Secularisation and the ‘Holistic Milieu’: Social and Psychological Perspectives

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Religion Compass 2/3 (2008): 365–384, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00067.x

Secularisation and the ‘Holistic Milieu’: Social and Psychological Perspectives

Roderick Main*University of Essex

AbstractIn sociology of religion, there is an ongoing debate about whether alternative,holistic or New Age spirituality represents a significant resurgence of concernfor the sacred in the West and, if so, whether it amounts to counter-evidence tothe thesis that the West is undergoing an irreversible process of secularisation. Inthis article, I examine representative accounts of the contrasting views that NewAge or holistic spirituality is not significant and that it is significant. Both viewsturn on interpretations of the importance within New Age spirituality, or the‘holistic milieu’, of the self and its relation to society and the sacred. However,neither sociological perspective explores in depth the nature of this central conceptof the self. For a deeper theorisation of the self that may cast some light on thecontradiction between the two sociological viewpoints and provide a model forappreciating the potential significance of New Age spirituality, I propose aninterdisciplinary intervention from the perspective of Jungian analytical psychology.Jungian psychology, I argue, is particularly fitted to contribute to the debateabout secularisation and New Age spirituality because of its having emergedout of, and embedding insights from, both secularising and sacralising tendenciesin modern Western culture. The Jungian approach points to a conception ofthe self, congruent with New Age notions, that counters the all too commonassumption that the new forms of subjective spirituality are socially insignificant.

Introduction

The secularisation paradigm has been influential in sociological thinkingsince the work of Max Weber (see Woodhead & Heelas 2000, pp. 307–41).But in recent decades, the paradigm has increasingly been challengedby scholars who have noted the apparent resurgence of religion in variousforms, including fundamentalism, evangelicalism, New Religious Move-ments, and alternative, holistic or New Age spirituality (see Woodhead& Heelas 2000, pp. 110–47, 429–75). The present article examines arecent defence of the secularisation paradigm, especially as it relates toNew Age or holistic spirituality (I use these terms interchangeably). Thearticle questions that defence in the light of, first, some even more recentresearch in sociology of religion and, second, a depth psychological model

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© 2008 The Author Religion Compass 2/3 (2008): 365–384, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00067.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

that stands in an interesting historical and theoretical relationship to bothNew Age spirituality and the problem of secularisation. The justification forintroducing a depth psychological perspective into what predominantlyhas been a sociological debate is that both the defence of the secularisationparadigm and the sociological work that calls it into question have pre-sented arguments that turn on interpretations of the importance withinNew Age spirituality of the self and its relation to society and the sacred.Yet, neither sociological perspective explores in depth the nature of thiscentral concept of the self. For a deeper theorisation of the self thatmay cast some light on the contradiction between the two sociologicalviewpoints, I therefore turn to depth psychology as a discipline pre-eminently concerned with the self. More specifically, I turn to Jungiananalytical psychology, which, I shall argue, is especially well suited toilluminate the issue with which this article is concerned because of itshaving emerged out of, and embedding insights from, both secularisingand sacralising tendencies in modern Western culture. First, however, itis necessary to set out the nature of the debate about secularisation andNew Age spirituality. I do this by summarising and contrasting tworepresentative works that set out the opposing sociological viewpoints.

The Secularisation Paradigm

In his book God Is Dead: Secularization in the West (2002), Steve Brucepresents an account of what he refers to as the ‘secularisation paradigm’and applies it to various areas of the contemporary religious scene.Although he does not believe that there is any one theory of secularisation– secularisation understood as ‘a long-term decline in the power,popularity, and prestige of religious beliefs and rituals’ (Bruce 2002, p. 44)– he argues that there can be found in the work of many scholars ‘clustersof descriptions and explanations that cohere reasonably well’ and can befairly synthesised into a secularisation ‘paradigm’ whose ‘basic propositionis that modernization creates problems for religion’ (p. 2). Taking his cuefrom Max Weber but also synthesising much subsequent sociological insight,Bruce outlines the key elements within the secularisation paradigm andsome of the complex connections among them. Of seminal importanceare the Protestant Reformation and its influence on the developmentof the Protestant Ethic, individualism and rationality. In a nutshell, theProtestant Ethic fostered industrial capitalism, economic growth and socialand structural differentiation. These, in turn, led to increasing social,cultural and religious diversity; the moderation of churches and sects;relativism; egalitarianism; secular states and liberal democracy; andcompartmentalisation and privatisation. Accompanying and contributing tothese developments were, on the one hand, the influence of individualismon the propensity to schism, the emergence of sects, and the growth ofliteracy and voluntary association; and, on the other hand, the influence


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of monotheism-inspired rationality on the emergence of science, technology,and technological consciousness (Bruce 2002, pp. 4–30). Taken together,according to Bruce’s version of the secularisation paradigm, these devel-opments have resulted in declining commitment to religion.

Apparent counter-tendencies to secularisation in the West are explainedby Bruce (2002) in terms of cultural defence and cultural transition,where religion remains relatively salient because it ‘finds work to do otherthan relating individuals to the supernatural’ (p. 30), such as reinforcing athreatened group identity or easing its move from one cultural context toanother (pp. 30–7). Again, Bruce carefully distances himself from some ofthe common misapprehensions about secularisation. For example, he doesnot argue that secularisation must have an even trajectory, that it leads toatheism, or that proponents of the secularisation thesis necessarily seesecularisation in a positive light (Bruce 2002, pp. 38–43). Nor does heargue that secularisation has happened or will happen universally, or eventhat its occurrence in the West was inevitable (Bruce 2002, pp. 37–8). Hedoes, however, strongly argue that, having happened, secularisation in theWest is unlikely to be reversed (Bruce 2002, p. 241).

Secularisation and the Failure of the New Age

One area of concern with the sacred that has seemed to some commen-tators to present a challenge to the secularisation paradigm is alternative,holistic or New Age spirituality, which appears to have flourished andachieved considerable cultural salience precisely at a time, the late twentiethcentury, when increasing secularisation might have been expected to makesuch an efflorescence improbable (see, for example, Tacey 2003). Does,then, the New Age represent counter evidence to the view that the Westis experiencing irreversible secularisation? Bruce thinks not and devotes achapter, unambiguously titled ‘The Failure of the New Age’, to explainingwhy (Bruce 2002, pp. 75–105; also see Bruce 1996, pp. 196–229; 1998).

Bruce’s identification of the beliefs and practices, groups and organisa-tions, and general characteristics of the New Age is fairly uncontroversial.Among beliefs and practices, he mentions alternative medicine, FengShui, aromatherapy, reflexology, crystals, prayer, tarot cards and other formsof fortune telling, astrology, meditation, spiritual healing and claimedcontact with supernatural beings. Among groups and organisations, henames the Festival for Mind-Body-Spirit, the Findhorn Community,Druidism, Wicca, Paganism, est, the Forum, Exegesis, and the RajneeshFoundation (Bruce 2002, pp. 80–1). These practices and organisations areclearly only indicative and the lists could be greatly extended (see Bruce2002, p. 83; 1996, pp. 196–200). At a more general level, Bruce identifiessix major characteristics of New Age religion, which are: that the self is,or is capable of becoming, divine; that the self provides the highestauthority; eclecticism; holism; perennialism; and the goal of well-being

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(Bruce 2002, pp. 82–5). While there are some differences, these beliefsand practices, groups and organisations, and general characteristics largelyoverlap with those provided by other commentators (e.g. Heelas 1996;Hanegraaff 1998; Sutcliffe 2003; Rose 2005).

Bruce, more insistently than other commentators, disputes that theNew Age has any major social significance. In arguing this, he focusesalmost entirely on social factors, which for him override the personalexperiences that, as he recognises, are so important to New Age partici-pants themselves. He underpins his case by invoking Roy Wallis’s (1976)typology of religious organisations, which distinguishes between thefollowing four types: churches, which are considered by their adherentsto be uniquely legitimate and by society to be respectable; denominations,which are considered by their adherents to be pluralistically legitimate(i.e. they do not claim to have a monopoly on religious truth) and bysociety to be respectable; sects, which are considered by their adherentsto be uniquely legitimate and by wider society to be deviant; and cults,which are considered by their adherents to be pluralistically legitimate andby wider society to be deviant (Wallis 1976, p. 13, cited in Bruce 2002,p. 77). In summary, Bruce argues that, in the West, the process of mod-ernisation has resulted in conditions of cultural diversity that diminish thelikely social significance of each of these forms of religion. The churchform of religion is quite simply no longer possible, because in no Westernsocieties will a claim to unique legitimacy in matters spiritual commandsociety-wide respect (Bruce 2002, p. 79). The denominational form ofreligion may continue to enjoy ‘some cohesion from its more sectarian orchurchly past’ but this heritage is ‘a wasting asset’ (Bruce 2002, p. 102).The sect form is able to survive only ‘where, and to the extent, that thesocial structure permits the creation of subsocieties’ (Bruce 2002, p. 79).And the cultic form of religion, though in some sense fitting the currentera (Bruce 2002, p. 85), lacks both the residual presence and cohesion ofthe church and denominational types and the conviction of the sect typethat it has unique access to the truth (Bruce 2002, p. 102). Therefore, ithas no purchase on, or firm basis from which to resist, the secularisingcurrents of modern society.

For Bruce, the New Age is a form of cultic religion, and several specificimplications follow from this. First, because of its ‘individualistic episte-mology’ whereby ‘the individual consumer decides what he or she willaccept’ (Bruce 2002, p. 77), the New Age is and must remain a diffuseform of religion, which can elicit only low levels of commitment andconsensus (Bruce 2002, pp. 90–5). ‘For any belief-system to survive intact’,writes Bruce, ‘there must be control mechanisms’ (Bruce 2002, p. 92).Yet, unlike for such forms of sectarian religion as Ian Paisley’s FreePresbyterian Church, in which ministers and elders are questioned abouttheir beliefs at ordination, for ‘diffuse cultic forms of religion’ such as theNew Age ‘no comparable mechanism for ensuring doctrinal cohesion is



possible’ (Bruce 2002, p. 93). Second, as a consequence of the low levelof commitment and consensus, the New Age, according to Bruce, lackssocial impact. He acknowledges that some – in his view, very few – NewAgers ‘have become active in environmental protests, in anti-capitalist rallies,or in developing alternative technologies,’ but judges that ‘the impact hasat best been slight’ (Bruce 2002, p. 95). The efforts of New Agers ‘are notamplified by being concerted’, so that ‘the New Age never becomes morethan the sum of its transient and relatively uncommitted parts’ (Bruce2002, p. 97). Nor, third, does Bruce see the New Age as having had muchindividual impact. For example, rather than transform individuals, as theyaspire to, New Age therapies ‘often do more to reconcile people to their placein the world’ (Bruce 2002, p. 98). Whereas a doctrinally coherentdenomination such as Methodism in its hey day ‘profoundly changedthose who adopted it and it profoundly changed their society’, in Bruce’sview ‘the New Age has changed very little’ (Bruce 2002, p. 98). Fourth,even if New Age beliefs were effective in changing something forparticipants, their nature as diffuse beliefs would make it difficult, if notimpossible, to reproduce and transmit them. For ‘the [central New Age]injunction to be true to yourself subverts the possibility of effectivelyasserting that these people would be better if they became like those people’(Bruce 2002, p. 99). And fifth, Bruce argues that the lack of any effort topreserve a body of doctrine leaves New Age beliefs vulnerable to thenatural tendency of all cultural products to dissolve and be graduallyaccommodated to the cultural norms – as when, in the hands of the NewAge, Hindu meditation becomes simply a form of relaxation or the Chinesepractice of Feng Shui becomes an adjunct to interior design (Bruce 2002,pp. 102–3). The insignificance of the New Age stemming from its natureas a form of diffuse, cultic religion is, in Bruce’s estimation, demonstratedby its poor showing ‘in terms of gross numbers of enthusiastic adherents’(Bruce 2002, p. 80). In summary, in the New Age, as Bruce (2002) sees it:

[I]nterest in matters spiritual [ . . . ] will not be sustained or form the basis forany sort of enduring shared culture so long as the possibility of shared beliefsand common reinforcing patterns of behaviour is subverted by the stress onindividual autonomy. (p. 105)

Thus, for Bruce, the New Age may be a recently emerged and, for some,an appealing form of religiousness, but it is and is likely to remainaltogether too ineffectual to reverse the overall decline of the influence ofreligion in modern Western societies, and therefore cannot stand as acounter-example to the secularisation paradigm.

Sacralisation and the Holistic Milieu

A very different picture of New Age spirituality is presented by PaulHeelas and Linda Woodhead in their book The Spiritual Revolution: Why

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Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality (2005). Heelas and Woodhead’s analysisturns on an appreciation of what Charles Taylor (1991) called ‘the massivesubjective turn of modern culture’ (p. 26, cited in Heelas & Woodhead2005, p. 2). This is ‘a turn away from life lived in terms of external or“objective” roles, duties and obligations, and a turn towards life livedby reference to one’s own subjective experiences (relational as much asindividualistic)’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 2). In the sphere of thesacred, this helps to clarify the frequently made distinction between‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’. Religion is associated with ‘life-as’ and ‘involvessubordinating subjective-life to the “higher” authority of transcendentmeaning, goodness and truth’, while spirituality ‘invokes the sacred in thecultivation of unique subjective-life’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 5).Life-as religion is evident in ‘the very public activities of church andchapel’, dubbed the ‘congregational domain’; and subjective-life spirituality,though less obvious in its manifestations, is found above all in ‘whatis often called alternative or New Age spirituality’, dubbed the ‘holisticmilieu’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 8).

Heelas and Woodhead (2005) explore whether in contemporaryWestern culture there may be taking place a ‘spiritual revolution’, whichfor them will have happened when ‘ “holistic” activities having to dowith subjective-life spirituality attract more people than do “congrega-tional” activities having to do with life-as religion’ (p. 7). In order totest this, Heelas and Woodhead (2005), together with some colleagues,undertook between 2000 and 2003 a locality study of ‘Patterns of theSacred’ in the town of Kendal in the North West of England (pp. 8–9,12–48, 151–4; also see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/ieppp/kendal/index.htm). On the qualitative side, their findings included that inKendal the congregational domain and holistic milieu are indeed ‘largelyseparate and distinct worlds’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 31). On thequantitative side, a meticulous count of sacred activity in a typical weekin November 2000, including both church attendance and involve-ment in face-to-face holistic activities, revealed that a spiritual revolu-tion as defined above has not taken place. There was, however, clearevidence that life-as forms of religion are declining, while spiritualities ofsubjective-life are growing, so that if current trends continue, a spiritualrevolution will take place in Kendal within about 30 years (Heelas &Woodhead 2005, p. 48). From a survey of research in Britain, the USA,and elsewhere, Heelas and Woodhead (2005) conclude that the patternthey have discerned in Kendal also holds for many other parts ofcontemporary Western culture (pp. 49–76). For them, the evidencesuggests that ‘the West is currently experiencing both secularization(with regard to life-as forms of religion) and sacralization (with regardto subjective-life forms of spirituality)’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005,pp. 9–10). In order to explain this situation, they present what they call ‘thesubjectivization thesis’:

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/projects/ieppp/kendal/index.htm



In a nutshell, the subjectivization thesis states that ‘the massive subjectiveturn of modern culture’ favours and reinforces those (subjective-life) forms ofspirituality which resource unique subjectivities and treat them as a primarysource of significance, and undermines those (life-as) forms of religion whichdo not. (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 78)

Heelas and Woodhead’s findings and argument contradict many of Bruce’sspecific assertions about the New Age. First, where Bruce (2002) deniesnumerical significance to the New Age (pp. 79–82), Heelas and Woodhead(2005) demonstrate empirically that it does have considerable numericalsignificance (pp. 130–2). Second, where Bruce argues that New Agebeliefs, being diffuse, will inevitably suffer from weak transmission, Heelasand Woodhead (2005) demonstrate that New Age spirituality or the holisticmilieu, whether or not its beliefs are weak and difficult to transmit, iscontinuing to grow (p. 135). Moreover, contrary to Bruce’s supposition,they found that ‘32 per cent of the participants in the Kendal holisticmilieu who have children report that their offspring share their owninterest in holistic milieu activities’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 136).Third, Heelas and Woodhead (2005) also question that holistic milieubeliefs are as diffuse as Bruce maintains, pointing out that there are manywidely shared holistic themes, such as belief in the existence of subtleenergy or indeed in spirituality itself (p. 135). Fourth, one of the pivotalpoints Bruce makes against New Age spirituality is that its emphasis onindividuality subverts the possibility of developing shared beliefs. Heelasand Woodhead (2005) qualify this by pointing out that the self withwhich the New Age is preoccupied is not individualistic but is a self-in-relation: ‘the holistic milieu’, they write, ‘is characterized by relationality;by the expression and cultivation of unique, and thus autonomous,subjective-lives within associational settings’ (p. 135; emphasis in original).Fifth, where Bruce sees little but superficiality among New Age par-ticipants, Heelas and Woodhead (2005) encountered in their fieldworkand surveys many examples of regular participation and deep commitmentamong New Agers (pp. 135–6). And sixth, where Bruce judges that NewAge spirituality lacks social impact, Heelas and Woodhead (2005) arguethat the beliefs and practices of the holistic milieu are continuous withand have clearly influenced a general culture of subjective well-being thathas deeply penetrated contemporary Western societies in such areas aseducation, healthcare, environmental concern and the workplace (pp. 79–81).

It is important to note that Heelas and Woodhead do not present theirfindings and argument as contradicting Bruce’s overall thesis about secu-larisation in the West. They acknowledge, albeit in passing, that thechanging fortunes of religion and spirituality are taking place ‘within anoverall framework of secularization’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 48).The spiritual revolution that they forecast would be one in which subjective-life spirituality overtakes life-as religion, not one in which sacred activity, inany particular form or as a whole, necessarily overtakes secular activity.

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However, while they do not challenge the secularisation paradigm as awhole, Heelas and Woodhead provide a very contrary view to Bruce’sof the vitality and potential social significance of New Age or holisticspirituality. The key factor in both analyses is the New Age preoccupationwith the experiencing self, rather than the obligating tradition or institu-tion, as the locus of authority. But where for Bruce focus on the self iswhat undermines any potential social significance of the New Age, forHeelas and Woodhead focus on the self strongly correlates with growingsocial significance. This situation seems to invite closer exploration of thenature of the self. At an empirical level, it would be useful to gather moredetailed data on how participants in the New Age or holistic milieuconceive of the self. It would also be helpful to develop measures toexplore possible correlations between conceptions of the self and indicatorsof social significance. However, such empirical work is beyond the scopeof the present article. Here, I would like to highlight further the need forexploring the concept of the self by presenting a psychological perspectivethat at least prima facie makes sense of Heelas and Woodhead’s survey dataas well as of the contradiction between Heelas and Woodhead’s estimationof the significance of the New Age based on these data interpreted interms of the subjectivisation thesis and Bruce’s expectations about theinsignificance of the New Age based on his understanding of secularisation.

Analytical Psychology

Specifically, I would like to introduce the perspective of C. G. Jung’s(1875–1961) analytical psychology. This perspective offers an articulateaccount of human subjectivity, which, importantly, recognises the opera-tion of the unconscious. In this analytical psychology is like any other ofthe depth psychologies, such as Freud’s psychoanalysis, but it does have anumber of relevant distinctive features, some of them conceptual, otherscontextual. At the conceptual level, Jung (1954) postulates not just apersonal unconscious, consisting of contents acquired in the course ofone’s personal life, but also a collective or transpersonal unconscious,consisting of contents that have not been personally acquired but areinherited by all humans (par. 3). In addition to personal complexes, there-fore, the psyche contains impersonal complexes or archetypes, which Jung(1954) defines as innate dispositions to apprehend the world in particularways and considers as much spiritual as instinctive (pars. 4–7; Jung 1947/1954, pars. 404–8). Common archetypes are the persona, the shadow, theanima and animus, and the self ( Jung 1928, pars. 243–53, 296–340, 399;1951, pars. 13–67). Unknowable in themselves, archetypes appear toconsciousness in the form of personally and culturally conditioned archetypalimages (often mythic personifications), identifiable by their spontaneity,autonomy and numinosity ( Jung 1954, par. 85). The archetype of theself occupies a special place as at once the symbol of psychic totality, the



central archetype of the collective unconscious and the goal of psychicdevelopment ( Jung 1928, pars. 274, 364–5, 404). The self is realisedthrough the process Jung (1928) termed individuation, which involves theunion of psychic opposites and the continual, arduous integration ofunconscious contents into consciousness ( Jung 1928, pars. 266–406).

Probably the most distinctive feature of the above Jungian concepts isthat they possess a dual sacred and secular character. For each concept –the collective unconscious, the archetype, the self and individuation – onthe one hand stems from empirical observation and biological and otherscientific assumptions, and on the other hand presupposes a dimension ofreality that is intelligent, purposeful and irreducible to material, social orcultural terms (see Main 2006b, pp. 155–6).

This paradoxical observation can be clarified by more fully consideringthe contextual background of analytical psychology, specifically thatanalytical psychology emerged out of tensions between secularising andsacralising currents in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-centurymodern Western culture: science and psychoanalysis on the secularisingside, traditional and esoteric religion on the sacralising side (see Homans1979/1995; Main 2004). These two seemingly antithetical currentsvariously contributed to the formation of Jung’s psychology and haveleft embedded within it both sacred and secular insights, attitudes andstrategies of interpretation (see Main 2003, 2004, 2006b). Of specificrelevance here is that this dual inheritance of Jungian psychology makesit an interesting and distinctive perspective from which to view the topicof our discussion. On the one hand, Jungian psychology clearly influencedNew Age or holistic spirituality, both directly and indirectly, and alsoreflects in remarkable detail many of the principal frameworks, tenets andaspirations of such spirituality (see Tacey 2001; Main 2002, 2006a),notwithstanding some important differences (see Tacey 1999, 2001). Onthe other hand, its contextual background connects Jungian psychologyclosely to the disciplinary framework in which discussions of secularisationand sacralisation have hitherto mostly been conducted (sociologicaldiscussions of modernity). For one can find in Jung’s writings a sometimesexplicit, sometimes implicit critique of modernity broadly matching thoseof mainstream sociology since Weber (see Main 2006d, 2007). This peculiar,dual character, at once sacred and secular, is usually a liability whenanalytical psychology is applied in academic contexts, especially becauseof its admission of sacred perspectives. In the present case, however,the dual character arguably makes analytical psychology a particularlywell-attuned instrument for investigating the area of the secularisation–sacralisation debate with which we are concerned. For it provides aperspective that, being deeply consonant with New Age spirituality aswell as deeply grounded in the realities of modernity, speaks, as it were,the language of both sides of the sociological debate and both insider andoutsider perspectives on it.

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More particularly, this Jungian psychological model can enrich thepreceding debate in a number of ways. Mainly it can do this bytheorising the self and its relation to society and the sacred in a way thatmakes sense of Heelas and Woodhead’s data, while at the same timerespecting the sociological considerations informing Bruce’s understand-ing. The model thereby provides a further basis for challenging specificarguments of Bruce concerning the lack of consensus, commitment,social impact, individual impact and reproducibility achievable by NewAge beliefs and practices. At a deeper theoretical level, it can even callinto question the very notion of secularisation. First, though, Jungianpsychology can highlight a feature in Bruce’s definition of religionthat may predispose it not to recognise the potential vitality of holisticspirituality.

Definitions of Religion

Jung (1938/1940) defines religion as ‘a careful consideration and observa-tion of certain dynamic factors that are conceived as “powers”’ (par. 8),as ‘the attitude peculiar to a consciousness that has been changed byexperience of the numinosum’ (par. 9), and as ‘a relationship to the highestand most powerful value, be it positive or negative’ (par. 137). The accenthere is on individuals’ experience and attitudinal response to theirexperience. In contrast, creeds are for Jung (1938/1940) ‘codified anddogmatized forms of original religious experience’ (par. 10). This under-standing of religion, in which the fundamental and vitalising factor isexperience, accords with the emphasis of the holistic milieu. Indeed, Jung(1957) elsewhere makes an explicit distinction between creed, expressing‘a definite collective belief ’, and religion, expressing ‘a subjective relation-ship to certain metaphysical extramundane factors’ (par. 507), whichresembles the distinction frequently made within the holistic milieubetween religion and spirituality (see Heelas & Woodhead 2005, pp. 5–6;also see Zinnbauer & Pargament 2005).

In contrast to this, Bruce defines religion as the following:

[B]eliefs, actions and institutions predicated on the existence of entities withpowers of agency (that is, gods) or impersonal powers or processes possessedof moral purpose (the Hindu notion of Karma, for example), which can setthe conditions of, or intervene in, human affairs. (Bruce 2002, p. 2)

Priority is given here to the doctrinal (beliefs), ritual (actions) and organ-isational (institutions) dimensions of religion (see Smart 1997). Notably,there is no mention of experience. Without judging one of the definitionsas inherently better than the other, we can note an important implicationof Bruce’s definition. This is that the emphases in his understanding ofreligion are inevitably reflected in his discussion of secularisation. Hedefines secularisation concisely, as we have seen, as ‘a long-term decline



in the power, popularity, and prestige of religious beliefs and rituals’ (Bruce2002, p. 44, emphasis added); and at greater length as:

[A] social condition manifest in (a) the declining importance of religion for theoperation of non-religious roles and institutions such as those of the state andthe economy; (b) a decline in the social standing of religious roles and institutions;and (c) a decline in the extent to which people engage in religious practices,display beliefs of a religious kind, and conduct other aspects of their lives in amanner informed by such beliefs. (Bruce 2002, p. 3, emphasis added)

Bruce’s sociological definitions of religion and secularisation – and hence,as we saw earlier, his analyses of the New Age – have no major place forthe experiential factor that is most highly valued not only by Jung butalso by participants in the holistic milieu. As a result of this focus, Bruceoverlooks the religious or spiritual vitality that can stem from experientialapproaches to the sacred, and this arguably skews his appreciation of NewAge or holistic spirituality.

Self and Society

This point can be pursued by comparing Bruce’s and Jung’s understand-ings of the relationship between self and society. The concept of the selfis, as we have seen, of central importance within the holistic milieu.However, in Bruce’s case, while he gestures towards the importance of theself, the actual understanding of the concept that informs his commentsis remote from how the concept is understood within the holistic milieuitself. In characterising the nature of the New Age, he notes the beliefamong participants that the self is divine, or is capable of becoming so,and is also the highest source of authority for the individual (Bruce 2002,pp. 82–3). But he seems to attach so little seriousness to these claims thathe does not consider, even hypothetically, how New Agers might construesuch a potentially divine and authoritative self as socially influential.Instead, when he makes his case for the lack of social significance of NewAge spirituality, he operates with an understanding of the self that alreadypresupposes it to be virtually impotent in relation to society unless it canform part of a numerically significant group and can subordinate itself tothe values of that group (Bruce 2002, pp. 93–4).

Jung’s understanding of the self emphasises at least three importantfeatures absent or marginalised in Bruce’s account, yet signalled as importantby Heelas and Woodhead. Together these features evince the dual secularand sacred character of Jung’s psychology. First, Jung consistently distin-guishes between the self and the ego (compare Heelas 1996, p. 19). Jungcharacterises the self in many ways, including as individuality, themid-point between consciousness and the unconscious, the union ofopposites, the totality of the psyche, the centre of the psyche, an archetype,wholeness, and an organising principle of the collective unconscious (see

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Colman 2006, pp. 153–61). In each of these ways, it is distinct fromthe ego, which Jung (1921) generally characterises as the centre only ofconsciousness (par. 706). When Bruce and other commentators criticisethe importance attached to cultivation of the self within New Agespirituality, they frequently slip into criticism of what would better bedescribed as egocentricity: prioritising and cultivating one’s personal aimsand conscious preferences, as in Bruce’s (2002) remark that ‘the individualconsumer decides what he or she will accept’ (p. 77). For Jung, as formany participants in the holistic milieu, this is missing the point. Forthe self, as they understand it, is cultivated at the expense of, or at least inuneasy tension with, the ego – a point vividly expressed in Jung’s (1955–6)statement that ‘the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego’(par. 778). In other words, unlike the ego, the self has transpersonalauthority and universality.

Second, Jung does indeed take seriously the relationship of the selfto the divine (compare again Heelas 1996, p. 19). Here, the sacred aspectof Jung’s thought is prominent. For Jung (1947/1954) the self, as anarchetype, necessarily has not only an instinctual but also a spiritual pole(par. 405). Even more, as the archetype of wholeness that symbolises boththe totality and the centre of the psyche, the self is for Jung indistinguish-able from the God-archetype, insofar as either of these can be knownthrough their expression in archetypal images ( Jung 1951, pars. 42, 320;Main 2006c, pp. 309–10). In Jung’s view, realisation of the self energisesthe psyche and, moreover, provides a sense of cohesion and purpose sostrong that it, perhaps it alone, enables the individual to resist the otherwiseoverwhelming pressures towards mass-mindedness characteristic of modernWestern societies ( Jung 1957).

Anthony Elliott, in his book Concepts of the Self (2001), notes that

[D]ifferent social theories adopt alternative orientations to mapping the com-plexities of personal experience, such that the conceptualization of selfhood issquarely pitched between those that deny the agency of human subjects andargue in favour of the person’s determination by social structures on the onehand, and those that celebrate the authenticity and creativity of the self on theother. (p. 9)

Bruce’s conceptualisation of the self is of Elliott’s first kind, while theconceptualisations of Jung and of the holistic milieu are akin to Elliott’ssecond kind – though in adding divinity to authenticity and creativityJung and the holistic milieu also introduce a dimension of the self notrecognised in Elliott’s book.1

Third, the self for Jung, in spite of not being primarily determined bysocial structures, is inherently social (compare Heelas & Woodhead 2005,p. 11). Here, the more secular character of Jung’s thought is evident. IraProgoff (1953), an early commentator on the social aspect of Jung’sthought, claimed that Jung, in the spirit of the French sociological tradition



of Durkheim, ‘does not carry over to the study of society interpretationsbased on the analysis of the human being as an individual’ but ‘makesit his principle that all analysis must start from the primary fact of thesocial nature of man’ (pp. 161–2). In support of this point we can noteJung’s (1958) statement that it is part of ‘the peculiar nature of the self ’that it ‘embraces the individual as well as society’ (par. 660). As thetotality of the psyche, the self encompasses the collective unconscious,which for Jung (1954) ‘is anything but an incapsulated personal system;it is sheer objectivity, as wide as the world and open to all the world’(par. 46). Thus, individuation, the process of realising the self in Jung’s(1947/1954) model, ‘does not shut one out from the world, but gathersthe world to oneself ’ (par. 432). Jung has sometimes been criticised fora lack of concern for society (see Homans 1979/1995, p. 143), and it istrue that he does not often discuss specific social institutions, policies,or values. However, his reticence on these matters is deliberate andstems from his belief that direct social action, performed by individualslacking in self-knowledge, will more often than not simply be theprojection of those individuals’ shadow complexes. Thus, he on oneoccasion dismissed politics as ‘99 per cent [ . . . ] mere symptoms andanything but a cure for social evils’ ( Jung 1936, par. 1301). For Jung,individuation or realisation of the self is the precondition for any socialeffectiveness that is not based on suggestion or projection. He argues,‘resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by the man whois as well organized in his individuality as the mass itself ’ ( Jung 1957,par. 540). Many participants in the holistic milieu share this outlook ofJung’s and see the development of vibrant, well-organised individualityas the only or best way to bring about genuine social improvement (seeHeelas 1996, pp. 23–6; Rose 2005, pp. 336–9); hence, their focus onself-development.

Possibilities of an Enduring Shared Culture

Bruce (2002), it will be recalled, argues that any form of spirituality inwhich stress is placed on individual autonomy will be incapable ofsustaining ‘shared beliefs and common reinforcing patterns of behaviour’and so will not be able to provide the basis for an ‘enduring sharedculture’ (p. 105), that is, a socially significant group characterised by adistinctive outlook that is capable of thriving beyond the present gen-eration. However, Heelas and Woodhead provide empirical evidencethat suggests the prospects for an enduring shared culture of sorts maynot be so gloomy.2 What the Jungian psychological model provides,especially with its emphases on the self as an archetype of the collectiveunconscious and on the process of individuation by which the self isrealised, is a way, different from Bruce’s, in which Heelas and Wood-head’s empirical findings in The Spiritual Revolution might indeed be

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understood to support the possibility of an enduring shared culture.Again, the openness of the Jungian psychological model to both secularand sacred considerations informs the arguments for this claim.

First, although the Jungian model stresses that the path towards self-realisation is unique for each individual, the insights and values to whicheach person attains through individuation can be universal. Heelas(1998) makes a similar point when he notes that some New Agers areepistemological individualists in the sense that they aim to access truthby way of their own experience, but ontological universalists in thesense that the truth they access by this means is the same for all (p. 261).However, Jung goes further than Heelas by providing a specific accountof the universality that might be accessed, in the form of his theory ofarchetypes and the collective unconscious. For Jung, those who con-sciously take up the process of individuation are likely to begin byengaging with psychological dynamics that are specific to them, and inthis they may seem self-preoccupied; but as the process advances, theywill begin to engage archetypal psychic dynamics that are universal andthat, as we saw in the previous section, Jung believed indissolubly con-nect the individuating self to society. In this model, there is no reasonnot to expect wide consensus among those engaged in individuation,except where the process is in its earlier, more personally orientedstages. There is also likely to be strong commitment to the universalinsights and values attained by connecting with the archetypal uncon-scious. For these insights and values emerge from and are tested againstindividual experience rather than being externally imposed, and so arelikely to be more securely owned. They might also be infused with thecompelling numinosity that, according to Jung, attaches to activatedarchetypes, and this might further increase the strength with which theyare held (see Jung 1942/1948, pars. 222–5).

With its emphasis on the importance of individual experience, ananalytical psychological perspective might be cautious about placing toomuch importance on ‘shared beliefs and common reinforcing patternsof behaviour’, but we have seen that it provides a coherent account,contrary to Bruce, of how wide consensus and strong commitment arequite possible for those engaged in self-spirituality. Furthermore, whereBruce predicts difficulties of reproduction of the beliefs involved inholistic spirituality, a Jungian perspective, insofar as it considers beliefsimportant, could point to the possibility of archetypal ideas emergingand re-emerging independently both at the individual and the sociallevel, without the need for any external mechanism of transmission( Jung 1938/1954, par. 153).

Jung’s concept of individuation also suggests how self-spirituality canhave both individual and social impact. Regarding social impact, furtherto what has been said in the previous section about the relationshipbetween self and society, a Jungian perspective could point to the direct



and, through the unconscious effects of the archetype, indirect influencethat integrated individuals can have on society (see Jung 1957, pars.582–8; Main 2006d). Here, one need only think of the eventual socialinfluence of the illuminative and revelatory experiences of many reli-gious virtuosi, including the founders of major religions, or, more mod-estly and contemporaneously, of how, in the view of the poets SeamusHeaney and Andrew Motion, for instance, literature that helps one ‘tocomprehend the self ’ can foster in individuals an ‘exemplary wisdom’that can have a ‘salubrious’ effect on society (Motion 2006, p. 26). Andregarding individual impact, a Jungian perspective provides a paradigmof how self-oriented spirituality or individuation can, albeit arduouslyand rarely, result in profound individual transformation. Jung outlinesthis process in his essay on ‘The Relations between the Ego and theUnconscious’ (1928) and throughout his work provides examples suchas that of the physicist, now known to be Wolfgang Pauli, who took upthe analytical psychological process of individuation and underwent aprofound transformation of personality and worldview ( Jung 1944, pars.44–331; also see Lindorff 2004).

Although the main argument of this article has been developed at thetheoretical level, it is worth noting that a measure of support for theanalytical psychological perspective on some of the preceding issues canbe found within empirical psychology of religion. For instance, JamesFowler’s (1981) model of faith development postulates a series of devel-opmental stages of faith, from the less to the more mature, and specifi-cally places ‘synthetic-conventional faith’, resembling the kind of faithBruce sees as producing the strong consensus characteristic of sociallysignificant religions, at a lower level than ‘individuative-reflective’ faith,which more resembles the kind of attitude implied in the Jungian proc-ess of individuation. If Fowler is right in his ranking of these differentkinds of faith, there are grounds for regarding subjective-life spirituali-ties, at least potentially, as more not less socially significant than life-asreligions. For the higher level of religious and moral maturity associatedin this view with individuation and subjective-life spiritualities is likelyin the long term to have the greater benefit for society.

Another relevant perspective from psychology of religion concernsreligious orientations. Bruce criticises New Age religion for the lack ofdoctrinal certainty shown by its adherents. But there is a body of evi-dence indicating that a questing orientation to religion, characterised bycomplexity, tentativeness and doubt, is more likely than orientationscharacterised by orthodoxy and commitment to be associated with suchpositive social traits as high levels of moral judgement, valuing of equal-ity and non-discriminatory attitudes (see Batson et al. 1993; Wulff 2001,p. 21). Thus, the lack of certainty in the spirituality of the holisticmilieu may again be a sign of not weakness but maturity – or at leastof a move towards maturity. Nor need this be a form of maturity

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achieved in isolation. For in view of the earlier point concerning thepossible universal insights attainable through cultivation of individualspirituality, it is possible to envisage the holistic milieu as potentially acommunity or network of mature, questing individuals. Such a communityor network might not fit the pattern of institutional stability that Bruceseems to associate with socially significant religions, but the ways inwhich it differs – in particular, in its greater versatility and responsivenessto shifts in both collective consciousness and the collective unconscious– could enable it to endure at least as well as any traditional religionin the rapidly changing conditions of late modern and post-modernsocieties.

Sacred and Secular

Bruce (2002) argues that the process of secularisation in the West ispredominant and irreversible (pp. 240–1). Heelas and Woodhead (2005)present a more complicated picture in which there is both secularisationin relation to some forms of concern for the sacred and sacralisation inrelation to other forms (pp. 9–10; also see Woodhead & Heelas 2000),although they concede that there may be ‘an overall framework of secu-larization’ (Heelas & Woodhead 2005, p. 48). To this difference of views,the Jungian psychological perspective can add the suggestion that theprocesses of secularisation and sacralisation may be more intimatelyinterconnected than is usually supposed. There are at least two ways ofunderstanding how this might be so. First, as a psychology of the uncon-scious, Jungian psychology allows that individuals or societies, whilebeing consciously secular, might at the same time harbour an unconsciouscommitment to the sacred. In fact, this would be not just allowed butexpected, in view of the Jungian principles that humans have an innate‘religious function’, a kind of instinct for religion ( Jung 1938/1940, par.3; 1944, par. 14; 1958, par. 653), and that there exists a compensatoryrelationship between consciousness and the unconscious (Jung 1928,par. 275). From this perspective, the psyche’s inalienable religiousness thatwas not expressed consciously would gather force in the unconscious,perhaps finding displaced expression in ‘secular’ ideals pursued withreligious fervour (Communism and other forms of totalitarianism are amongJung’s favourite examples of this; see Jung 1942/1948, par. 222; 1957,pars. 511–12). Alternatively, it might erupt as a new form of religiosity,very likely with all the inferior qualities of poor adaptation and lack ofdifferentiation that usually attach to emerging unconscious contents (seeTacey 2001, p. 190; 2003, pp. 23–5).

Second, and perhaps more radically, Jungian psychology raises thepossibility of an orientation beyond the dichotomy between the sacredand the secular. One of the major concerns of analytical psychologyis with reconciling or transcending opposites, a concern most vividly



expressed in Jung’s late work Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into theSeparation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy (1955–6), wherehe explicitly invokes the medieval concept of the ‘one world’ or unusmundus to signify a unitary reality beyond the distinctions between matterand spirit ( Jung 1955–6, pars. 659–64, 759–75). Analytical psychologycan itself be viewed as a symbolic reconciliation of the tensions Jungexperienced, in himself and in his culture, between dual commitmentsto the secularising force of scientific experiment and the sacralising forceof religious experience (Main 2004, pp. 91–114). Forged out of anattempt to be true to both sides of this dichotomy, analytical psychologyis not straightforwardly either a secular or a sacred discipline. One canthink of it either as participating in both the secular and the sacred whilebeing fully identifiable with neither, or as presupposing a level of onto-logical unity where distinctions between sacred and secular break downand lose their meaning. In either case, Jungian psychology calls intoquestion the validity of discourses based on a polarisation between thesecular and the sacred by suggesting that those terms enfold each otherand are merely the selective description of a reality that could equally beimagined and described in opposite terms.

Conclusion

The preceding discussion has brought into focus a particular debate insociology of religion concerning whether New Age or holistic spiritualitymight represent a counter-example to the thesis that western cultureis undergoing an irreversible process of secularisation. The representativeexponents of secularisation (Bruce) and of the (at least partial) counter-movement of sacralisation (Heelas and Woodhead) both hinge theirarguments on the salience within holistic spirituality of the experiencingself, although they draw different conclusions from this salience. I haveargued that this focus on the self invites interdisciplinary contributionsfrom psychology, and I have proposed that a particular depth psychologicaltheory, Jungian analytical psychology, may, unexpectedly for sociologists,be an especially apt perspective to introduce. For an analytical psycho-logical perspective throws into relief sociological marginalisation of thedimension of experience in defining religion and secularisation, as wellas one-sidedness in the dominant sociological characterisations of the selfand its relation to society and the sacred. In particular, the analyticalpsychological perspective counters the view that cultivation of the self isnecessarily indulgent and socially ineffectual. Being epistemologicallyindividualistic but ontologically universal, analytical psychology providesan instance of the kind of theoretical framework that could help tounderstand why and how subjectivity and the self might be as importantas is claimed by many participants in and commentators on the holisticmilieu.

382 Roderick Main


Short Biography

Roderick Main is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Director in the Centrefor Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, Colchester, UK,where he mainly teaches on the historical, philosophical, religious andcultural contexts of Jungian analytical psychology as well as on the appli-cation of analytical psychology to the study of myth and religion. Hisresearch has two main aspects. One aspect examines the emergence ofanalytical psychology out of tensions between secularising and sacralisingcurrents in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Western culture.The other aspect explores how the resultant distinctive character ofanalytical psychology might be turned to account in the socio-culturalanalysis of religiousness as it has transformed under conditions of modernity,looking especially at science and religion interactions, religious funda-mentalism, and ‘New Age’ spirituality. He is the editor of Jung onSynchronicity and the Paranormal (Routledge/Princeton, 1997) and theauthor of The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of ModernWestern Culture (Brunner-Routledge, 2004) and Revelations of Chance:Synchronicity as Spiritual Experience (SUNY, 2007). He holds an MA inClassics from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Religious Studiesfrom Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Roderick Main, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University ofEssex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, UK. Email: [email protected].

1 Examples of the self theorised as potentially authentic and creative but not divine can befound in the work of some relational psychoanalysts, such as Donald Winnicott and ErichFromm (see Jones 2002, pp. 45–9).2 At the conclusion of an earlier study, Woodhead and Heelas expressed doubt that what theythere refer to as ‘spiritualities of life’ would be able to sustain anything more than ‘adventitiousand instrumental communities’, partly because ‘The “Self ” . . . may not always prove strongenough to sustain itself in complex and testing times’ and because such spiritualities insufficientlyattend to the ‘relational’ (Woodhead & Heelas 2000, p. 494). However, I take it that theadditional evidence presented in The Spiritual Revolution, which supports an even stronger viewof the self and moreover highlights the status of the self as a ‘self-in-relation’, has gone someway to mitigating that conclusion.

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Documents

Secularisation and the ‘Holistic Milieu’: Social and Psychological Perspectives