Psychology of Religion: Between Theory and Empiricism / Edited by K. M. Antonov, Moscow: PSTGU Publishing House, 2015, 188 p.

As often happens with regard to the social sciences and humanities (and the psychology of religion at the moment is mainly such, despite not unsuccessful and promising attempts to give it a more natural scientific character), the psychology of religion has a number of intractable theoretical, methodological and practical problems that come from their very foundations. The first thing that confronts you-

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A person who wants to learn more about the psychology of religion is interested in the uneven development of this issue in Western countries and in the post-Soviet space. This situation is caused by the Soviet scientific isolation and the vicissitudes of the development of the former USSR countries, which, unfortunately, do not always sufficiently promote high-quality scientific research and interaction.

In this sense, the psychology of religion differs little from other scientific disciplines that are forced to survive in such specific conditions. In addition, the psychology of religion does not have a clear status as an academic discipline. Like physical objects, which can be described simultaneously as a particle and as a wave, the psychology of religion is both one of the disciplines of religious studies, studied at philosophical faculties and taught, as a rule, by people with a philosophical education, and a course at psychology faculties, taught by psychologists for future psychologists (a course, I must say, far from being a complete the main one). As correctly stated by the authors of the reviewed collection, the work of religious scholars in the field of psychology of religion is mainly historical, theoretical and analytical, while psychologists studying religious phenomena are often limited to analyzing purely empirical information.

The approach of religious scholars is determined by their knowledge of religious traditions and skills in working with texts, while often lacking sufficient knowledge and skills to conduct empirical research. Psychologists, however, due to their own limitations, do not always try to make a complete picture of what religious or non-religious life is, preferring simply to apply their competence in the field of empirical research to a rather new and exotic topic for mainstream psychology. The psychology of religion is perceived by psychologists, as a rule, as a side branch of their basic science. Some weight is given to the discipline by the fact that some works on religion are available from such authoritative classical psychologists as William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Abraham Maslow, Gordon Allport, and Viktor Frankl. However, the psychology of religion was not the main area of interest and research for any of the authors mentioned above.

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However, the unresolved nature of the disciplinary status of the psychology of religion may turn out to be good for the latter. Religious studies and psychology themselves, that is, the" mother " sciences, are the result of active interaction between representatives of various academic disciplines and directions. Religious studies cannot be conceived without the work of historians, philosophers, sociologists, philologists, anthropologists, and cultural scientists; nor can psychology be presented, especially in the context of its development history, without the contributions of philosophy, biology, and medicine, as well as the sciences of language and the brain. In modern science, interdisciplinarity is the strength, not the weakness, of a particular research project. This trend promises brilliant prospects for the psychology of religion, but requires a focus not on isolating representatives of different disciplines from each other, but on joint projects. The very fact of strict institutional differentiation of sciences, in which, in particular, publication in a journal devoted to "other science" does not formally play any role for the career of graduate students, doctoral students, and research and teaching staff of higher education institutions, significantly complicates the cooperation of colleagues representing different disciplines. Given such problems of interdisciplinary interaction, as well as the fact that the post-Soviet psychology of religion is lagging behind the Western one, the publication of the collection "Psychology of Religion: Between Theory and Empiricism", which provided an excellent interdisciplinary platform for religious scholars and psychologists, is worth welcoming in every possible way.

The collection summarizes the results of the work of the Psychology of Religion section of the 2015 Minsk Conference "Religion and / or Everyday Life". It consists of four sections: "History of the Psychology of Religion", "Theoretical and applied Aspects of empirical research", "Psychology of Religious Conversion" and "Cognitive Religious Studies". Attention is drawn to the interest of the researchers who provided their texts to issues relevant to the world psychology of religion at the current stage of its development.

Elena Orel's article on the principle of methodological objectivism raises the question of the position that a researcher of religious phenomena should take in relation to the ontological status of objects of religious faith. Ав-

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Thor, drawing on the classics of the psychology of religion, Theodore Flournoy and William James, emphasizes the desirability of excluding the question of the reality of anything outside the physical world from academic consideration. Methodological objectivism is opposed by biased principles of confessionalism and partisanship in one way or another. The article discusses the possibility of verification of value judgments, and it is argued that such verification is always necessarily incomplete and limited; and therefore, the final falsification is also not possible. Such an epistemological insertion seems quite appropriate in a methodological article, since it sets the boundaries of our knowledge, forms the researcher's attitude of modesty in relation to the material he studies.

David Damte raises the question of religious feeling and its understanding by 19th-century German philosophers. The review begins with the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, but does not end there - the article also contains a description and analysis of the views of Jacob Friedrich Fries, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (Fichte the Younger), Eduard von Hartmann and Gustav Teichmuller. Despite the fact that the publication is mainly devoted to the history of philosophy, touching on issues of psychology only indirectly, its careful reading can provide the psychologist of religion with a number of important intuitions and hypotheses, as well as an understanding of the background on which the early psychology of religion developed. In particular, a number of philosophers first drew attention to the unconscious nature of mental life (Eduard von Hartmann), which later formed the basis of psychoanalytic approaches.

The peculiarities of mysticism research are discussed in detail in the article by Tatyana Malevich. Mystical experience seems to be one of the most difficult phenomena to study in the psychology of religion, due to its (according to the mystics themselves) fundamental extra-semiotic nature, inexpressibility, problems with a clear definition (is it just a more intense religious experience or something completely different?), the problem of studying from the outside or from within, as well as difficulties of interpretation by scholars of the experience of non-Abrahamic adepts

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religious traditions. The article discusses the advantages and limitations of questionnaires and interviews, psychometric scales designed to explore mystical experience, as well as experimental studies. It is concluded that it is necessary to use various quantitative and qualitative methods that complement each other in a comprehensive manner.

Psychologist Denis Kozhevnikov devoted his article to evaluating the effectiveness of autogenic training and centering prayer. Autogenic training was developed for secular settings, while centering prayer is a psychopractic that originated in a Christian context for religious purposes. The author describes the design and results of a psychophysiological experiment, coming to the conclusion that autogenic training has a greater impact on the psychophysiological state of a person, which, however, does not mean that centering prayer is ineffective for religious purposes. The described empirical research can be useful for religious scholars as a demonstration of the possibilities of empirical psychology for testing hypotheses that arise as a result of theoretical analysis and reflection. Considering this consideration, it is worth noting that the comparison of the degree of influence of various psychotechnics on the psychophysiological state of a person is rather indirectly related to the problems of the psychology of religion, although the question is open and different opinions are possible in this regard.

The largest number of articles in the collection is devoted to the issue of religious conversion. In this regard, I would like to make a critical comment, which, however, does not in any way call into question the high quality of the materials provided by the authors of the collection, and also, no doubt, reflects the subjective academic preferences of the reviewer. There is also no doubt that all relevant and significant issues of a particular scientific discipline cannot be considered within the framework of one publication or even one collection. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that none of the four articles that deal in great detail with the prerequisites, stages, and phenomenology of conversion even indirectly raises the issue of deconversion, the loss of religious faith. Such one-sidedness does not seem consistent, both because of the urgency of secularization and, as a result, because of the need for secularization.

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both as a consequence of the departure from the religious faith of many people in the world, and based on purely methodological considerations. A modern psychologist of religion, Benjamin Beit-Hallami, argues that the psychology of religion is also the psychology of non-1. In other words, a comprehensive review of the processes of gaining and losing faith seems to be more informative than the traditional emphasis on religious conversion in the psychology of religion. In the light of the availability of qualitative research on deconversion 2, the lack of references to this issue seems inconsistent, although, I will make a reservation, one should not expect to consider all relevant issues of a particular discipline in one collection of materials that does not set itself such a task.

Konstantin Antonov addresses the question of the relationship between religiosity and rationality in the context of religious conversion. The latter is seen as a transition, a leap from the mundane to the sacred, which, however, in the framework of human life never acquires a final character. Religious experience should be updated from time to time, so as not to be absorbed in the routine of everyday life. At the same time, this religious experience does not exist separately from thinking, becoming an object for such thinking. Reflection and experience enter into complex interactions, not being able to do without each other. Often, their interaction becomes the basis for conflict. The question of the correlation between reflection and religious experience becomes particularly relevant due to the growing disputes between believers and non-believers in Western countries, as well as the polarization between them in the whole world.

Lyubov Ardasheva states that it is impossible to build a single comprehensive model of conversion that is universal for all religious traditions and for all people. The existing models are discussed in some detail in the article, along with critical comments on each of the stages - mainly we are talking about the model proposed by John Loflandon.

1. Beit-Hallahmi, B. (2007) Atheists: A Psychological Profle, in M. Martin (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Atheism, p. 301. Cambridge University Press.

2. Например: Zuckerman, P. (2015) Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion. Oxford University Press.

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and Rodney Stark. In fact, as the author of the article notes, not a single study confirms the correctness of this model. More promising are the approaches of Henri Guren and Lewis Rimbaud, for which conversion is a rather long process, the stages of which are mainly guidelines for the researcher, and not strictly sequential phases. Ardasheva draws a conclusion about the gradual process of conversion, the suddenness of which is only part of the conversion, and not the conversion itself. A less rigid and more nuanced approach to such a complex process seems much more relevant.

Irina Bulanova offers a social-constructivist approach to the study of the phenomenon of conversion. The author suggests studying conversion in the context of personal changes, which, due to methodological limitations, cannot be induced from the outside. As a consequence, it is not possible to establish causal relationships in the experiment. However, the study of religious language and metaphors of conversion as not only a subjective-individual, but also an intersubjective process has no such limitations. A narrative analysis of the text that tells about the appeal shows how an individual can acquire a new social identity, assess the experience of past events and prospects for the future. The "Second Cognitive Revolution", which supplemented the subjective emphasis of cognitive approaches with an inter-subjective one, actualized the narrative approach and, in general, qualitative research methods. In this sense, the approach to data and their analysis used in the article seems very promising. However, research of this kind should be continued and supplemented with samples of representatives of other faiths and religions, as well as non-believers who have experienced / are experiencing deconversion.

Tatiana Folieva examines the problem of conversion based on the materials of Jehovah's Witnesses, and the research focus here is shifted from the individual to the organization. At the same time, the appeal is seen not so much as the action of impersonal forces in relation to a passive object (as in the case of classical appeal). St. Paul), and as a process initiated by the subject, that is, the person himself, actively seeking answers to ideological and exological questions.-

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special questions. The article contains an empirical study based on the content analysis of printed materials of Jehovah's Witnesses. Content analysis is based on a script theory developed by experts in the field of artificial intelligence. Folieva concludes that the model of conversion practiced by Jehovah's Witnesses is more likely a rational type of conversion, despite the fact that they do not use scientific terms. Conversion is based on getting clear answers to the questions posed, and not on appealing to the mystical and hidden dimension of Christianity, as, for example, in the dogma of the Trinity. Again, data analysis has significant potential, allowing us to reveal the peculiarities of conversion of representatives of different religious traditions. Attention should also be paid to the methods used by modern secular and atheist organizations to increase the number of non-believers. This would naturally supplement the information about the rational type of conversion, because it is quite difficult to imagine deconversion that has other origins.

Three articles in the collection are devoted to the cognitive approach to religion research, which has been developed in recent decades. The question of the relationship between cognitive religious studies and the psychology of religion is debatable, since not all cognitive religious scholars agree to see themselves as one of the areas of psychology of religion. Institutionally, cognitive religious studies is represented by a separate association, the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR), which is not part of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion (IAPR); these organizations hold independent conferences and publish independent journals. The question of the correlation of these directions is periodically raised, even to the point of indicating that they are to some extent "twins" 3.

The first article of the section on cognitive religious studies, written by a team of authors (Roman Sergienko, Irina Shoshina, Irina Malanchuk), is a qualitative overview of the above mentioned research.

3. As, for example, at the conference of psychologists of religion in Lausanne in 2013. See http://wp.unil.ch/iapr2013/congress/program [access

from 29.10.2016].

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directions. The article traces the origins of cognitive religious studies, starting with Stuart E. Guthrie, who studied anthropomorphism and pareidolic illusions ("faces in clouds", etc.), Justin Barrett, who described the hypersensitive agency detection device (HADD), Pascal Boyer, who wrote about ontological categories and minimal counterintuitiveness, and other authors. Sergienko, Shoshina, and Malanchuk emphasize the evolutionism underlying the cognitive approach, the latter's emphasis on the naturalness of cognitive processes, the specific work of which makes human religiosity possible, as well as the fundamental interest of representatives of the direction to the ordinary and ordinary, rather than extraordinary, religiosity of mystics. The cognitive mechanisms that make religion possible, such as social perception and theory of mind, are revealed, and neurophysiological studies that contribute to understanding what religion is are briefly mentioned. The article is one of those that makes sense to read for those who are starting to study cognitive religious studies, since it allows you to navigate this material well.

Alexandra Belova addresses the topic of a cognitive approach to the study of rituals and ritual behavior. This topic, in comparison with the study of the peculiarities of the formation and functioning of religious views and beliefs, is less common in general reviews of cognitive religious studies, which, however, does not make it less important. The article discusses cognitive theories of ritual behavior. Special attention is paid to the theory of ritual representations by Robert McCauley and Thomas Lawson, as well as to the theory of ritual and memory by Harvey Whitehouse. The review also includes views on ritual by Dan Sperber, Pierre Lienard, Paxal Boyer and some other researchers. The value of this review is undeniable, since it not only introduces the reader to the works of cognitive religious scholars that have not been translated into Russian or Ukrainian, but also demonstrates the heuristic potential of cognitive theories applicable to not only beliefs, but also religious activities of people.

A very interesting theoretical problem is raised by Dmitry Gorevoy in the article

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on the "anthropomorphic projection". In it, the author compares the ideas of Russian ethnographers with the theories that arise in the context of modern cognitive religious studies. Representatives of both directions are united by a naturalistic research attitude, that is, an attitude to explain religion as a natural phenomenon, as well as an appeal to research data on archaic religiosity and childhood. However, the views of Sergey M. Shirokogorov, Lev Ya. Sternberg, Vladimir G. Bogoraztan, and other ethnographers, while being largely similar to those of, say, Stuart E. Guthrie, Jesse Behring, and Justin Barrett, have different theoretical and, to some extent, empirical sources. Cognitive religious studies relies on modern theories of consciousness, in particular, on the theory of modularity of consciousness of Noam Chomsky's student Jerry A. Fodor, whereas classical ethnography was rather empirical and inductive in nature and did not have a theoretical apparatus comparable to the current one. In the future, it would be important to correlate the latest cognitive theories of religion with the views of classical Western anthropologists, tracing their possible line of succession.

Despite all the undoubted advantages of the collection, it is also important to point out some of the existing gaps and imbalances. As already mentioned, much attention is paid to the phenomenon of conversion, which is understood one-sidedly, only as a transition from unbelief to faith, but not vice versa. Deconversion is not considered even indirectly-and this is subject to continued secularization and an increase in the number of people living without religion. The appearance of "atheist churches"4 is symptomatic, and they are designed, in particular, to socialize people who are used to church life, but have lost their faith. The reader will also not find information about the age and gender dynamics of religiosity, religious forms of coping, that is, the specifics of how people experience life challenges and failures depending on their attitude to religion, publications on religion and physical and mental health and well-being, as well as consideration of issues of religious motivation.-

4. See for example: Wheeler, B. (2013) What Happens at an Atheist Church? http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21319945 [accessed 29.10.2016].

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motivation and psychological consequences of the type of individual motivation. Meanwhile, the tradition of studying the motivation of religious activity is part of classical (Gordon Allport) and modern (the self-determination theory of personality by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan 5) mainstream psychology. Moreover, a number of studies of religiosity conducted in the Laboratory of Positive Psychology and Quality of Life at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow also rely on the theory of self-determination. The absence of references to these studies and references to the publications of the laboratory staff, not to mention the absence of their articles in the collection, indicates the need for further work on improving the quality of communication with fellow psychologists.

Despite critical comments, the publication of the collection "Psychology of Religion: Between Theory and Empiricism" is a clear symptom of the fact that this discipline, despite many difficulties, exists in the post-Soviet space and, moreover, is actively functioning and developing. In this sense, not only the fact of publication is important, but also the high quality of the articles presented in the collection, their interdisciplinary nature, as well as reference to the works and research of Western colleagues.

5. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000) "Self-Determination Theory and the Facilitation of Intrinsic Motivation, Social Development, and Well-Being", American Psychologist 55(1).

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