Religion as an Invaluable Source of Psychological Knowledge: Indigenous Slavic Psychology of Religion

This article presents a research perspective that aims to explore religion as a basis for the construction of psychological knowledge. It is assumed that religious doctrine and practice have access to contents that pertain to local forms of human mental life. Taking into account the presuppositions of indigenous psychology has resulted in a proposal to extend scope of current academic psychology and combine knowledge provided by national/ethnic psychologies that are not identical to Occidental psychology. We propose ways of using the religious conception of soul and of religious rites of passage that correspond with real psychology and subjective understanding of humanity to reconstruct a local perception of human development. The pre-Christian religion of the Slavs will be used as an example. Public Significance Statement This study presents the role of religion as a basis of psychological knowledge construction in the paradigm of indigenous (local) psychology, which is shown using pre-Christian Slavic religion as an example. It aims to enhance the understanding of human beings in their cultural context treated as the most adequate frame of psychological functioning descriptions.