Jean Piaget: The Developmental View

The Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896-1980) researched childhood experiences in general and produced a structure for developmental thinking which he hoped would enable us to understand more fully the processes of thinking, which children and adolescents use in their selection, search, manipulation and organisation of their experiences. Ronald Goldman Applied Piaget’s General Structure In the … Read more

Edward Robinson: The Original and Continuing Vision

Those who, like Edward Robinson, take a different view, criticise the developmentalists for their obsession with predictability, universality and control. In 1969, Alister Hardy founded the Religious Experience Research Unit at Manchester College, Oxford. The R.E.R.U. collates the religious experiences of people and publishes books on these from time to time. Edward Robinson Became the … Read more

Religion in Childhood and Adolescence

One of the ways into a study of this subject is to notice how widely writers differ in their thoughts about the religion in Childhood and Adolescence. There are two main views on this: the developmental view (J.Piaget; R.Goldman) and The original and continuing vision (E.Robinson). The Developmental View of Religion in Childhood and Adolescence To summarise … Read more

Archetypes – What are Archetypes? Types of Archetypes

Archetypes (according to Jung) are mythological motifs in our consciousness which are ‘typical forms that appear spontaneously all over the world, independently of tradition, in myths, fairytales, fantasies, dreams, visions, and the delusional systems of the insane’. Jung revived the ancient Gnostic term ‘archetype’ for this phenomenon – it represented the ‘patterning tendency’ in the human … Read more

Individuation

Today we will explore the Jungian concept of Individuation – the process of becoming an individual as developed by Carl Gustav Jung. Martin Schmidt states that “Jung saw it as the process of self realisation, the discovery and experience of meaning and purpose in life; the means by which one finds oneself and becomes who … Read more

A Comparison of Freud and Jung on Religion

I'm a Freud you're not getting any Junger

Today, I will be comparing two famous Psychologists on their views of religion – I hope that you enjoy my comparison of Freud and Jung. 1: For Freud religion was an obsessional neurosis. People need to be ‘cured’ of religion- He believed that psychology would eventually succeed in explaining religion away in much the same way … Read more

A Criticism of Freud on Religion

Over the last few blogs, I have been taking an interest in Freud and his views on religion. As you know, Freud was a psychologist and psychoanalyst who dispelled religion as an illusion. In my last blog, I explored the positives of Freud on religion by asking ‘Is there any Truth in Freud on Religion?’. … Read more