Religious Experience and Self-Psychology

Korean Christianity and the 1907 Revival Movement

Jung Eun Jang

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781349950416
• Thema: Theology & Religion
• Thema: Psychology of Religion

This book explores the 1907 Korean Revival Movement from a self psychological perspective. The examination of the psychological processes in the movement based on Heinz Kohut's self psychology can shed light on religious experiences as selfobject experiences by identifying the sense of defeatedness and helplessness that Korean people experienced under Japanese occupation as what Kohut calls self-fragmentation of the Korean group self and explaining its therapeutic functions which facilitate potential for the narcissistic nourishment of the fragmented group self leading to renewed self-esteem, transformation, and empowerment of the Korean people. Korean people in the early 1900s experienced abuses and oppression by corrupt officials and exploitation by Japanese government. Through religious experiences which emphasized the individual repentance, the experience of God through the spirit, emphasis on prayer, and eschatological faith, the Korean Revival Movement in 1907 enabled its followers to experience mirroring and idealizing selfobjects which function as a role of transforming the lower shape of narcissism into the higher one.

© The Author(s) 2016

Jung Eun JangReligious Experience and Self-Psychology10.1057/978-1-349-95041-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Psychological Analysis of the 1907 Revival Movement

Jung Eun Jang¹

(1)

Christian Studies, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

End Abstract

1 Contexts for the Study

The Korean Protestant Church has grown rapidly since Christian missionaries first landed in Korea in April 1885. Scholars agree that the driving force of this growth in Korean Protestant Christianity was the 1907 Revival Movement. In addition, the 1907 Revival is viewed as an important factor in the maturation of the Korean Church’s structure and theology. Therefore, the history of the Korean Protestant Church cannot be adequately described without mentioning this Movement.

The Korean Revival Movement of 1907 is referred to as the great revival meeting that took place from January 2 to January 22, 1907, in the Jang Dae Hyeon Church, located in Pyeongyang, Korea. However, the 1907 Revival Movement can be viewed as a subsequent series of revival meetings and Bible conferences that occurred following a prayer meeting of the missionaries at Wonsan in 1903 that is generally considered to be the origin of the 1907 Movement. In this book, I utilize the 1907 Revival Movement to signify a series of revival meetings and conferences that occurred in the early 1900s, in particular, from the missionaries’ prayer meeting at Wonsan in 1903 to the Pyeongyang Revival Movement in 1907, because these meetings were historically closely interconnected. My psychological study is interested in the reason why these successive revival meetings occurred during this specific period.

The 1907 Movement was shaped by the climate of the era in which it occurred, which is considered by many to be one of the darkest periods in Korean history. In the early 1900s, Korean people were burdened by war, especially by the control of the Japanese since 1905, when the Japanese protectorate was established. At the same time, Korean people were at the mercy of corrupt officials and severe exploitation by the Japanese government. The loss of a nation’s identity and basic rights and devaluation by others can certainly cause collective feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and hopelessness. This psychological instability had an enormous effect on the development of the 1907 Movement, which was characterized by sensitivity to sins and wrongdoings, a deep sense of defeat and shame, petition for forgiveness, and confession of sins in public, in addition to a feeling of peace and joy.

However, the influences of the psychological processes involved in the 1907 Revival Movement have neither been previously acknowledged nor studied. Recently, there has been a substantial amount of research and events such as symposia and seminars in the Korean academic world to consider the background and influences of the movement, to celebrate the centennial of the movement. However, most research has centered on the historical, theological, and spiritual meaning of the movement, as well as on its significance. As a consequence, the psychological processes and their influences on the 1907 Revival have been neglected.

By overlooking the psychological aspects of the 1907 Revival Movement, earlier studies do not have the following benefits that a psychological approach can bring to studies on the movement: (1) The psychological approach enriches the historical account of the 1907 Revival Movement by paying attention to the emotional and unconscious basis of historical thought and action. By doing so, it can enlarge and refine concepts of the explanation for human religious experiences and conduct in the movement by accounting for the emotional origin and psychological motivation. (2) It places a focus on the oppressed and devalued groups or classes who had religious experiences in the 1907 Revival, as opposed to an emphasis on significant individuals or abstract theological discussion. This helps to bring out the liveliness of the world of lived experiences from the perspective of those who lived it. (3) It explains how religious experiences, theological doctrines, and religious practices of the movement fostered the psychological health of the Korean people participating in the movement by meeting these psychological needs. In order to bring depth, my study thus focuses mainly on the positive psychological functions of religious experiences for mental health. However, I fully acknowledge that the negative psychological functions of religious experiences were also present at the 1907 Revival.

In this book, I argue that there were significant fundamental psychological processes that occurred in the 1907 Revival Movement. In particular, I bring Heinz Kohut’s self psychology into the constructive dialogue and engagement with the religious experiences during the 1907 Revival Movement. The self-psychological approach to the revival movement led me to propose that the sense of defeatedness and helplessness that the Korean people experienced under the Japanese occupation can be identified with what Kohut calls “self-fragmentation” of the Korean group self, and that the psychological processes in the movement facilitate potential for the narcissistic nourishment of the self, leading to maintaining cohesiveness of its sense of self. An integral aspect of this study centers on the attempt to explore and identify how the religious experiences met the psychological needs of the Korean people in the movement through the selfobject experiences of idealization, mirroring, and twinship, as presented in Kohut’s psychology of the self. In other words, the presence of these psychological dynamics functions as a supportive selfobject environment, according to Kohut’s self psychology. Thus, this book contends that the examination of the psychological processes in the 1907 Korean Revival Movement, based on Heinz Kohut’s self psychology, can shed light on religious experiences as selfobject experiences and, thereby, reveal the positive function of religious experiences for human beings and their psychological health.

2 The Method and Underlying Theory of the Study

The principal methodology employed in this study is psychohistorical. Psychohistory has many different meanings and uses. The most basic definition of psychohistory is the “psychological study of history” with the “use of any one of many different psychological theories (or any combination of these theories) for the purpose of historical analysis.” ¹ In the broadest sense, psychohistory can be understood as history informed by psychology or psychology informed by history. ² The framework of this method tries to merge psychological theory with historical inquiry. Considering that psychohistory is the psychoanalytically oriented approach to history, it can be said that it seeks to delve into the unconscious motives of historic people’s or group’s attitudes and actions with the help of contemporary psychodynamic theory.

Freud analyzed the characters of famous figures such as Moses and Leonardo da Vinci with his psychoanalytic theory. However, his paradigm of individual psychopathology focused on internal drives and hidden conflicts. Thus, there was limited room for discussion regarding the relationship between the individual psyche and the historical environment. In his first biographical study, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, published in 1910, Freud quite clearly said that the “aim of our work has been to explain the inhibitions in Leonardo’s sexual life and in his artistic activity.” ³ He was not interested in the full life of Leonardo, entangled with its historical context. Freud’s evident focus was directed toward Leonardo’s sexual conflicts and their manifestations in his artistic form.

On the other hand, Erikson understood how important culture could be for an individual. Considering Erikson’s work as the third of his four paradigms of psychohistory, Lifton, a psychohistorian, noted that Erikson was concerned with “the kinds of inner conflicts illuminated by the Freudian tradition,” but “he placed the great man…within a specific historical context.” ⁴ In his work Young Man Luther, in which he combines the clinical methods of analysis with exhaustive cultural studies to deal with Luther’s identity issues, Erikson expressed his understanding of how important a specific historical context could influence an individual, by saying, “we cannot lift a case history out of history.” ⁵ Bruce Mazlish, a professor emeritus of history at MIT, also posited that in its best moments, psychohistory “attempts to understand the social conditions shaping the development of the individual psyche and then the psychological factors forming the social conditions.” ⁶ In addition, there have been many studies that pay attention to life histories and demonstrate how social paradigms, historical conditions, and cultural views impact the person. ⁷

Psychohistory is frequently criticized by traditional historians because of its disregard for conscious purpose and the conjectural and reductionist nature of its explanations of historical causality, based on incomplete evidence of early childhood experiences and relations. Runyan identifies three specific critiques of reductionism as applied to psychohistory: (1) that psychological factors are emphasized at the expense of external social and historical factors, (2) that psychobiography focuses excessively on psychopathological processes and provides insufficient attention to normality and creativity, and (3) that it tends to explain the adult character and behavior exclusively in terms of early childhood experiences, while neglecting later formative processes and influences. ⁸

Considering the problem of reductionism in psychohistory, it is important for a psychohistorian to choose a psychological theory that is appropriate to the historical subject matter, acknowledging the cultural contexts and historical factors and reflecting on the formative influences of adulthood on the inner world. Psychohistorical theory and practice can be classified according to the following psychological lens employed for the study of history: ⁹ (1) Freudian psychohistorians focus largely on “the discovery and interpretation of suppressed childhood traumas in the unconscious,” and they tried to find out reliable sources regarding the earlier periods of historical figures. ¹⁰ (2) In the case of Erikson, his development of the new form of psychohistory in the direction of psychoanalytical ego psychology, with particular focus on issues of identity and, more recently, on varieties of psychohistory, employs ego psychology that takes note of the ego’s functions that mediate between the id and the superego and reality. (3) The object relations theory emphasizes on the psychic structures that comprise introjected objects that can be seen as the intrapsychic representations of significant figures in the infant’s life. The notion of intrapsychic objects is very useful in psychologically interpreting history, because a specific historical and cultural context represented by values and ideals embodies the individual’s object world. ¹¹ (4) Lastly, some psychohistorians use the self-psychological approach, which holds that the development of narcissism follows its own line and that disturbances in this development generate a weakened and fragmented sense of self. ¹²

In choosing a particular psychological method, I have been guided by the question of which psychological tradition seems most suitable to the themes presented in the 1907 Revival Movement, which seems to be closely associated with the devaluation of the self due to the experiences of oppression by others and subsequent recovery by religious experiences. I also considered the critique of reductionism by choosing a psychological approach that can respond to the criticism. I have chosen Kohut’s psychoanalytic self-psychological concepts of selfobjects and selfobject experiences in building a framework for psychologically analyzing the movement because he has developed an innovative understanding of human motivation by his proposals about the nature and functioning of the self, not from the pathological but from the formative perspective. Through the lens of his self psychology, the religious experiences of the individuals participating in the movement can be depicted as therapeutic experiences, prompting them to advance from a state of fragmented self to that of a cohesive one. In other words, while the Korean people experienced oppression and domination through the power of the corrupted officials and the Japanese government at that time, some of them had the opportunity to satisfy their narcissistic needs of mirroring, idealizing, and twinship through their participation in the 1907 Revival Movement.

In addition, Kohut’s self psychology is very useful in delving into the external social, cultural, and historical influences on an individual’s psychological development. His concept of selfobject as an expansive concept of object can include a non-human object, such as a society and/or a religion as a whole. In other words, historical conditions and religious experiences can play the role of selfobjects that designate objects experienced as a part of the self. Therefore, Kohut’s self psychology can be viewed as a proper psychological theory in examining the relationship between an individual and social situations, which need to be the key aspects of the updated psychohistorical approach for being open to the criticism of reductionism by traditional psychohistorians.

Furthermore, the work of Kohut offers a holistic perspe...