PoR: New Trends and Neglected Themes

Text presented by members Aletti, Antonietti and Villani at the IAPR conference in Gdansk (2019). The speech consists of slides and text presented during the conference.

Abstract: This presentation addresses the issue of “New trends and neglected themes” by focusing on some changes that have taken place in the literature of the psychology of religion over the last twenty years. The overlapping between religion and spirituality challenges the object of the psychology of religion, its scope, its methods and, as a consequence, its distinctiveness within the mainstream in this field.
Within the title, the word ‘surroundings’ is meant ironically to emphasize that while religion has – or at least had – a fairly stable and precise definition in psychological literature, some authors today tend to include other concepts under the term ‘religion’, which are not always well defined. For example, spirituality, search for meaning, well-being and coping, mindfulness, resilience, positive thinking or even meaningless are all concepts whose relationship with religion is still unclear.

Title: Psichology of Religion and its surroundings. Trends and Themes