Abstract
This article presents the basic achievements of the psychology of religion in the Lvov-Warsaw School of K. Twardowski, their developments and significance for the contemporary psychology of religion. Twardowski’s School existed parallel to other European psychological schools: the Würzburg School, founded by Oswald Külpe, and the Dorpat School of the Psychology of Religion, founded by Karl Girgensohn (unfortunately without mutual scientific relations). The article presents two research trends in the psychology of religion resulting from Twardowski’s works, specifically research on mental acts and religious beliefs with use of introspection and research in the field of cultural-historical psychology. The theory of acts and products, and the theory of cratism/power (similar to the theory of Alfred Adler) played crucial roles here. Psychological investigations into religious beliefs were also dominated by the psychological principle of contradiction, and the obtained results also seem to be important today.
Keywords
The origin of Twardowski’s School
The Lvov-Warsaw School, founded by Twardowski, is currently one of the most recognized Polish philosophical thought in the world. It was primarily a philosophical-logical and mathematical school (Brożek et al., 2017; Woleński, 2003). An important role was also played by psychology, although this fact is practically unmentioned in the current literature, apart from just a few publications (Citlak, 2016a, 2019c; Rzepa & Stachowski, 1993). The same problem applies to the psychology of religion in Twardowski’s School. 1 The basic achievements of the representatives of this school can be primarily treated today as important opposition to reductionism in contemporary psychology and the psychology of religion. Moreover, coherent theoretical foundations for experimental and non-experimental research were developed, which could have constituted one of the major theoretical programs of European psychology. The work that was started—which had a pioneering nature—was cut short by political events. Principles and insights that emerged were sometimes analogous to theories independently put forward elsewhere, sometimes even anticipating them: an original analysis of mental acts by K. Twardowski, Witwicki’s theory of the pursuit of power (analogous to Adler’s search for power), empirical identification of the cognitive dissonance principle (20 years before L. Festinger), and the above-mentioned experimental 2 versus non-experimental psychology program (similar to Wundt’s 3 and Vygotsky’s cultural-historical psychology). This tradition is still valuable, especially in religious studies. The main purpose of this paper is not to provide an overview of the Lvov-Warsaw School but mainly to point out elements in it that shed light on present-day issues in the psychology of religion.
After earning a PhD at the University of Vienna and completing a habilitation thesis, in 1895 Twardowski was appointed as an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Jan Kazimierz in Lvov. There, he revived and radically reorganized the program in philosophy. 4 Twardowski was strongly influenced by the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano (1874/1995), his teacher in Vienna, as represented in Brentano’s Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. Later, Edmund Husserl and his Logische Untersuchungen from 1900 to 1901 also had a significant influence on Twardowski. Twardowski’s thought was rooted in German philosophy at the end of the 19th century, but it should be added that “Twardowski did not belong to Brentanian orthodoxy (unlike Marty, Kraus and Kastil [. . .] he deviated instead in substantial aspects from Brentano’s own stances (like Meinong and Husserl)” (Betti, 2017, p. 3).
Although the school had already gone its own way during the Lvov period, prior to the point at which Poland gained its independence following the First World War in 1918, a particular interest in psychology had become established (along with philosophy and logic). It was believed that psychology could solve some philosophical and logical problems. “In 1891–1892 Twardowski spent time as a researcher both in Leipzig, where he followed courses by Wilhelm Wundt and Oswald Külpe, and in Munich, where he attended the lectures of Carl Stumpf, another pupil of Brentano” (Woleński, 2003). The first important works of Twardowski’s—Idee und Perzeption. Eine erkenntnis-theoretische Untersuchung aus Descartes, About the Content and Object of Representations (Twardowski, 1892; 1894/1965) or Actions and Products. A few Comments from the Borderline of Psychology, Grammar and Logic (Twardowski, 1912/1965)—were philosophical-psychological works. He founded a small laboratory at the University of Jan Kazimierz in 1901, which was transformed into a laboratory of experimental psychology in 1907. Not only was it philosophers such as Jan Łukasiewicz, Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz and Tadeusz Kotarbiński who studied at his side but also the first Polish psychologists including Stefan Baley, Stefan Błachowski, Władysław Witwicki, and Mieczysław Kreutz. Many Polish students took part in the experimental research of W. Wundt and then created new psychological centers in Poland (Wilno, Warsaw, Poznań). In other words, the Polish psychological school of the first half of the 20th century had its source in Twardowski’s philosophical roots (Rzepa & Stachowski, 1993). During the Lvov period, two of the most original psychological theories were developed: Twardowski’s theory of acts and products, and Witwicki’s cratism theory. However, the special feature was not the theory but the methodology, rooted in the philosophical thought of F. Brentano and in his theory of mental acts (Rzepa, 1998). After the First and Second World Wars, the school’s activity was considerably reorganized and weakened, and after regaining independence in 1918, the focus was also on reactivating the Polish language. The writing and publishing of scientific research in Polish was considered a special honor, which—despite many advantages—quickly led to the isolation of the Polish psychologists’ environment (Rzepa, 1998). The process of scientific alienation was further exacerbated after the Second World War with the establishment of the communist government and ideology. In K. Twardowski’s School, psychology developed in parallel to two major psychological schools in Europe at that time: the Würzburg School, founded by Oswald Külpe (Hacker & Weger, 2018), and the Dorpat School of the Psychology of Religion, founded by Karl Girgensohn (Wulff, 1985). Unfortunately, there was never any mutual cooperation or communication, and many of the important works of Twardowski’s School were never continued after World War I (1914–1918), with the best example being the fate of the psychology of religion.
The term Lvov-Warsaw School usually refers to its philosophical and logical traditions, whereas the Lvov School refers more often to the psychological (Rzepa, 1997b) and philosophical tradition. In this article, however, I will use the term Lvov-Warsaw School or Twardowski’s School in relation to psychology, because some theories and psychological research that will be the subject of this manuscript were created in Lvov and continued later in the Warsaw and even the Poznań scientific environments, primarily by Władysław Witwicki, Stefan Błachowski and their students (Stachowski, 2007).
Theoretical foundations for experimental and non-experimental psychology
The theoretical field for psychological investigation and a certain research order was initially defined by K. Twardowski (1894/1965; 1912/1977) in his dissertations On the content and object of presentations: A psychological investigation and Actions and Products: Comments on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar and Logic, which formed the basis of the theory of mental acts and products. It is widely known in the literature (Brandl & Woleński, 1999; Kijania-Placek & Woleński, 1998; Rzepa & Stachowski, 1993), so it is worth remembering only the most important assumptions. Twardowski took over the concept of the intentional mental act and its content/object from Brentano; however, he developed them according to the suggestion of Aloise Höfler, who accused Brentano of the lack of a precise distinction between the content and the object of act. He therefore distinguished the third element (besides the act and its content): the object of the mental act. Every psychological act has its own object and its content. For example, the act of imagining something has its own object, for example, a landscape, and the content of this act is the image of the landscape in the human mind (Twardowski, 1894/1965). Most importantly, the feature of any mental act is its intentionality, and therefore a reference to the object: love is always love for someone/something, and similarly for hatred, anger, cognition, evaluation, and so on. Through mental acts, people establish a unique mental relationship with the world. The analysis of these acts is therefore key to understanding not only the mental life of a person but also their relationship with the external world and how they perceive/experience this world. The psychology of acts and their products is the foundation of Twardowski’s work. The detailed analysis of the relationship between the mental act and its product—presented later in 1912—led Twardowski to the classification of products and to very significant theoretical and methodological conclusions (Betti, 2010; Brandl & Woleński, 1999; Cavallin, 1998), creating the space for two complementary traditions of psychology, namely the psychology of impermanent products (mental acts and beliefs), and the psychology of permanent products (documents, arts and cultural goods).
Mental acts and beliefs (or the psychology of impermanent products)
The products of mental acts are mental products (just as the products of physical acts are physical products), the product of thinking is thought, and the product of imagination is mental imagery. Mental products are inherently impermanent/transitory, that is, they exist as long as there are mental acts (thought exists only when there is an action of thinking). A psychologist wanting to study the mental product in a “pure” state, to directly examine thought, judgment, or conviction, must directly examine it in a mental act. Psychological research—to be reliable and to refer to psychological phenomena—should use such research methods that ensure direct contact with the mental act and its product. The nature of psychological phenomena, in some sense, imposes a requirement to apply appropriate methodology on psychologists. Consequently, Twardowski accepted that the only method of direct access to psychic phenomena is (according to Brentano’’s thought) internal perception: introspection (Plotka, 2019). Methods taken from the natural sciences based on observation and measurement, such as an experiment, are not able to reach the essence of mental phenomena but only some of their products Bobryk (2001, 2014; Rzepa, 1997). Positivist methodology is foreign to the subject matter of psychology because it is related to other ontological phenomena (Twardowski, 1910/1965, 1913/1965). This postulate was supposed to protect psychology against the threat of its reductionism, which had already made itself known in the physiological psychology of Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and Edward Titchener in the United States. Furthermore, this postulate opened wide possibilities for descriptive, analytical and phenomenological psychology (Auerbach, 1931; Blaustein, 1928; Prokopski, 2015).
In the context of the psychology of religion, the above-mentioned conclusions are very important. Above all, they allow the chaos of terminology to be organized, which is taking place today in psychological literature; they also enable the avoidance of some misunderstandings. The authors of publications on religious beliefs, even in flagship journals, not only do not distinguish between such concepts as the psychological act, its content and object (meaning conceptual distinction rather than terminological), but introduce a very complex and not always coherent conceptual grid. Interesting examples of such accumulation are the articles by Neil Van Leeuwen (2009, 2014, 2017), which are being increasingly discussed, in which the authors use terms such as mental state, cognitive attitude, religious cognition, beliefs versus factual beliefs, religious credence, varieties of belief, various subtypes of belief, and so on. The authors not only refer to different traditions as psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, and anthropology but also combine concepts that refer to ontologically different phenomena, wanting to explain two basic types of religious beliefs (Boudry & Coyne, 2016). The lack of a distinction between the content of beliefs/religious judgments and the nature and specifics of the act itself seems to be widespread today. This problem becomes more evident when examining the specificity of acts of judging or thinking through the analysis of their psychophysical products, such as speech, reaction, and behavior (Reddisha et al., 2016), thus by analyzing other ontological phenomena. In other words, when talking about faith in immortality or someone’s belief that God exists, one must be aware that we are talking only about the content of faith and the content of belief, and not about psychic acts of faith or acts of religious thinking.
In the perspective of Twardowski’s considerations, one can also look at the problem of the difference between religious and nonreligious convictions, a key issue for cognitive psychologists and psychologists of religion. In the light of these distinctions, there is no reason to speak about the dissimilarity of the mental act itself in the case of religious and nonreligious cognition. However, these acts differ in terms of object and content. In the case of an object in religious cognition, we are dealing with an empirically unverifiable reality. God, paradise, and immortality cannot be objects of scientific study because they are completely elusive and, what is more problematic, they do not have unequivocal definitions. We do not know what kind of reality a believer establishes in a mental act and whether this reality exists at all. In the content of religious beliefs, there are usually “non-visual” representations (i.e. concepts) or “visual” 5 representations, such as imaginations, and religious beliefs are most often created on them. This position is close to the tradition of contemporary psychology and the philosophy of religion, in which religious convictions/beliefs do not have a different cognitive status but rather a different content (Barrett, 2000; Boudry & Coyne, 2016; Van Eyghen, 2016).
In addition to the above, in light of Twardowski’s theory, it should be said that the contemporary psychology of religion focuses not so much on the direct examination of such psychic acts as acts of faith or the act of thinking, but primarily on their products. This is especially true when they are behavioral products like behaviors, reactions or neuronal processes. It is worth noting that even in the cognitive psychology of religion (Clark & Barrett, 2011; De Cruz & De Smedt, 2015) it is very easy to shift the attention and interest of researchers from mental acts to computational processes, neural simulations, or simulations of cognitive processes. A close analogy to this problem is shown by the analysis of the computational theory of mind in light of Twardowski’s works, in which it clearly shows how deep modern reductionism is and how often it is incompatible with the nature of mental acts and the human mind in general (Citlak, 2019c). The contemporary neuroscience of religion and even neurotheology can be very helpful, but it is sometimes surprising that some researchers would like to study the religious worldview on the basis of biological and chemical indicators (stimulation of selected brain structures—(Aaen-Stockdale, 2012; Biello, 2007). In this case, even the most advanced correlation models or experimental schemes will always remain outside the content and nature of the religious worldview. Typical conclusions resulting from such planned research “[. . .] showed that religious participants activated dorsolateral prefrontal regions in the psalm recital” (Schjoedt, 2009, p. 323), and “Results showed that stronger religious zeal and greater belief in God were associated with less firing of the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex—A.C.) in response to error and with commission of fewer errors. These correlations remained strong even after we controlled for personality and cognitive ability” (Inzlicht et al., 2009, p. 385). The value of such research is obviously high, especially in pastoral psychology and in the general psychology of religion (Dixon & Wilcox, 2016; McGregor et al., 2008). The authors of course do not equate neuronal processes with religious belief; however, the adopted methodology often leads to a shifting of attention and then to a subtle change in the subject of research. As a consequence, the researcher changes the theoretical perspective and accepts functionalist explanations as the most important or, worse, the only explanations. If the nature of religious beliefs were to be examined mainly in the light of biological or behavioral correlates, in my opinion it is a simple way to repeat the complications that have occurred and take place in mainstream cognitive science: deep reductionism of mental life. The price that contemporary psychology pays for a methodological change (acceptance of observation and experimentation since Wundt’s times or present-day computer simulations) is very high, especially in the case of the psychology of religion, the essence of which is qualitative rather than quantitative (Belzen, 1997; Wulff, 2003). I agree with James Nelson: “The paradigm of positivistic naturalism, with its emphasis on quantitative questionnaire methodology, has been the most influential but also the least helpful in generating new ideas for the psychological understanding of religion” (Nelson, 2012, p. 685).
Of course, we can ask the question of how to examine the nature of these acts. In the period when Twardowski and his students conducted their analyses, experimental introspection was mainly used as the only way to explore the essence of mental acts (Allik, 2006; Hacker & Weger, 2018). I do not mean that we must adhere to that methodology, rather that we should be careful when formulating conclusions about the nature of psychic religious acts based only on their products. The “core” of mental acts to a large extent remains unavailable to us. What is more, the currently dominant experimental psychology marginalizes phenomenological analyses, becoming the only reliable source of information on this issue. The psychology of religion because of its subject matter is not the same as natural science and does not to have to be reductionist. The history of psychology provides from its very beginnings a different method (hemeneutically, phenomenologically, discoursive oriented) that can minimize this problem.
Documents, arts and cultural goods (or the psychology of permanent products)
The theory of acts and products creates a theoretical starting point for a two-way (experimental and non-experimental) psychology of religion which is absolutely original in international psychological literature. If mental acts are accompanied by physical acts/activity, then one can speak of a psycho-physical product, such as writing (or letters on paper), which is a product of the act of writing, sculpture is a product of the act of carving, and so on. Psychophysical products can be impermanent (e.g., facial expressions as an expression of experienced mental states and muscle reactions), or permanent (e.g., text or a work of art). Twardowski calls “all impermanent psychophysical products signs of a mental life, whereas [. . .] all permanent psychophysical products are documents of mental life or psychological documents” (Twardowski, 1913/1965, p. 258). Although psychophysical products are an indirect source of psychological data—unlike in the case of introspection—they were intended to be used as a complementary source and important subject matter of psychological research. Psychophysical products are cultural goods (written documents, works of art), but most importantly, they express the psychophysical acts and psychological products that led to their creation. What is more, according to Twardowski, a psychophysical product can “evoke in a variety of individuals the psychological product expressed in it” (Twardowski, 1912/1965, p. 135). Contact with psychophysical products may cause the recipient to create the psychic products that led to their creation in the first place, for example, euphoria or an artist’s longing may be aroused by the recipient of their work. The mental product that underlies the psychophysical product itself in this way becomes the meaning of that product. “A meaning is then any mental product related with a psychophysical product in such a way that it is expressed by such a psychophysical product. Then we can speak of the meaning of a scream, the meaning of a painting and the meaning of blushing, etc.” (Twardowski, 1912/1965, p. 232). In conclusion, Twardowski recognized that psychophysical products are documents of mental life, and as such they deserve a psychological interpretation, the aim of which should be the reconstruction of the author’s mental products.
Twardowski created a theoretically cohesive space for practicing two-way psychology: (a) empirical psychology using the introspection method, as a result of which there was a chance to reach the essence of psychic phenomena, and (b) cultural-historical psychology, very similar to W. Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie (Wundt, 1913), in which the main sources of data were to be cultural goods like religion, language, works of art, historical documents, holy books, and so on. It is worth remembering that for Wundt, the beginnings of empirical psychology did not just mean introducing the experiment as the most important way to access the mental life, but it meant the possibility of combining experimental research with a non-experimental tradition (Greenwood, 2003; Wundt, 1913). This trend—although also present in psychology in later works of L. Vygotsky (1931/1997) and Vygotsky Circle (Yasnitsky, 2018), I. Meyerson (1987; Parot, 2000), and in historical social psychology (Gergen & Gergen, 1984)—was quickly dominated by experimental research. In Twardowski’s psychological school, each of the proposed paths for the development of psychological research was, however, burdened with the problem of subjectivism. It threatened both introspective research and the study of cultural works. The problem of the subjectivism of introspection was later partly solved by Mieczysław Kreutz, indicating its possible modifications (Kreutz, 1949, 1962), but the subjectivism of the interpretation of psychophysical products as cultural works remained virtually unresolved and revealed itself in later psychological works of representatives of this school (Citlak, 2016a).
The consequences of the theory of acts and products run much deeper (Bobryk, 2014; Brożek & Chybinska, 2016); however, in the context of the topic presented here, the above two trends have a special meaning. Both paths of the development of psychology have found a place in the psychology of religion, but they have their specificity. One of the distinguishing features of Twardowski’s School was strict conceptual precision and rigorous subordination to logical reasoning. Twardowski severely criticized all deviations from these principles. He did not tolerate irrationalism, and was a staunch opponent of subordinating research or argumentation to any ideology. Philosophy, psychology and any kind of research had to remain pure, independent of the subjective researcher’s worldview. The sphere of religion and religious beliefs—entangled in subjectivism and even irrationalism—found itself quite quickly in the optics of analytical and epistemological considerations. Psychologists educated in Twardowski’s environment were generally not religiously involved and held a critical attitude toward religious phenomena (although not in the negative sense of “enemies of religion”). For this reason, the first research in the psychology of religion remains a kind of phenomenon in this school. It should be added here that, slightly earlier, the first psychology lecturer in Poland, Julian Ochorowicz (1850–1917), combined these two branches of psychology in his scientific activity (Ochorowicz, 1916). Ochorowicz, who graduated in Leipzig in 1875, was also lecturer at the Jan Kazimierz University from 1876 to 1881. As one of the first psychologists in Europe, he tried to rationally explain the phenomena of hypnosis, the spiritual medium and parapsychology using experimental methods. The relatively important part of his research was the psychological analysis of religious phenomena in history, the analysis of mystics’ diaries, and most significantly, experimental research on mystical experiences and religious ecstasy (Ochorowicz, 1870, 1898). In 1882, he moved to Paris, where he founded The International Institute of Psychology. Ochorowicz also initiated The First International Congress of Physiological Psychology, which took place in Paris in 1889. Unfortunately, despite the connections with Lvov and important scientific achievements, he was not in the circle of Twardowski’s School, especially since “he advocated a separation of empirical psychology from philosophy and a further naturalization of the mind” (Nicolas & Soderlund, 2005; Weaver, 2018; Ziółkowska, 2018, p. 75).
The consistency of religious and non-religious beliefs
The problem of religious beliefs in Twardowski’s School was closely related to the study of cognition and judgments. Twardowski did not devote too much space in his works to religious beliefs, claiming that science must be based on facts and empirical data (introspective or resulting from observation). Religious beliefs, however, are based on “facts” about which science is unable to speak or verify. A similar position was held by K. Ajdukiewicz, who also claimed that the philosophical analysis of religious beliefs often omitted (and continues to omit) the essence of these beliefs, because they mainly express a certain emotional aspect of religious experience and reflection on life, and not logically correct content. Above all, however, these are beliefs about which truth or object cannot be expressed (Ajdukiewicz, 1949/2004). Despite the various views in Twardowski’s School (I omit here the philosophical views of Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Tadeusz Czeżowski, Jan Łukasiewicz, etc.), all of their representations combined an analytical and strictly rationalist stand toward religious beliefs, which was usually associated with criticism of irrationality and conceptual ambiguity.
Twardowski (and his students) distinguished two basic types of judgments: presented/imagined judgments and expressed judgments. The judgment is based on visual presentations (images) or non-visual presentations (concepts, notions). Presentations that appear in the human mind are not yet judgments. You can mentally “see” a certain fact, a flair, a concept, even understand it, but it will not be a judgment because it is not accompanied by a so-called moment of assertion (recognition by the subject regarding whether or not it is reality). A person may have an idea of a judgment, but it will not yet be an actual judgment (Twardowski, 1898). Twardowski also accepted, similarly to Alexius Meinong (1910), that there is an indirect form between presentations and actual judgments, that is, suppositions that can be considered as equivalent to presentation judgments, but of course, without assertion (Paczkowska-Łagowska, 1980). Supposition is an assumption about reality or some facts but without unambiguous conviction. Therefore, only proper judgments can be true or false. Suppositions are common in the area of artistic experiences, poetry, thinking processes, assumptions, religious beliefs, and so on.
The above distinctions are important if we take into account the fact that the religious belief system is a complex system, that is, it covers different types of beliefs. First of all, there may be different types of presentations (deities, heaven, hell, soul) or concepts (salvation, death, resurrection, sanctity) at the basis of religious cognition, which determine the emergence of religious beliefs of different characteristics and slightly different ontological status. Second, in each of these two cases, conviction can have the characteristic of a proper judgment or supposition, and this means that not all religious beliefs have a moment of assertion and therefore certainty. An explicit indicator of such a way of thinking in the religious sphere is the linguistic distinction used by people: “I believe that God exists”” or “I know / am convinced that God exists.” This was empirically demonstrated by L. Heiphetz et al. (2018) in a series of psychological studies where religious beliefs were most often expressed as “I believe” and not “I know / I am convinced,” as is typical in the case of knowledge about the world. Third, the strength of religious beliefs can be graded, which is often seen in psychological research, when subjects are asked “How much do you believe in God?,” “How religious you are?,” and so on However, on the grounds of logic, such grading is pointless; the judgments are either true and recognized or false and rejected. This means that at least some of these beliefs are not subjected to the rigorous rules of logical thinking. Finally, because at least some religious beliefs are more or less obvious (subjectively certain), there must be some cognitive mechanism to deal with their coherence or inconsistency with other beliefs.
The problem of cognitive and religious dissonance
The most famous and discussed work in Lvov-Warsaw School on this topic is Władysław Witwicki’s 6 Wiara oświeconych (Faith of the Enlightened), first published in France in 1939, and then in Poland in 1959 (Grzegorczyk, 1999; Jadczak, 1979; Kosnarewicz, 1989; Nowicki, 1982; Rzepa, 1989, 1997a; Szmyd, 1996). It presents the results of research on the religious beliefs of educated people which were performed using the introspection method. The very idea of studying convictions was established in the mainstream of the Twardowski School; it also created a wide field of interpretation of results and their reference to the philosophical and phenomenological tradition. It was a study of “the intellectual, moral and aesthetic attitude of the enlightened people to their religious beliefs” (Witwicki, 1959, p. 89). Witwicki suspected that there was a difference between the logical and intellectual assessment of religious beliefs and practices, and the logical and intellectual assessment of beliefs and behaviors unrelated to religion. In the introspective reports obtained from the respondents—after reading a specially prepared story 7 —he found results consistent with these assumptions.
People who believe in God did not have difficulties with the correct moral and logical evaluation of other people’s behavior, but they had serious difficulties with the logical and moral evaluation of the behavior of biblical figures or those that constituted a model of faith/ethics for them. The same act performed in identical (or similar) circumstances was assessed as positive or negative depending on who made it, and not depending on the moral nature of this act. For example, the punishment imposed on humanity by God was right, but the same punishment imposed on students by the headmaster was cruel. What is more, the respondents usually did not notice this contradiction or claimed that in the sphere of religious beliefs and practices, one cannot simply apply the laws of logic. One of the most important conclusions of Witwicki was the discovery that believers apply the principles of logic and morality selectively, and when they come into conflict with their faith, logic and morality can be suspended or rejected. There is a kind of “logical paralysis.” Moreover, “paralysis of logic [. . .] is joined with paralysis of a significant part of the emotional life during the religious acts. Believers have a kind of two moral physiognomies” (Witwicki, 1959, pp. 296–297). It was important research result showing that the coherence of religious beliefs does not have to result from their logical consistency.
Witwicki went further (which according to both myself and others was a mistake, or at least an over-interpretation—Grzymała-Moszczyńska, 1980; Rzepa, 1997b; Szmyd, 1963), claiming that in the minds of believers, religious beliefs (especially when they are those of educated people) can survive the conflict with logic if they are suppositions for a given person. The concept of supposition was taken by Witwicki from Alexius Meinong (1910), and he understood it in a similar way—as beliefs that do not explicitly value the truth or falsehood as “intermediate states between convictions and presentations” (Witwicki, 1959, p. 28). In this way, religious beliefs as suppositions can survive in the mind because they are not a subject of logic. A consciousness of psychological contradiction can lead to the suspension of the laws of logic, but it can also lead to the denial of a non-religious belief as erroneous, in contrast to religious beliefs. The consequence of this is often a shift of non-religious beliefs beyond consciousness. This result pays special attention to the possible collapse of the logical belief system even in the face of illogical religious beliefs. The problem is recognized in literature on the subject but is much less explored by psychologists, who usually pay attention to the inverse relationship (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook et al., 2012; Zmigrod et al., 2018). Therefore, in the human belief system, two completely independent or antagonistic sub-systems of beliefs may develop: religious and non-religious, or proper convictions and supposition. Witwicki also points out that the basis upon which religious beliefs often arise (including illogical beliefs) is a suitably formed emotional complex, among which feelings of worship, adoration and fear play a dominant role. They also, unfortunately, do not yield to cold rational analysis. This inner split can finally include beliefs and also feelings. “Two different emotional attitudes: religious and secular, eternal and temporal, angelic and predatory, can perfectly exist side by side and not affect one another” (Witwicki, 1959, p. 300).
The phenomenon of suspending the principles of logic with respect to suppositions (also with respect to convictions and judgments) was a very important result in that time, mainly on account of the fact that in 1939, Witwicki had already managed to prove the fundamental mechanism of reducing the psychological tension resulting from experiencing a conflict of convictions, described earlier in the literature as the psychological principle of contradiction (Aristotle, 2009; Łukasiewicz, 1909). “The inability to accept this principle a priori in Aristotle’s assumption: “Nobody can believe that the same is and is not,” as well as in the modified form: “Two beliefs, which are judged contradictory, cannot exist simultaneously in the same mind,” showed already Jan Łukasiewicz indicating the need for its empirical verification. But the possibility of empirical verification of the discussed principle was questioned and rejected by Edmund Husserl. Whereas Witwicki, referring to the results of his own research, stated that the psychological principle of contradiction in the form “No man can simultaneously argue about and deny one and the same object” is false; it is contradicted by a number of facts recorded in the psychology of dreams, aesthetic experiences, religious experiences” (Szmyd, 1996, p. 204).
In 1939, Witwicki wrote,
A deeply watchful man avoids any contradictory convictions; upon acknowledging such a contradiction, he feels anxious [. . .] He is ready to adhere to one out of two contradictory convictions although at times he may find it difficult to choose the right one. It is particularly hard for a reasonable person to experience two contradictory convictions at the same time and consciously. (p. 65)
His findings suggested the psychological principle of contradiction is not so rigorously followed as the logical principle of contradiction. In Polish psychological literature, Witwicki in Wiara oświeconych presented himself as “[. . .] a pioneer of cognitive dissonance theory” (Rzepa, 1997a, p. 129). Unfortunately, this is only as a “pioneer,” because Witwicki stated a priori that religious convictions are in fact only suppositions, making them more difficult to be analyzed in terms of their psychological and logical coherence: it was not the problem of coherence between convictions, but between convictions and suppositions (Rzepa, 1997a; also Kosnarewicz, 1989). This mechanism was empirically verified and described in detail by Leon Festinger eighteen years later, presenting the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957; Festinger et al., 1956).
Magical thinking and religious psychosis
Research on the psychological principle of contradiction was continued by Aniela Meyer-Ginsberg, a student of Witwicki, who in an introspective experiment attempted to show when and under what conditions someone shows insensitivity to the psychological principle of contradiction. According to her, although the contradiction of beliefs occurs in dreams, daydreams, and aesthetic experiences, it is particularly often found in religious thinking as well as in magical thinking and superstitions (Meyer-Ginsberg, 1935). In religious beliefs, people usually treat the contradiction with rational beliefs seriously, because it causes a strong psychological tension and sometimes anxiety. Therefore, in such a situation, people apply various treatments to eliminate the feeling of dissonance. However, in the case of magical beliefs and superstitions, the state of tension and/or dissonance is either very weak or does not occur at all. As such, they are not treated so seriously and are therefore either trigger only weak reactions or no reactions at all. The psychological principle of contradiction stops being applicable when a person “ceases to think clear-headed and soberly” (Meyer-Ginsberg, 1935, p. 382), whereas magical thinking is a remnant of primary, prehistoric thinking, which is also typical for children, and its genesis lies in the feeling of helplessness in the face of events. Thus, religious and magical practices have the same source: the desire to achieve a sense of power, control over reality, and going beyond visible limits: “here you can break the laws that govern the world and your own reason or mind, you can believe in unbelievable things and accept things not accepted” (Meyer-Ginsberg, 1935, p. 386). In the light of W. Witwicki’s cratism theory—which I will mention a little further on—Ginsberg’s conclusions allow us to assume that the source of magical thinking is the cratic desire (seeking to feel strength and power—Witwicki, 1907, 1927) and the desire to overcome weaknesses.
Critical analysis of beliefs and religious behaviors was also conducted by one of the most famous of Twardowski’s students, Stefan Błachowski. 8 Błachowski conducted experimental research on memory, thinking and imagination and also dealt with the psychology of religion. I will focus here only on the most important results of Błachowski’s research on collective religious behavior and thinking.
In 1926 in Słupia (Poland), just before the Catholic holiday of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, several teenagers experienced religious revelation claiming that the Mother of God appeared to them. Visions and unusual mental states began to repeat, and information about the “miracle” reached a wide range of people. Within a short period of time, more and more groups came to Słupia for prayers and ceremonies. 9 Blachowski a natural observation of this phenomenon, and together with the psychiatrist Stefan Borowiecki, he carried out experimental research on the participants and visionaries of this miracle. The results were published in two works: Psychic Epidemic in Słupia near Środa (Błachowski and Borowiecki, 1928) and On artificial Ecstasy and Visions (Błachowski, 1938):
Visionaries showed a lower than average level of intelligence, features of mental underdevelopment, exuberant imagination, and a tendency to hysteria.
They were characterized by unusual susceptibility to suggestion (in laboratory conditions without difficulty Błachowski and Borowiecki evoked the vision of Our Lady in the teenagers and the ecstatic states, sometimes in one or two minutes; their eyes were open, they had stiff, tense bodies but a normal heart rate).
Participants of the religious movement showed a reduced level of rational, critical thinking, the loss of individuality, and certain forms of infantilism. “Pilgrims in Słupia renounced, as a man in hypnosis, to a greater or lesser degree of his personality, ceased to be themselves, and became a common body [. . .] controlled by the image of the Mother of God” (Błachowski & Borowiecki, 1928, p. 12). In light of modern psychology, it can be said that these were typical symptoms of the subject’s depersonalization, described in the theory of self-categorization by J. Turner (1985; Turner et al., 1987; Iacoviello & Lorenzi-Cioldi, 2018).
The problem of magical thinking also appears in two other works by Blachowski (1937, 1939): The Magical Behavior of Children in Relation to School and Good Luck Letters. A Contribution to the Psychology of Magical Thinking. Blachowski’s research is to a certain extent a development of J. Piaget’s thesis on children’s thinking (Piaget, 1926/1951), and above all, is based on the work of K. Zeininger on the role of magical thinking and magical behavior in child development (Zeininger, 1929). The results of the Polish psychologist’s reasearch clearly showed that magical thinking is a very common phenomenon both in adolescents and adults, although along with cognitive development and greater knowledge about the world, it slowly weakens. Its main cause is a lack of sense of security as well as anxiety or fear of danger and unpredictable events, and so on.
These are critical but important conclusions regarding religious experiences and beliefs. Religious visions and ecstatic states may in some cases be rooted in personality dysfunctions; they can be evoked through suggestion or group influence, which in the case of mass religious movements, can lead to the disappearance of logical and critical thinking and the depersonalization of their members. Religious beliefs can also have a strong resemblance to magical beliefs which are typical of children or arise from pre-logical thinking. It is worth emphasizing that the studies of Witwicki, Meyer-Ginsberg and Błachowski combined a common thematic axis concerning the relationship between religious beliefs and rational, logical beliefs. As J. Szmyd points out, the psychological principle of contradiction played a special role in the Polish psychology of religion from that period (Szmyd, 1996). This principle is apparently not respected in religious beliefs.
Cultural-historical psychology of religion
The second trend of possible psychological research was also undertaken by Witwicki in the form of an analysis of psychophysical products, that is, cultural works. Witwicki devoted many years to the analysis of art and historical written works. He was a philologist; he knew Greek and Latin well and in the history of Polish science, he is also known as a translator of Plato’s Dialogues and an author of Dobra Nowina wg Marka i Mateusza. The ancient Greek world was his passion throughout his life. He propagated knowledge about ancient culture, conducted educational programs on this topic on Polish Radio in 1938–1939, and also published a series of commentaries on selected issues of Greek culture entitled Przechadzki ateńskie I-VIII (Witwicki, 1947). He was also passionate about the psychology of art, to which he devoted a lot of space in his handbook Psychology vol. II, the first Polish psychological handbook for students (Witwicki, 1927/1963).
Research on cultural works directly contributed to Witwicki’s creation of the most original Polish psychological theory—the theory of cratism (Greek κρατος power, strength; Jadczak, 1981; Nowicki, 1982; Rzepa, 1991), which is very similar to A. Adler’s theory of striving for power (Adler, 1907, 1920; Markinówna, 1935) and to the theory of E. Fromm (Głogowska, 2016). The works of Plato and Aristotle played a special role here, as well as, to a lesser extent the philosophy of F. Nietzsche’s will to power and H. Spencer’s notion of evolutionism (Rzepa, 1990, 1991) Witwicki announced the theory of cratism in three stages: first in the doctoral dissertation on ambition in 1900, then during a conference in 1907, and finally in its most developed form in the handbook of Psychology vol. II in 1927. This theory has been made available in English recently (Citlak, 2016a), so I will not discuss it in detail. Witwicki, during the analysis of cultural works, remarked on the pursuit of a sense of power, the pursuit of independence, superiority over his own limitations, and superiority over others as the basic motivational mechanisms of man. The cratic desire has the character of a biological drive and is something culturally independent; it plays a special role throughout human life, although it does not result from a sense of inferiority as claimed by A. Adler (Markinówna, 1935; Witwicki, 1907). It may be manifested in various ways. Formerly, it could have been more clearly related to the pursuit of power and physical strength, which allowed faster access to proper social positions; today, the cratic desire is realized by acquiring greater social or professional competences. The cratic desire (or cratic motivation) was first seen in Socrates’ behavior and then in many biblical figures, first and foremost, Jesus. The cratic sense (sense of strength, power and superiority) also plays an important role in aesthetic and religious experience. The theory of cratism was also used by Witwicki to create the psychobiography of the aforementioned Socrates and Jesus (Rzepa, 2002).
According to Witwicki, the intensification of the cratic desire is also associated with the changes in the area of experienced feelings that he divided into autopathic feelings and heteropathic feelings. The first are lived in relation to oneself (Greek authos—he, himself; and pathos—feeling, experience), while the second in relation to others (heteros—another, different; and pathos—feeling, experience), and these are social feelings. He used his theory to classify the emotional states that dominate in various types of social relations (Witwicki, 1927/1963). “The main determinant of emerging feelings between people was the subjective feeling of life force encountered by people as well as their friendly or hostile attitude towards each other. This created six possible interpersonal relationships: with those hostile towards me [. . .], and with those friendly towards me [. . .]” (Citlak, 2016a, p. 116). In the first case, we have feelings for stronger than I—fear, anxiety; as equals—hatred, anger, hostility; weaker than I—hatred, anger, hostility. In the second case for stronger than I—respect, admiration; as equals—friendship, trust; weaker than I—compassion, pity.
Cratic desires can manifest themselves in four different forms: raising up others, raising up oneself, belittling others, and belittling oneself. It is not only self-raising that can ensure a sense of power, but also self-humiliation, for example, in ascetic practices aimed at increasing control over one’s own body or emotions. Cratic desires are also associated with the accomplishment of cratic feelings. They are an important part of a religious experience to which Witwicki devoted a lot of work. On the one hand, it is about experiencing the strength of the higher power or the power of the deity with which the individual stays in contact; on the other, it is about the opportunity to worship/honor the deity and the chance for self-sacrifice: “When someone becomes dust on one side [. . .] on the other, it feels like a solidary worshiper, a servant and an instrument of the most powerful being, there are moments of maximum sense of power” (Witwicki, 1927/1963, p. 246). He finds the same essential moment in sacrificial systems when he writes that the ritual/sacrificial killing “is the maximum domination over the others, an opportunity for a maximum sense of power over someone” (Witwicki, 1927/1963, p. 187). The sense of power is also one of the foundations that fuses the religious community that is organized around the worship of the deity.
Cratic motivation, as well as the strive for cratic feelings, underlies many religious practices, especially the above-mentioned ascetic practices. According to Witwicki, they are often interwoven with the desire to exalt the deity and the need for self-humiliation. Examples of this type are provided by the history of Christianity: St. Francis, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, and the religious activity of hermits and even martyrs.
The above interpretations raise practically no objections, especially since they were in many aspects similar to the philosophy of religion of F. Schleiermacher, who defined the essence of religion as a feeling of the boundless dependence of man on God (Schleiermacher, 1799/1958), or the philosophy of R. Otto with his concept of the mysterium tremendum (Otto, 1917/1958) and the notion of submission as one of the three dominant feelings in religious experience (submission, enthusiasm and focus). Very similar results (although in this case, empirically confirmed), were obtained through research performed on religious experience at the Dorpat School (Wulff, 1997). K. Girgensohn in particular showed that one of the main features of religious experience is the phenomenon of the ego’s unification with the power and omnipotence of the deity or the higher power (Girgensohn, 1921; Gruehn, 1924).
The most advanced cratic interpretation in the field of the psychology of religion was presented by Witwicki on the example of Jesus. Published posthumously in 1958, it is a 200-page commentary on his own translations of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. Witwicki acknowledged the evangelical image of Jesus as authentic mainly for psychological reasons. This mentally divided Jew was a typical example of cratic desires: to uplift himself as Son of God and Messiah. In Christian theology, it is called divine and human nature, but it is actually nothing more than cratic desires. According to Witwicki, Jesus evoked the sense of guilt from his disciples, and then as their Savior, offered them salvation from sin. Referring to the typology of E. Kretschmer from 1929, Witwicki also ascribes schizotymic features to Jesus, typical for schizophrenics and people with social competence disorders. I will omit here a detailed analysis of this interesting psychobiography, which—considering negative cratic desires and schizophrenia—should ultimately be considered as an interpretive abuse (Smereka, 1961). 10 Nevertheless, the main thesis of the cratism theory seems to be very useful for analysis of the evangelical portrait of Jesus: it enables the identification of differences between the four psychological images of Jesus in the canonical Gospels (Citlak, 2019a; see Capps, 2000; Ellens, 2014; Ellens & Rollins, 2004).
The psychological cratic image of Jesus, albeit important for the psychology of religion, should be seen as part of the broader (and more important) theoretical perspective of Witwicki, which he developed over many years of study of the ancient world. Witwicki noticed cratic desires not only in the life of Jesus, but also in the lives of John the Baptist, Moses, and prophets of the Old Testament. There is some likelihood that cratic desires and the cratic perspective of the world (the desire to be strong and powerful, and the perception of the world in terms of hierarchy, obedience and surrender) could indeed play an important role in the organization of the social life of that time, and therefore also in the organization of ancient religious beliefs and practices. The concept of cratism and cratic desires were especially useful not only in psychological investigations into the life of Jesus, but more widely in the ancient Semitic and Judeo-Christian tradition. They were noticed in the last linguistic research of the Hebrew Old Testament, the Greek New Testament and the Arabic Quran (the highest level of cratism was found in the Old Testament, and the lowest in the New Testament; the Quran was between them—Citlak, 2016b; 2020). To summarize, it seems that the theory of cratism—based on the analysis of ancient philosophical and religious discourse—could prove useful in studies of contemporary religious discourse. This would, however, require separate study.
Both traditions of religious psychological research (permanent and impermanent products) had very strong and original foundations, and they could be continued in a complementary manner. Studies on religious beliefs could be the subject matter of theoretical, phenomenological and cultural-historical analyses in connection with experimental research.
Conclusion
The psychological tradition of K. Twardowski’s School is one of the most interesting phenomena of European psychology of the early 20th century, though it remains unknown in broader psychological literature. It went down in the history of humanities mainly as the philosophical and logical Lvov-Warsaw School, although in the first years of its existence, psychology played as important a role as philosophy. The psychology of Twardowski and his students is also the basis for the most important achievements of 20th century Polish psychology (Materska, 1996). Unfortunately, political factors led to the encapsulation of the scientific community and also to the inhibition of the undertaken research. First, after Poland regained independence in 1918, many of its representatives published the results of their research in their native language without passing them on to the wider international scientific community. Second, many representatives of the school died during World War II, and some of them left the country moving to other research centers in the West. 11 Third, the territorial borders of Poland changed, Lvov and Vilnius were lost, and academic and scientific activity had to be built from the beginning. Finally, after 1945, communist governments and ideology were introduced, which subjected Polish science to strong indoctrination; the Lvov-Warsaw School was treated as a manifestation of bourgeois thought. Much of the psychological work and research that began in the early days of the school was never continued. Apart from the psychological theory of action of T. Tomaszewski (Materska, 1996) and his students, who formed the core of later Polish psychology, the tradition of the Lvov-Warsaw School unfortunately did not attain a significant status within the international scientific community. And paradoxically, it happened to a large extent because of communist pressure, Polish scientists (including psychologists) mainly turned to the developing British and American psychology, which at that time became a symbol of free and unfettered thought. The psychology of Twardowski and his students was more often the subject of dissertations by philosophers than psychologists, only recently has it begun to enjoy greater interest, which can be seen in both the number of monographs and articles (e.g. Bobryk, 2001, 2014; Citlak, 2016a, 2016b, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c; Jadczak, 1981; Kosnarewicz, 1989; Nowicki, 1982; Paczkowska-Łagowska, 1980; Plotka, 2019; Rzepa, 1990, 1991, 1997a, 1997b, 1998, 2002, 2019; Rzepa and Stachowski, 1993; Szmyd, 1996).
Despite the above, the psychological work of this school is an important element not only of the history of European psychology, but also of the contemporary psychology of religion, which at the time enjoyed extraordinary interest and is currently experiencing a renaissance. The specificity and value of these achievements can be summarized in the following theses:
The psychological school of K. Twardowski derives from the philosophical and psychological tradition of F. Brentano. It was primarily a school of descriptive psychology with an emphasis on introspective analyses. Its special feature was, however, an analytical and even phenomenological approach, thanks to which, a coherent and precise conceptual and terminological device was developed.
The theoretical basis for psychological research on religion was set by K. Twardowski in the theory of acts and products, as well as in a detailed analysis of mental products. Twardowski’s works opened the field for two psychological traditions: (a) empirical and phenomenological research on religious beliefs and mental states (the theory of judgments played an important role here); (b) cultural-historical research on the psychology of religion (with the analysis of documents, language and religious customs, similar to the psychology of W. Wundt and L. Vygotski).
In cultural-historical psychology, one of the most original (and still little known) Polish psychological theories played a special role: W. Witwicki’s theory of cratism. The cratic psychobiography of Jesus of Nazareth was created according to its assumptions.
Psychological studies of religious beliefs were for some time dominated by the psychological principle of contradiction (especially the studies of W. Witwicki, A. Meyer-Ginsberg and S. Błachowski). The results of these studies allowed Witwicki to formulate the basic thesis of cognitive dissonance theory in 1939 (almost twenty years before L. Festinger).
The theory of acts and products, as well as the mental acts analysis used in the study of religious beliefs enables us to see and capture some form of reductionism in the psychology of religion. If we accept that the essence of religious experiences is a certain mental state, then empirically oriented psychologists primarily study their products, not the acts.
The problem of reductionism in the psychology of religion threatens not only behavioral psychology, but also the contemporary cognitive psychology of religion and the neuroscience of religion, which—despite the unquestionable advantages—devote a large part of research to ontological phenomena other than mental acts (i.e. their products).
The religious belief system is a very complex system, including beliefs and judgments based on visual and non-visual presentations (images, concepts, notions), and a large part of them have the nature of suppositions and do not abide by the rules of logical thinking.
The psychological principle of contradiction—in relation to religious beliefs—is very often “neglected” by the human cognitive system. This can lead to the creation of two relatively independent systems of evaluation and thinking. Moreover, the religious belief system (e.g. magical, superstition) can also lead to the negation of rational and logically coherent beliefs in some circumstances.
Empirical quantitative experimental research of religious beliefs should be combined with or supplemented by qualitative research and the findings of phenomenological and descriptive psychology.
The theoretical specificity of the research conducted in Twardowski’s School (a close relationship between psychology and philosophy), the methodology used (experimental introspection), as well as the results obtained (the meaning of the concept of power in religious experience, the suppositional vs non-suppositional nature of religious beliefs), bring it closer to the Dorpat School of Psychology of Religion. 12 Unfortunately, the Polish tradition, despite significant achievements in this field, never established cooperation with the representatives of Dorpat psychology, which—in my opinion—turned out to be its greatest loss.
Twardowski’s School is not only a voice of opposition to reductionism, but also the proposal of a two-way approach to the psychology of religion, in which the hermeneutic and phenomenological tradition can play an important role, necessary to capture the essence of mental acts and religious beliefs (in the light of this tradition was possible to distinguish suppositions from beliefs). This tradition remains present in psychology, not only in Wundt or Vygotski but also today in the discourse and narrative studies, where the concept of meaning plays a crucial role. Correlation and experimental analyses should be supplemented with additional techniques, for instance narrative methodology (Runyan, 2005). In this context, very symptomatic are D. Wulff’s words in his article from 2003 A field in crisis: is it time for the psychology of religion to start over? “Fortunately, research and reflection continues apace in other quarters within the psychology of religion, especially by those representing hermeneutical approaches [. . .] Inevitably more attuned to broad intellectual trends than the empirically oriented, those of the hermeneutic bent are gradually bringing into discussion such current frameworks as discourse analysis, critical psychology, narrative psychology, and social constructionism. The challenge now is to convince the empirical psychologists of religion to take these perspectives seriously and then to reexamine their own conceptualizations and commitments in the light of them. If persons of the stature of James Gibson and Henry Gleitman can conclude that a fresh start is necessary [. . .] there may be no better place to begin than with William James . . .” (Wulff, 2003, p. 28), and I could also add “and with L. Vygotsky, G. Mead and K. Twardowski’s School.”
