Religion, trauma and non-pathological dissociation in Northern Ireland

Dissociation and Religiosity: The Role of Religious Experience

“…The finding that there was no significant association between frequency of prayer and dissociation fails to corroborate Binks and Ferguson's (2013) finding that there was a positive association between prayer and nonpathological dissociation. The finding that religious experience was predicted by dissociation, controlling for frequency of prayer, concurs with Thalbourne (2007) who reported a positive association between mystical experience and dissociation.…”

“…Religiosity was measured using the Francis Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity-Short Form (Francis, 1993) and the Maranell Religious Ritual Scale (Maranell, 1974), and dissociation was measured using the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES; Carlson & Putnam, 1993). However, Binks and Ferguson (2013), among Northern Irish respondents living in England, found no association between either intrinsic or extrinsic religious orientation and nonpathological dissociation, a positive association between prayer and nonpathological dissociation, and a negative association between "living life according to religious beliefs" and nonpathological dissociation. Religious orientation (intrinsic orientation and extrinsic orientation) was measured using the Age Universal I-E Religious Orientation Scale (Gorsuch & Venable, 1983).…”

The politics of ‘whataboutery’: The problem of trauma trumping the political in conflictual societies

“…These conditions give rise to the possibility that ‘the past’ may have ‘an unwarranted role as the arbiter of the future’ (Brewer, 2016: 4) in the politics of divided but ‘post-conflict’ societies. In some respects, the role of the past as arbiter is evident in much of the literature on societies like Northern Ireland in the field of political psychology whereby the experience of trauma is explained to express the challenges of managing relations between individuals or groups of people after transitional processes (Binks and Ferguson, 2013; Hamber, 2006, 2007). In these accounts, the victims of traumatic events can become ‘stereotyped as “innocent” and cast into the role of “moral beacons,” whose response is seen as a litmus test by which the public can gauge their own entitlement to anger or desire for revenge’ (Brewer and Hayes, 2011: 83).…”