"Exceptional Experience" as Social Construct
The aim of this project was to reconstruct the concept of "exceptional experience" including the associated profane and scientific knowledge. Empirical material was provided by public discourses of different scientific professions, by results of surveys about beliefs of the population concerning paranormal experiences as well as by juristic and therapeutic practices. In the context of the analysis complex methods of empirical sociology of knowledge were used, especially the analysis of patterns of interpretation and discourse analysis.
First results: Only by denying certain human experiences the status of the ordinary, the sciences (and religion) in modern times, have been discursively constituting them as exceptional experiences for the western world. These experiences have been associated with specific features by science, whereby their reality status in every-day life is challenged and their intersubjective comprehensibility is destructed. The subjects are taken the possibility to communicate them in an everyday mode. A continuative hypothesis to this could be: The exclusion of such experiences from everyday life is caused by an interest of social control, which intends a scientific forming of profane thinking and to eliminate socially and/or politically undesirable collective knowledge. Ideational base is the distinction between scientific-rational and magic-irrational knowledge. As a result of the societal stigmatization of magic-irrational knowledge (keyword: superstition) the predominance of the scientific over the profane thinking has been constituted and guaranteed.
Project leader: PD Dr. Michael Schetsche
Staff member: Ina Schmied-Knittel, M.A.
Publications:
Michael Schetsche (2003): Soziale Kontrolle durch Pathologisierung? Konstruktion und Dekonstruktion ,außergewöhnlicher Erfahrungen' in der Psychologie. In: Grenzenlose Konstruktivität? Standortbestimmung und Zukunftsperspektiven konstruktivistischer Theorien abweichenden Verhaltens. Hrsg. Birgit Menzel und Kerstin Ratzke, Opladen: Leske + Budrich; S. 141-160. [Social control by pathologization? Construction and destruction of 'extraordinary experiences' in psychology.]
Michael Schetsche, Ina Schmied-Knittel (2003): Wie gewöhnlich ist das Außergewöhnliche? In: Alltägliche Wunder. Erfahrungen mit dem Übersinnlichen. Wissenschaftliche Befunde. Hrsg. Eberhard Bauer, Michael Schetsche, Würzburg: Ergon, S.171-188. [How ordinary is the "extraordinary"?]
