Dr hab. Katarzyna Skrzypińska, prof. UG, was elected chair of the Polish Association for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality for the next term. - 'Our Society brings together people with different world views, we are interested in atheists and agnostics with often very rich views of the world and faith in science,' says dr hab. Katarzyna Skrzypińska, Prof. UG.
During the Third Congress of the Polish Association for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, which was held as part of the Fifth International Conference of the Polish Association for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, a President of the Association was elected. She was again dr hab. Katarzyna Skrzypińska, prof. UG from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Gdańsk.
- 'In 2012, together with the then-doctoral students of the Institute of Psychology - Janina Nowak (currently Pawłowska) and Marta Boińska - I organised the 1st International Conference at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Gdańsk, intending to establish the Polish Association for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (PTPRiD). This is what happened. The following year, I finalised the registration of the association in court. Out of almost 100 participants at that meeting, more than one third became members of PTPRiD. At that time we planned to organise cyclic conference meetings under the agreement of three universities: The University of Gdańsk, Jagiellonian University and the Catholic University of Lublin,' - says dr hab. Katarzyna Skrzypińska, prof. UG, chair of PTPRiD. - 'The last word in the name of our association was then a kind of novelty in the field of science. Yes, there were quite a few organisations related to the psychology of religion, but not to spirituality. Few were born in the USA. Therefore, our doors opened to a much broader substantive option than before.'.
The Polish Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality is an organisation that aims to provide a platform for discussing the conclusions of research and analysis concerning the psychological aspect of the functioning of religion in the modern world. The idea of the organisation is to spread scientific knowledge about psychological processes underlying the spiritual and religious sphere of human life.
- 'For our part, we focus on psychological research related to the process of searching for the meaning of life, satisfaction from it, generally understood quality, salutogenic approach to the problem of health and self-realisation. In detail we are interested in the mechanisms of formation of beliefs in the human mind,' - explains prof. Katarzyna Skrzypińska.
Society brings together people with different world views, which, as the chairwoman convinces, allows to maintain balance in scientific research, in the field of objectivisation of data and their interpretation.
- 'There is probably nothing worse in scientific procedure than attachment to one's own subjectivity and attempts to confirm one's hypotheses instead of verifying them. The development of appropriate scientific procedures is also served by the online webinars we established this year, which present the current knowledge accumulated on the psychology of religion and spirituality in a bi-monthly cycle. These are studies related to experiencing a pandemic situation, which caused many changes in the process of re-evaluating one's own life and views, new phenomena in psychology (e.g. spiritual intelligence, mindfulness and empathy) or education in psychology of religion,' - explains prof. Katarzyna Skrzypińska.
More about PTPRiD on the association's website