process of remembering. | ||||||
| Moral realism | As characterized by Piaget, the conviction common among children that good and bad or right and wrong are inherent and objectively perceptible attributes of certain acts, rather than socially conditioned judgments. | ||||||
| Moratorium | A legally or socially sanctioned period of delay before a person must assume some obligation or responsibility. | ||||||
| Mortification | Subjecting oneself to bodily discomfort or pain as a form of penance or a means of subduing the passions; considered essential to ascetic practice. | ||||||
| Multiple regression | A statistical procedure for combining two or more variables in a way that maximizes the predictability of another, related variable. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Mundane | Having to do with the transitory pleasures and practical activities of everyday life, in contrast to what is eternal and transcendent. | ||||||
| Mysterium tremendum et fascinans | (Latin, "tremendous and fascinating mystery") Otto's summary formulation for characterizing the bipolar structure of the experience of the holy. | Otto | |||||
| Mystical | Related to a spiritual reality not ordinarily present to the senses or comprehended by the intellect. | ||||||
| Myth | A class of engaging and tradition-sanctified stories dealing with the origin, nature, and purpose of the world and its inhabitants. Often featuring divine beings, these stories are sometimes taken as true in the narrow historical sense. | ||||||
| Narcissism | Egocentric overvaluation and admiration of oneself; preemptive self-love. See also Primary narcissism. | ||||||
| Nationalism | The conviction that one's own nation is superior to all others and that in culture and interests should thus be favored. | ||||||
| Near-death experience | The variable configuration of remarkable perceptions and intensely positive feelings reported by persons who have come close to dying. | ||||||
| Necrophilia | A disposition to find corpses sexually exciting. | ||||||
| Negative identity | Erikson's thinking, an identity perversely based on certain personal qualities and social roles that had earlier been presented to the individual as wholly undefinable or even dangerous. | Erikson | |||||
| Negative reinforcement | Increasing the probability of some response by making the removal of an aversive stimulus event contingent on the response. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Neoteny | The preservation into adulthood of certain juvenile characteristics. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Neurotic | Pertaining to an often debilitating mental disorder characterized by enduring or recurrent symptoms experienced by the individual as alien and unacceptable. (cont.) | In contrast to psychosis, reality testing remains essentially intact, and the individual's behavior does not conspicuously violate social norms. | |||||
| Neurotransmitter | A chemical substance that serves to transmit an electrical impulse from one neuron to another (or to a post-synaptic cell). | ||||||
| Nigredo | An initial stage in the alchemical work, represented by blackness or dark chaos on the material level and by death on the spiritual level. | ||||||
| Nihilism | The deeply pessimistic view that nothing is knowable or of value, and that existence is therefore meaningless. | ||||||
| Nirvana | In the Buddhist tradition, the final state of unspeakable bliss resulting from transcendence of desire, suffering, and the cycle of birth and rebirth. | ||||||
| Nomology | In interpretive psychology, the typifying of phenomena in terms of the laws or functions that govern their change or alteration. | ||||||
| Nomothetic | Pertaining to laws of general applicability. Contrast with Idiographic. | ||||||
| Noncanonical | Falling outside a religious tradition's canon, or authoritative body of scriptures, yet similar in form and content. | ||||||
| Nonmimetic | Nonimitative, thus nonrepresentational or abstract. | ||||||
| Nonrational | Incapable of being grasped by conceptual thought. | ||||||
| Norepinephrine | A major neurotransmitter secreted mainly in the locus coeruleus of the brain stem and regulating emotional response. | ||||||
| Novitiate | A person admitted to a religious community for the traditional period of probation, or preliminary testing, that precedes full membership. | ||||||
| Null hypothesis | In statistical analysis, the precisely testable hypothesis that the differences observed among the assessed variables may be attributed solely to chance variation. (cont.) | Ch 5 | 2/17 | If the differences prove to be large enough to allow rejection of the null hypothesis, in effect one's true hypothesis is affirmed, that among the variables there is a statistically significant but otherwise unspecifiable difference. | |||
| Numinous | The term employed by Otto to designate the category of value and the associated complex of feelings originally implied by "the holy." (cont.) | Otto, Calvin | Otto initially assumed he was the first to coin this term, but he later discovered that the Latin numinis was used as early aas the sixteenth century by Calvin. | ||||
| Objective psychology | Any of a variety of approaches in psychology that restrict themselves to data that are publicly observable. | ||||||
| Objective worship | According to Pratt's distinction, the form of worship aimed at communicating with and perhaps influencing some supernatural being. Contrast with Subjective worship. | Pratt | |||||
| Obsessional neurosis | A disabling mental disorder in which the person is plagued by persistent irrational or repugnant ideas, thoughts, or images that lie beyond his or her control; referred to more often today as obsessive-compulsive disorder. | ||||||
| Occipital cortex | The uppermost layer of the cerebral hemispheres in higher animals, including human beings; commonly called gray matter in accord with its appearance. | Isn't this known as the cerebral cortex? The occipital cortex would then be the part deep to the occipital bone; having to do with vision. | |||||
| Oceanic feeling | A term, ultimately derived from Sanskrit sources, used to refer to unbounded mystical experience. Borrowing the term from Romain Rolland, Freud takes its referent to be the limitless narcissism of infancy. | Freud, Romain Rolland | |||||
| Oedipus complex | The crucial pattern of object relations in the phallic stage when the child experiences sexual desire toward the parent of the opposite sex and jealousy and rage toward all rivals, especially the parent of the same sex. (cont.) | In the inverse Oedipus complex, which orthodox psychoanalysts take to be almost as common, the roles of the parents are reversed. | |||||
| Omnipotence | The quality or state of having unlimited power or influence. | ||||||
| Omnipotence of thoughts | In psychoanalysis, the delusional conviction that the mere thinking of some outcome is sufficient to bring it about. | ||||||
| Omniscience | The quality or state of having unlimited awareness, knowledge, or understanding. | ||||||
| Once-born | A term freely borrowed by James from Francis Newman to describe the healthy-minded type, whose happiness does not require the agonizing second birth of the twice-born. | James, Francis Newman | |||||
| Ontogeny | The course of development of an individual organism. | ||||||
| Ontological | Pertaining to being or existence. | ||||||
| Operant behavior | Emitted responses that operate on the environment and produce reinforcing effects. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Operational definition | A definition of some characteristic or process in terms of the operations or procedures used to identify and measure it (e.g., defining religiosity in terms of a particular scale purporting to assess it). | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Oracle | The answer spoken by the representative of some divinity in response to an inquiry. The term is also applied to the representative and to the shrine where the oracles were given. | ||||||
| Oral sadism | The taking of pleasure in injuring or destroying by biting; said by psychoanalysts to derive from experience late in the oral stage. | ||||||
| Oral stage | The first of Freud's psychosexual stages, during which the mouth serves as the primary source of pleasure. | Freud | |||||
| Originology | A term proposed by Erikson to designate a too-facile explanation of a phenomenon in terms of its origins. | Erikson | |||||
| Orthodoxy | Faithful subscription to a set of beliefs established as correct by some authority. | ||||||
| Orthopraxy | Faithful observance of the practices prescribed by some authority. | ||||||
| Overdetermination | The principle, emphasized by psychoanalysis, that every behavior or experience has a variety of causes, any one of which may be sufficient to maintain the phenomenon. | ||||||
| Pantheism | The doctrine that equates God with the whole of the universe. | ||||||
| Paradigm | In general, a particularly clear example of something. More specifically, a model of scientific conduct - including theory, principles, methods, results, and applications - that guides the continuing research of a community of adherents. | 2/17 | |||||
| Paranoid | Subject to irrational suspiciousness and delusions of persecution. | ||||||
| Parapsychology | Serious/systematic investigation of such paranormal phenomena as telepathy, clairvoyance, and apparitions of the dying/deceased, aiming to establish their nature/laws and ultimately place them in a broader and generally acceptable scientific framework. | ||||||
| Parricide | The murdering of a close relative. | ||||||
| Pathological method | The illumination of more or less normal phenomena by studying instances of pathological exaggeration. | ||||||
| Patriarchal | Under the control of or dominated by men. | ||||||
| Patricide | The killing of one's own father. | ||||||
| Peak experience | Maslow's term for mystical experience, chosen in order to study such experience apart from its traditional religious context and to make it more widely available. | Maslow | |||||
| Pedagogy | The study of educational methods, process, and goals. | ||||||
| Penance | Assigned or self-imposed punishment, ranging from bodily suffering to the performance of good works, that is required for the forgiveness of one's sins. | 2/17 | |||||
| Perennial philosophy | Unanimous core of truth said by some commentators to underlie the surface variety of religious traditions. Some prefer to call this putative underlying unity "primordial tradition" to avoid suggesting that it operates as an articulate formal philosophy. | Huston Smith (1976) | |||||
| Perseveration | The persistence of some goal-directed behavior usually to an exceptional degree or beyond a desired point. | ||||||
| Persona | In Jung's theory, the social mask or outer attitude a person assumes to meet society's expectations while yet preserving his or her true nature. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Personal document | Any record, such as a letter, journal, or autobiography, that through analysis or interpretation yields insight into the experience or personality of the writer. | ||||||
| Phallic stage | The third and most crucial of Freud's psychosexual stages, during which the genitals become the primary erotogenic zone. | ||||||
| Phallus | The penis, especially when represented as a symbol. | ||||||
| Phenomenology | The descriptive study of the contents human experience, carried out as free as possible of any presuppositions or theoretical framework. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Phlegmatic | Characterized by sluggishness and apathy; one of the four basic temperaments identified by Hippocrates and Galen. | Hippocrates and Galen | 2/17 | ||||
| Phobia | A persistent and often debilitating irrational fear of some object or situation. | ||||||
| Photism | An impression of bright light in the absence of an adequate stimulus. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Photobiology | An interdisciplinary field of study that investigates the role of light in the functioning of living organisms. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Phylogeny | The evolutionary development of a species. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Physiognomy | Traditionally, the ancient art of judging character from the appearance of the face. The term is now used by phenomenologists to refer to the appearance of the outer world in an individual's experience, for example, as threatening, friendly, or calming. | ||||||
| Pietism | A 17th-century reform movement in Germany reasserting the importance of heartfelt personal piety as over against the formality and intellectualism of the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions. | ||||||
| Pistis | A Greek word meaning "trust" or "trustful loyalty," which for Jung is equally a mark of religious experience and a mark of fidelity to the laws of the individual's own being. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Placebo effect | Positive change occurring in response to some factor, not because the factor is efficacious in itself, but because the individual confidently expects it to work. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Pleasure principle | In psychoanalysis, the id's blind dedication to maximizing pleasure and minimizing displeasure, without regard to reality. (cont.) | Although eventually displaced by the reality principle, it remains a strong disposition within the psyche throughout life, sometimes even overcoming the reality principle. | |||||
| Pleroma | In the Gnostic tradition, the remote and self-contained realm of divine light. | ||||||
| Pluralism | An outlook that respectfully acknowledges today's diversity of intellectual, cultural, and religious views and thoughtfully takes them into account in the process of establishing commitments in a relativistic world. See also Postmodernism. | 2/17 | |||||
| Polymorphouse perversity | The indifference of the id, and hence of the infant, to who or what the object of gratification is. | ||||||
| Positivistic | Characterized by disdain for subjective, intuitive, or speculative approaches to the world of human experience and corresponding deep admiration for the objective procedures of the natural sciences. | ||||||
| Possession | A sometimes voluntarily provoked trance state, usually marked by intense motor activity and emotional excitement, in which the ordinary personality is displaced by another, often alien one that is interpreted as a possessing spirit. (cont.) | 2/17 - Trance | Among onlookers, possession evokes all the emotions, including uncanniness and dread, that Otto sums up in the expression mysterium tremendum. | ||||
| Post hoc analysis | The choosing of some form of statistical analysis after the data have been collected and examined. Although it makes the obtaining of significant results more likely, it also increases the probability of a false positive. | ||||||
| Posthypnotic suggestion | A suggestion made during hypnotic trance that the subject will react in a specified way in the subsequent waking state. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Postmodernism | Contemporary view that the confident beliefs and values of the modern era are not true in any absolute sense but are human creations that represent alternate ways of making sense of human experience in a universe that will forever remain mysterious. (c) | 2/17 - Itself and Social Constructionism | See also: pluralism, social constructionism, relativism. | ||||
| Pragmatism | The philosophical system championed by James according to which the meaning or truth of an idea is to be found it its practical consequences. | James | |||||
| Prakrti | (Sanskrit) Primeval matter or substance; with purusha (Sanksrit, "man"), one of the dual bases of all existence, material and spiritual, according to Sankhya, one of the oldest major systems of Indian philosophy. | ||||||
| Prana | (Sanskrit, "breath") The term for "life energy" or "vital air" in Indian philosophy. | ||||||
| Pranayama | (Sanskrit, "breath-restraint") The disciplining of respiration, which constitutes the fourth of the eight stages of yogic progression. | ||||||
| Pre-Oedipal | Pertaining to events or attitudes that characterize the developmental period preceding the Oedipus conflict. | ||||||
| Prepotent | Taking precedence over others in power or influence. In Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the lower a need is in the hierarchy, the more prepotent it is. | Maslow | |||||
| Presence | See sense of presence. | ||||||
| Primary narcissism | In psychoanalysis, the infantile psychic disposition to cathect one's own body as an object of sexual pleasure. | ||||||
| Primary process | The autistic and illogical laws governing the infantile psyche in its pursuit of the pleasure principle. | ||||||
| Primitive credulity | The tendency, most evident in children, to believe what one is told until there is some occasion for doubt. | ||||||
| Principle of biological interpretation | Proposed by Flournoy in 1903, this principle maintains that an adequate psychology of religion is 1. physiological in its attentiveness to organic conditions; 2. genetic or evolutionary in its concern with development, (c) | Flournoy | 3. comparative in its sensitivity to individual differences; and 4. dynamic in its recognition of the dynamic interplay of many factors in the religious life. | ||||
| Principle of psychoreligious parallelism | Berguer's principle that every religious phenomenon possesses two parallel aspects: a psychological state and an impression of value and objective significance. (cont.) | Berguer | Because the psychology of religion can address only the first of these factors, he argues, it cannot give a full account of relgiion. | ||||
| Principle of the exclusion of the transcendent | Flournoy's classic principle according to which the psychologist of religion will neither eject nor affirm the independent existence of the religious object. | Flournoy | |||||
| Principle of the inclusion of the transcendent | The principle, suggested here as a complement to Flournoy's exclusionary principle, maintaining that the psychology of religion must take into account the experience of transcendent objects. | Wulff | |||||
| Progressivism | A term first used by participants and later by historians to refer to the group of reform movements that swept across America from the 1890s to 1917. It was a major factor in the rise of the psychology of religion. See also Social Gospel movement. | ||||||
| Projection | The unwitting attribution to others of trends within a person's own personality; considered a defense mechanism when the person first represses and denies such trends. | ||||||
| Projective technique | Any of a variety of procedures that elicit a projection of the individual's private world of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings by providing a relatively unstructured field that the individual must organize. | ||||||
| Propaedeutic | (Greek, "to teach beforehand") preparatory study or practice needed as a foundation for some subsequent undertaking or achievement. | ||||||
| Propitiate | To appease or regain the favor of. | ||||||
| Propriate function | Allport's term for any of the activities or functions of the self (proprium), all of which serve to integrate the personality. | Allport | |||||
| Protocol | The original record of an interview or of the results of an experiment or other investigation. | ||||||
| Pseudospeciation | In Erikson's theory, the conviction that a person's own group and its ways define what is essentially human, and that other groups, viewed as if of a different species, are a threat to the person's own identity and fate. | Erikson | |||||
| Psychasthenia | A term used by Janet for what today is called an obsessive-compulsive disorder. | Janet | |||||
| Psychedelic | "Mind-manifesting," a term coined by Humphry Osmond as a neutral label for drugs that induce ecstatic or mystical experiences. It is also used to describe the experiences themselves. | Humphry Osmond | 2/17 | ||||
| Psychologism | A term of reproach designating the tendency to reduce philosophical and theological reflection to psychological processes, hence making psychology the fundamental discipline. | Brought up in lecture 2/8, along with scientism. | 2/17 | ||||
| Psychometrics | The quantitative assessment of individual differences in abilities, attitudes, interests, traits, and other such personal qualities. | ||||||
| Psychopathic | 1. Most generally, and as used by James, characterized by unspecified mental disorder. 2. More recently and specifically, pertaining to individuals who chronically engage in antisocial activities without guilt or anxiety (cont.) | James | They are seemingly incapable of lasting, warm, and responsible relationships; also called sociopathic. | ||||
| Psychotic | Pertaining to serious mental disorder in which the person unmistakably loses contact with reality, and thinking, perception, and emotion may be profoundly disturbed. | ||||||
| Punishment | In operant conditioning, an aversive stimulus that suppresses the occurrence of the behavior it follows. | ||||||
| Purgatory | According to Roman Catholic doctrine, a place or state of punishment where departed souls undergo purificatory suffering for the interval of time required to atone for their sins. | ||||||
| Pyknic | One of Kretschmer's three bodily types, characterized by a physique that is soft, heavy, and round. | Kretschmer | |||||
| Quasi-experimental | Descriptive of various research designs that, for ethical or practical reasons, depart in one or more ways from the usual rigorous standards for an experiment. (cont.) | For example, relying on naturally occurring differences on an independent variable rather than trying to manipulate them. | |||||
| Quaternity | Any figure or assemblage having four elements or parts; said by Jung to symbolize the archetype of the self. | C.G. Jung | |||||
| Quest religious orientation | An understanding of religion, not as a shared body of established truths and obligatory practices, but as an active and personal search for deeper understanding of and contact with ultimate reality. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Radical empiricism | James's late-developed metaphysics according to which the universe is composed of pure, or unanalyzed, experiences, which are interpreted either as objects in the world or as events in the mind, depending on the person's practical purposes. (cont.) | James | This philosophy of pure experience, of life as it is actually lived through, is close in spirit to modern-day phenomenology | ||||
| Ramadan | Arabian lunar calendar's ninth month, during which all able-bodied Muslims except soldiers and young children fast from sunrise to sunset, commemorating Muhammad's initial revelation and his later flight from Mecca to Medina; start of their calendar. | 2/17 | |||||
| Rapture | According to mystical tradition, and ecstatic state in which the soul is lifted out of itself by divine power, allowing it to see things beyond the reach of ordinary human vision. | ||||||
| Rationalism | Reliance on reason, as opposed to sense experience, for establishing what is true. | 2/17 | |||||
| Reaction formation | A defense mechanism whereby a person exhibits a trait or pattern of behavior that is diametrically opposed to the wishes or tendencies he or she has denied and repressed. | ||||||
| Reality principle | In psychoanalysis, the realization that there is an independent world of reality that requires considerable compromise if pleasure is ultimately to be obtained. This principle, the possession of the ego, ordinarily displaces the pleasure principle. | ||||||
| Recapitulation theory | The hypothesis that individual development proceeds through a series of stages paralleling those in the evolutionary development of the species. (In a phrase, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.) | 2/17 | |||||
| Redintegration | The postulated process by which a total experience is brought back into consciousness by a single associated stimulus. | 2/17 | |||||
| Reductionism | The explanation of complex phenomena in terms of simpler, underlying processes. | 2/17 | |||||
| Reflex arc | The classic theoretical uni characterizing the function of the nervous system. A receptor nerve, excited by a stimulus, transmits this excitement through an intermediate neuron to an effector nerve, which activates the corresponding muscle or gland. | ||||||
| Regression | In psychoanalysis, the retreat to earlier, less mature ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, usually as a mechanism of defense. | ||||||
| Reification | The treating of some process or abstract construct as though it were an independently existing thing. The notion that a person "has a religion" is an example of such an error. | 2/17 | |||||
| Reinforcement | In operant conditioning, the process of increasing the probability htat some behavior will occur by following it with a stimulus event known to have reinforcing properties. The term also serves to designate the stimulus event. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Relativism | The view that all knowledge is relative to the historical and personal context in which it is formulated and interpreted. | ||||||
| Reliability | The relative capacity of a measuring instrument to give consistent results, either within itself or from one occasion to another. It is expressed as a correlation coefficient. Distinguish from Validity. (See Validity) | ||||||
| Religionswissenschaft | (German, "science of religion") The science or scholarly study of the world's religious traditions; usually translated as "history of religions." | ||||||
| Religious act | The phenomenological expression referring to the individual's complex relation to the religious object. It includes the partial acts of taking cognizance of the object and of taking a stand in relation to it. | ||||||
| Repression | The exclusion of disturbing impulses, images, or thoughts from consciousness by an ongoing process that itself lies outside of awareness; the most elemental defense mechanism. | ||||||
| Respondent behavior | Behavior elicited by an unknown stimulus. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Response set | A certain disposition - for example, acquiescence - to respond to questionnaire items in terms other than those intended by the test developer. | ||||||
| Reticular activating system (RAS) | A fibrous network of neurons in the brain stem that plays a major role in regulating general arousal and excitability. | ||||||
| Ritualism | In Erikson's theory, a pathological distortion of one of the elements of ritualization. | Erikson | |||||
| Ritualization | 1. In ethology, a complex series of repetitive exchanges initiated in many animal species by instinctive display activities and serving to coordinate movement and modulate behavior. (cont.) | Erikson | 2. In Erikson's theory, periodically recurrent interplay between at least two persons and carried out with attentiveness to form and detail, a sense of higher symbolic meaning, and a feeling of absolute necessity. | ||||
| Role taking | Assuming or appropriating the role of another person by identifying with that person. Also used by Sunden in the more limited sense of imagining oneself in the other's place in order to anticipate how the other will respond. | Ch 4 | Sunden | 2/17 | |||
| Rosary | A Roman Catholic devotion centering on the mysteries of Christ's life and recited with the aid of a circular string of beads also called a rosary. Most common 150 Hail Marys, in groups of ten, groups preceded by Our Father and followed by a Gloria. | ||||||
| Rubedo | The final stage and goal of the alchemical work, symbolized by the mysterious philosopher's stone and a number of other mythic, sometimes red objects suggesting ultimate transformation and immortality. | ||||||
| Sadistic | Taking pleasure in inflicting physical or mental pain on another person. | ||||||
| Sadomasochistic | Combining both sadistic and masochistic tendencies. | ||||||
| Salvation | The variously conceived ultimate goal of religious devotion, the highest good offered by a tradition to its followers. | ||||||
| Samadhi | A state of supreme concentration in which opposites are paradoxically transcended and union is attained; the final stage of yogic progression. Of the grades, savichara samadhi entails penetration to the "subtle" aspects of matter, (cont.) | whereas in nirvichara samadhi, thought becomes one with the essence of the physical world, leaving behind all consciousness of time and space as well as feelings of suffering or pleasure. | |||||
| Sanguine | Typified by warmth, cheerfulness, and optimism; one of the four basic temperaments delineated by Hippocrates and Galen. | Hippocrates and Galen | 2/17 | ||||
| Satori | The joyful and ineffable experience of sudden illumination that is the immediate aim of Zen Buddhist meditation. | ||||||
| Satyagraha | (Sanskrit, "truth force") The ritualized program of friendly passive resistance that Gandhi and his followers used to effect political and social reform. | ||||||
| Scatological | Having to do with excrement. | ||||||
| Schizoid | A personality disorder in which the person is emotionally aloof, lacks warm feelings for others, and is indifferent to the praise or criticism of others. | ||||||
| Schizophrenic | Exhibiting certain symptoms of psychosis, including delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thought processes. The person's sense of self is frequently disturbed, affect is blunted or inappropriate, and the individual tends to withdraw from the world. | ||||||
| Schizothymic | In Kretschmer's typology, a class of temperaments consisting of a complex amalgam of divided tendencies that give the outward appearance of coolness, polite sensitivity, adaptability, and refinement (cont.) | Kretschmer | 2/17 | while hidden within may be passionate feelings, rebelliousness, vulgarity, and maliciousness. Kretschmer associates this temperamental type with the lean and narrowly built physique of the leptosome. | |||
| Schuldig | A German word meaning both "guilty" and "indebted"; used by existential psychologists to characterize human relation to the natural world, other persons, and oneself. | ||||||
| Scopophilia | (Also scoptophilia) The impulse to look, especially at what is forbidden or unknown. Freud said that this impulse, a component of the sexual instinct, is most conspicuous in the phallic-stage interest in the sexual organs. (cont.) | Freud | Psychoanalysts maintain that the interest in looking, as well as its counterpart, showing, is sublimated in various religious practices. | ||||
| Scrupolosity | Anxious over-attentiveness to the details of moral or religious requirements. | ||||||
| Second naivete | Ricoeur's term for the postcritical attitude of openness to the objects of religious faith, an attitude said to be fostered by phenomenology through its hermeneutics of restoration. | ||||||
| Secondary process | In psychoanalysis, the more or less logical form of thinking characteristic of the conscious ego. | ||||||
| Secularization | The progressive substituting of nonreligious and frequently scientific interpretations of events for the traditional religious ones. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Self | In Jungian psychology, the archetype of psychic harmony, balance, and wholeness. In its various manifestations it symbolizes the never wholly attained goal of individuation. | ||||||
| Self-actualization | The realization to a marked degree of a person's inherent potential. | ||||||
| Self-grandiosity | The solipsistic attitude of extravagantly favorable self-evaluation, an attitude denoted by the psychoanalytic principle of primary narcissism. | ||||||
| Self-objects | In Kohut's theory, any objects that are felt to be a apart or extension of the self and therefore cathected with narcissistic rather than object libido. | Kohut | |||||
| Self-representation | In psychoanalysis, the relatively enduring precipitate of past experiences by which the ego represents itself to itself. | ||||||
| Semantic differential | A standardized rating device consisting of a series of seven-point bipolar scales for assessing the connotative meaning of some concept or object. | ||||||
| Sensationalism | The view that all knowledge is ultimately derived from sensory experience. | 2/17 | |||||
| Sense of presence | A usually vivid and often overwhelming sense of the presence of an invisible spirit or divine being who, although only vaguely represented, is often precisely localized. | ||||||
| Sentiment | In relation to some object, a complex personal disposition that is primarily affective and conative in organization while yet possessing considerable cognitive content. | ||||||
| Serotonin | A neurotransmitter produced in the raphe nuclei and exerting an excitatory function at some brain synapses and an inhibitory function at others. Its chemical structure is strikingly similar to that of LSD. | ||||||
| Shadow | In analytical psychology, the denied and undeveloped side of the personality, which, though individual in form, is archetypal in its universality, dynamics, and symbolism. | ||||||
| Shaman | A term of northeast Asian origin now applied to any priest or medicine man whose specialized functions as prophet and spiritual healer are carried out in a state of voluntary possession trance. | 2/17 - Trance | |||||
| Shiva | The Destroyer in the Hindu divine Triad, in which Brahma is Creator and Vishnu is Preserver. Variously represented as the Lord of Dancers, as an ithyphallic ascetic, and as a deity who is half male and half female. (cont.) | Shiva is most commonly worshiped in the form of the linga, an emblem of the creative energy of the universe. See also Linga. | |||||
| Sick soul | In James's typology, the person of melancholic temperament, whose peculiar sensitivity to the evil aspects of reality is founded in an agonizing inner dividedness or discordancy of the self manifested in a conviction of sinfulness. | James | |||||
| Significance level | In statistical analysis, the probability of wrongly concluding that obtained results are statistically significant. By convention, the largest acceptable probability is usually .05. See also False positive. | Ch 5 | 2/17 | ||||
| Social constructionism | The view that all human knowledge and understanding is created and shaped through a process of negotiation among persons living within particular cultural contexts. See also Postmodernism. | 2/17 | |||||
| Social Gospel movement | A late nineteenth-century reform movement in America dedicated to bringing the Christian gospel to bear on the economic, political, and social problems created by industrialization. See also Liberalism, Progressivism. | ||||||
| Social learning theory | A cognitively oriented behavior theory that accounts for the learning and enactment of complex patterns of behavior in terms of observation and selective imitation. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Social releaser | A ritualized pattern of behavior that serves to trigger and innate releasing mechanism in another member of the same species, thereby instigating a series of repetitive exchanges that serve to modulate and coordinate behavior. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Sociobiology | Field of study employing what has been learned about ethology, ecology, and population genetics to predict features of a population's social organization, given its size, density, and age distribution, (cont.) | Ch 4 | 2/17 | and the behavioral constraints that the population's shared genetic constitution imposes. | |||
| Solipsism | The conviction that the self is the whole of reality, and thus that other persons and the rest of the world are a person's own creations. Ascribed by some psychologists to the young infant, this view has, in modified form and to varying degrees, (cont.) | Jung | 2/17 | been espoused as an epistemological doctrine by nearly every major philosopher since Descartes. Jung expresses this doctrine when he says that all we can know is our own experience. | |||
| Soma | In ancient India, an intoxicating plant juice and the god associated with its use that were the subject of lyric hymns in the Rig Veda. | ||||||
| Somatotonia | The component of temperament said by Sheldon to correspond to the mesomorphic body type. Among its traits are energetic and noisy assertiveness, love of risk and physical adventure, and psychological callousness. | ||||||
| Somatotype | One or another of the basic body builds identified in some typological schema, usually under the assumption that each type is associated with a certain configuration of psychological traits. | ||||||
| Spatiality | A fundamental phenomenological category encompassing the totality of an individual's subjective experience of space. See also Temporality. | ||||||
| Speaking in Tongues | See Glossolalia | ||||||
| Spike activity | Large and sudden changes in the electrical potential of nerve cells, as superimposed on the slower wave rhythm reflected in an electroencephalogram. | ||||||
| Standard deviation (SD) | The descriptive statistic most commonly used to specify the variability of scores in a distribution. It is equal to the square root of the variance. In a normal distribution, 34.13 percent of the scores fall between the mean and one SD. See Variance. | ||||||
| Stigmata | In the Christian tradition, marks or actual bleeding sores resembling the traditional wounds of the crucified Christ and welcomed by their recipients as a sign of intimate participation in the renunciatory suffering of their Lord. | ||||||
| Subjective worship | In Pratt's typology, the form of worship chiefly intended to induce some desired mental state in the worshipers. contrast with Objective worship. | ||||||
| Sublimation | In psychoanalysis, the unconscious diverting of illicit impulses into more highly refined and elaborated interests that, though socially acceptable, also allow partial satisfaction of the instigating needs. | ||||||
| Subliminal | Occurring below the threshold of conscious awareness. | ||||||
| Superego | In Freud's conception of the psyche, the largely unconscious division formed by the introjection of parental attitudes and experienced as the conscience. | Freud | |||||
| Superior function | In analytical psychology, the mode of perceiving or judging inner or outer events that is most developed and most frequently used. | ||||||
| Suppression | Conscious renunciation of certain instinctual impulses, a process that Freud says is likely to be only temporarily successful. | ||||||
| Sutras | The collection of aphoristic teachings in the late Vedic scriptures of ancient India. | ||||||
| Synapse | The juncture where a nervous impulse passes from one neuron to another. | ||||||
| Synchronicity | The principle proposed by Jung to account for the temporal concurrence of certain events that are not causally linked. | Jung | |||||
| Syncretism | In the history of religions, the gradual and usually spontaneous mingling of two or more traditions, eventually resulting in a new whole. | ||||||
| Synesthesia | A concomitant subjective sensation or image in one sensory modality in response to a stimulus that is presented to another (e.g., seeing colors in response to certain sounds). | ||||||
| Syzygy | (From Latin, Syzygia, "conjunction") In analytical psychology, the conjunction of male and female, usually in the form of a divine couple. | ||||||
| Talion punishment | Retribution taking a form corresponding to the injury or the crime committed (e.g., an eye for an eye). | ||||||
| Tallith | (Hebrew) A prayer shawl, typically white with blue or black stripes and usually made of wool, worn by Jewish males during the morning prayers as well as during all services on the Day of Atonement, (cont.) | if not on other occasions as well. Wearing the Tallith denotes symbolic subjection to the will of God. | |||||
| Talmud | An authoritative encyclopedia of ancient Jewish thought supplementing the Hebrew Bible and concerned chiefly with law. | ||||||
| Tantric | Pertaining to a pan-Indian mystical movement centering on the worship of Shakti, the Divine Woman and Mother. It arose in the 4th century C.E., and has been assimilated into both Hindu and Buddhist traditions. | ||||||
| Tefillin | (Hebrew, "phylacteries") Two black leather boxes that are ritually bound by leather straps on the head and the left arm (the right arm of left-handed persons) of Jewish males who have reached religious majority (age 13). (cont.) | Worn on weekdays but not on the Sabbath or festivals, the tefillin contain scriptual passages and are said to fortify the wearer against sinning. | |||||
| Telekinesis | The movement of objects without contact or other apparent physical means. | ||||||
| Teleological | Pertaining to purposes or goals. | ||||||
| Telepathy | The conveying of an impression from one mind to another without the use of the sense organs. | ||||||
| Telesphoros | A deity, often represented as a child, who attended Asclepius, the Greek god of healing. | ||||||
| Telic | Tending toward some end or goal. | 2/17 | |||||
| Telos | (Greek, "end," "purpose") In Koepp's schema of interpretive understanding, the purpose or goal, and thus the unifying element, of the phenomenon a person seeks to understand. | ||||||
| Temperament | An enduring inclination toward a certain quality of emotional response and mood. | ||||||
| Temporality | A fundamental phenomenological category encompassing all aspects of the subjective time of the individual's world of experience, including personal tempo, the dynamically interrelated structures of past, present and future, (cont.) | and the relation to social historical, and cosmic time. See Spatiality. | |||||
| Temporal lobe | A large lobe of the cerebral hemisphere positioned in front of the occipital lobe and below the lateral fissure, thus located roughly at ear level. | ||||||
| Tetany | A nervous disorder characterized by intermittent tonic, usually paroxysmal spasms involving the extremities. | ||||||
| Theocracy | Rule of a society or state by immediate divine guidance or by representatives of God, usually priests. | ||||||
| Theodicy | The attempt to justify the ways of God in the face of the existence of evil. | ||||||
| Theophagy | The sacramental eating of a god in the form of a sacrificed human being or animal, the first fruits of a harvest, baked bread, or some other substance. | ||||||
| Theophany | Some perceptible manifestation of a deity. | ||||||
| Theosophy | 1. Any system of thought (e.g., Gnosticism) purporting to offer mystical knowledge of God and of the universe in relation to God. 2. The philosophy derived from Buddhist and Hindu sources by the Russian medium Madam Blavatsky (1831-1891), (cont.) | and promulgated by the Theosophical Society she founded in America in 1875. Annie Besant (1847 - 1933), a nationalist leader in India, headed the society from 1907 until her death. | (continued) Anthroposophy is a separatist movement initiated in Germany by Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who emphasized the natural availability of divine wisdom. See also Gnosticism. | ||||
| Theriomorphic | Having the form of an animal. | ||||||
| Threshold | The point at which an increasingly intense stimulus produces a physiological or psychological effect. | ||||||
| Totemism | A social system centered on a shared mystical relation with some animal or plant that is venerated as a symbol of the tribe and the members' common ancestry. | ||||||
| Trance | A state of profound absorption frequently accompanied by vocal and motor automatisms that in some contexts are interpreted as signs of spirit possession. | 2/17 | |||||
| Transcendence | The crucial, ultimate dimension toward which all religious expression is directed and in which, to varying degrees, it participates. | 2/17 | |||||
| Transcendent function | Jung's term for the complex process in which opposing elements of the individual psyche are brought together by means of unifying symbols, thus facilitating the transition from a less developed attitude to a more advanced one. | Jung | |||||
| Transference | In psychoanalysis, the therapeutically invaluable tendency of the patient to see the therapist as a virtual reincarnation of some important figure in the patient's childhood and thus to reenact this past relationship in the therapist's presence. | ||||||
| Transitional object | Some childhood object such as a blanket or teddy bear that symbolizes the mother and helps to ease the young child's transition from hallucinatory omnipotence to recognition and acceptance of objective reality. | ||||||
| Transitional phenomena | The broad class of cultural possessions, including especially art and religion, to which Winnicott assigns the function of creating an illusory, intermediate realm of experience that helps throughout life to bridge inner and outer realities. (cont.) | The child's transtitional object is the prototype of all later such phenomena. | |||||
| Transmarginal inhibition | A protective reaction of the nervous system to over-stimulation. | 2/17 | |||||
| Transpersonal psychology | An offshoot of humanistic psychology that encompasses a wide range of self-transcending phenomena, including ecstatic and mystical experiences. (cont.) | Its proponents seek to appropriate insights from the great religious traditions, especially those of the East, in order to develop a new paredigm of scientific understanding. | |||||
| Transvestite | A person who takes pleasure in adopting the dress and manner of the opposite sex. | ||||||
| Tophotropic arousal | Increased activation of the parasympathetic nervous system with attendant relaxation and quietude; the outcome of various meditative practices. | ||||||
| Tropism | Automatic orientation by an organism toward or away from a source of stimulation. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Twice-born | An alternate term used by James to refer to the sick soul, who must undergo the second birth of conversion in order to attain happiness. | James | |||||
| Typology | The construction of a fundamental set of "ideal" types as an orienting schema for comprehending individual forms. The term is also applied to the system of types itself. | ||||||
| Umwelt | In existential thought, the aspect of the personal world that is constituted by one's relation to the surrounding natural world, including one's own body. | ||||||
| Upanishads | A class of sacred texts in the Hindu tradition containing speculations regarding the nature of the world and of ultimate reality and how salvation may be attained. | ||||||
| Vaishnava | Pertaining to the major Hindu sect that centers on the worship of Vishnu or one of his incarnations. The other major sect, the Shaivite, centers on Shiva. | ||||||
| Validity | The degree to which something is well grounded or supported by appropriate means. In psychometrics, it is the degree to which an assessment device actually measures what it is supposed to measure. (cont.) | Establishing the validity of a test or questionnaire is a complex and cumulative undertaking, the results of which require careful interpretation. | |||||
| Variance | A descriptive statistic for specifying the extent to which individual scores in a distribution deviate from the mean. It is calculated by squaring the deviation of each score from the mean and then averaging these squared deviations. | ||||||
| Vedas | The four canonical collections of hymns and prayers that constitute the most ancient of the Hindu scriptures. Of the four, the Rig Veda is the most important. | ||||||
| Veridical | True or accurate; not illusory. | ||||||
| Verstehen | (German, "understanding") The intuitive process, grounded in a person's own lived experience and capacity for empathy, by which the felt meaning that underlies any of a great variety of expressions, (cont.) | from bodily gestures to literature, art, and religion, is discerned. See Empathy. | |||||
| Viscerotonia | The component of temperament said by Sheldon to correspond to the endomorphic body type. Its traits include love of physical comfort and eating, complacency, sociability, and love of ceremony. | Sheldon | |||||
| Viscous | In Kretschmer's typology, the temperament ordinarily characterized by phlegmatic equanimity and stability but capable of explosive anger and massive violence. Kretschmer ascribes this temperamental type to the athletic physique. | Kretschmer | |||||
| Vishnu | The Preserver in the Hindu divine Triad, in which Brahma is Creator and Shiva is Destroyer. Among Vishnu's incarnations, Krishna and Rama are the most important. | ||||||
| Volitional | Having to do with the processes of choosing or deciding. | ||||||
| Wurzburg school | The group of psychologists who, under the leadership of Oswald Kulpe at Wurzburg university, used systematic experimental introspection to study thought processes. | Oswald Kulpe | |||||
| Yoga | (Sanskrit, "yoking") An ancient Hindu system of doctrines and physical practices directed toward the attainment of pure Being or liberation. | Of the many types of yoga, the best known are hatha (yoga by way of bodily purification and discipline), raja (concentration), jnana (knowledge), bhakti (loving devotion), and karma (action). | |||||
| Yoni | The pear-shaped base, representing the female genitals, out of which the Shiva linga rises. | ||||||
| Zazen | The practice of seated meditation that constitutes the heart of Zen Buddhist training. | ||||||
| Zeus jealousy | Suttie's designation for a man's jealousy of the woman's capacity to bear and suckle children. | Suttie | |||||
| Zizith | (Hebrew, "fringes") The tassels attached to the four corners of special garments worn by Jewish males according to biblical command as protection against immoral conduct. | ||||||
| Religion | 2/17 | ||||||
| Psychology | 2/17 | ||||||
| Empiricism | 2/17 | ||||||
| Constitutional Types | See Endomorphy and Mesomorphy | 2/17 | |||||
| Reified Object | See Reification | 2/17 | |||||
| Ethocentrism | 2/17 | ||||||
| Somatotypes | 2/17 | ||||||
| Fasting | 2/17 | ||||||
| Reconstructing complexity | 2/17 | ||||||
| Mystical physiology | 2/17 | ||||||
| Anthropomorphize | 2/17 | ||||||
| Trophotropic arousal | 2/17 | ||||||
| Reciprocal relation | 2/17 | ||||||
| Ethology | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Stimuli | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Response | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Objectivism | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Primary instincts | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Telic behavior | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Learning | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Habit | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Peripheralist | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Anunustic | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Rationalizations | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Autohypnosis | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Fiction of Complexity | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Radical behaviorism | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Contingencies | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Genetic | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Mimetic behavior | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Religious control | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Utopian | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Group loyalty | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Eschatological | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Postmortem | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Methodological behaviorism | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Vicarious | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Motor reproduction | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Self-reinforcement | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Transmission | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Imitation | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Attachment theory | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Evolutionary process | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Ritual | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Super-Normal Sign Stimuli | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Hard-core altruism | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Soft-core altruism | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Cultural evolution | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Objectification | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Relief effect | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Genetic predisposition | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Social adaptive value | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Human subjectivity | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Dehumanization of psychology | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Mentalistic | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Instinctual drift | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Human cognition realm | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Intuitive principles | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Faculty of imitation | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Mental contagion | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Fallacy of identifying coordinates | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Fallacy of mistaken essentials | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Symbolic activity | Ch 4 | 2/17 | |||||
| Efficacy of prayer | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Scientific psychology | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Experimental approach | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Correlational approach | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Hypnotic experiments | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Correlational study of prayer | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Problem of prayer therapy | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Yoga/Zen | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Difference Prayer/Meditation | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Transcendental meditation and psychophysiological effect | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Statistically significant | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Dominant hemisphere | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Dependent variable | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Independent variable | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Self-actualization | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Drug-induced Mysticism | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| 9 Features of Mysticism | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| The Good Friday Experiment | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| ASCID | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Extrovertive mystical experience | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Mind games | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Good Samaritan Study | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of George Coe | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Francis Galton | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of R. Byrd | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Keith Wallace | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Walter Pahnke | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Bernard Aaronson | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Jean Houston and Robert Masters | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Darley and Batson (1973) | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Batson and Gray (1981) | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| Studies of Batson and Flory (1990) | Ch 5 | 2/17 | |||||
| James Leuba | Psychologist of the Clark School (think Hall and Starbuck). | Ch 2, Ch 3 | Interested in the psychophysiological aspects of religion. Specifically did not believe in an altogether transcendent object of the religious experience, rather the physiological phenomena that create it. | ||||
| William James | Psychologist of the Descriptive Tradititon | Ch 2 | Anti-medical materialism. | ||||
| Abstraction | The cognitive process of extracting from a phenomenon its essentail features. According to Arnheim (1969), abstraction is a prerequisite for both meaningful experience and productive thinking. | The Formal Beginnings: Thee Traditions; Two Fundamental Trends; Explanatory trend. | David Hume (1757) and Enlightenment thinkers of 18th century. | ||||
| Acquiescence | Marked tendency to agree-or, by extension, to disagree-with questionnaire items, regardless of content. | ||||||
| Advaita vedanta | A nondualist Indian Philosophy that identifies the embodied soul with the unchanging eternal reality (Brahman). | ||||||
| Adventitious reinforcement | Increase in the probability of a particular response as a result of reinforcing stimulus that happens to follow but is not contingent on this response. | Ch 4 | 2/17 | ||||
| Principal of Psychogenesis | 2/17 |
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