The study of religious psychology involves both the gathering and classification of data and the building and testing of various (usually rather wide-ranging) explanations. The former activity overlaps with the phenomenology of religion, so it is to some extent an arbitrary decision under which head one should include descriptive studies of religious experience and related subjects.
Psychological studies
Notable among investigations by psychologists was The , by the American philosopher and psychologist (1842–1910), in which he attempted to account for experiences such as conversion through the concept of invasions from the unconscious. Because of the clarity of his style and his philosophical distinction, the work has had a lasting influence, though it is dated in a number of ways and his examples come from a relatively narrow selection of individuals, largely within the ambit of Protestant Christianity. This points to a recurring problem—that of relating to the institutions and symbols of different cultures and traditions.
More radical, but drawing from a rather larger range of examples, was the American psychologist (1868–1946). In A Psychological Study of Religion he attempted to account for experience psychologically and physiologically, pointing to analogies with certain drug-induced experiences. Leuba argued forcibly for a naturalistic treatment of religion, which he considered to be necessary if religious psychology was to be looked at scientifically. Others, however, have argued that psychology is in principle neutral, neither confirming nor ruling out belief in the . Most scholars would, however, consider the problem to be a complex philosophical one, which goes beyond psychology as such.
Among those who have attempted a fairly detailed classification of mystical experience, but not necessarily from a scientific-psychological point of view, mention should be made of the English scholar (1875–1941), drawing on examples from the Jewish, Christian, and Islāmic traditions. Recently, systematic explorations (taking into account Eastern as well) have been undertaken. Rudolf Otto was important in elucidating the nature of numinous experience, and there has also been a certain amount of scholarly work performed in the description and classification of types of shamanism, , and similar phenomena.
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