Fits, trances, & visions : experiencing religion and explaining experience from Wesley to James / Ann Taves.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Taves, Ann, 1952-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Experience (Religion)--History--18th century.

Experience (Religion).

Psychology, Religious--History--18th century.

Psychology, Religious.

Methodism--History--18th century.

Methodism.

Experience (Religion)--History--19th century.

Psychology, Religious--History--19th century.

Methodism--History--19th century.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 449 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Other Title:

Fits, trances, and visions

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, [1999]

Summary:

Fits, trances, visions, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, possession. Believers have long viewed these and similar involuntary experiences as religious -- as manifestations of God, the spirits, or the Christ within. Skeptics, on the other hand, have understood them as symptoms of physical disease, mental disorder, group dynamics, or other natural causes. In this sweeping work of religious and psychological history, Ann Taves explores the myriad ways in which believers and detractors interpreted these complex experiences in Anglo-American culture between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Taves divides the book into three sections. In the first ranging from 1740 to 1820, she examines the debate over trances, visions, and other involuntary experiences against the politically charged backdrop of Anglo-American evangelicalism, established churches, Enlightenment thought, and a legacy of religious warfare. In the second part, covering 1820 to 1890, she highlights the interplay between popular psychology-particularly the ideas of "animal magnetism" and mesmerism -- and movements in popular religion: the disestablishment of churches, the decline of Calvinist orthodoxy the expansion of Methodism, and the birth of new religious movements. In the third section, Taves traces the emergence of professional psychology between 1890 and 1910 and explores the implications of new ideas about the subconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, and dissociation for the understanding of religious experience.

Throughout, Taves follows evolving debates about whether fits, trances, and visions are natural (and therefore not religious) or supernatural (and thereforereligious). She pays particular attention to a third interpretation, proposed by such "mediators" as William James, according to which these experiences are natural and religious. Taves shows that ordinary people as well as educated elites debated the meaning of these experiences and reveals the importance of interactions between popular and elite culture in accounting for how people experienced religion and explained experience.

Combining rich detail with clear and rigorous argument, this is a major contribution to our understanding of Protestant revivalism and the historical interplay between religion and psychology.

Contents:

Part 1 Formalism, Enthusiasm, and True Religion, 1740-1820 13

Chapter 1 Explaining Enthusiasm 20

Chapter 2 Making Experience 47

Chapter 3 Shouting Methodists 76

Part 2 Popular Psychology and Popular Religion, 1820-1890 119

Chapter 4 Clairvoyants and Visionaries 128

Chapter 5 Embodying Spirits 166

Chapter 6 Explaining Trance 207

Part 3 Religion and the Subconscious, 1886-1910 251

Chapter 7 The Psychology of Religion 261

Chapter 8 Varieties of Protestant Religious Experience 308.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [363]-434) and indexes.

ISBN:

0691028761

0691010242

OCLC:

41338079