Modern and Postmodern Ways of Knowing

Despite significant resistance, psychology is being dragged into the postmodern era. While many debate whether the postmodern era has officially begun, others argue that the postmodern era has already past by. This said, the emergent consensus is that these are postmodern times. Much of contemporary Western culture and academia is beginning to embrace this paradigm shift, though the field of psychology is still trying to establish itself as a modernist science. Ironically, psychology's attempt to identify itself in modernistic terms may leave psychology out of touch with the culture it is trying to influence (Hoffman, 2004a). We submit that psychology and the religious integration 1 movement need to begin addressing the issues of postmodernism or else face irrelevance. Through this paper, we will place postmodernism in a broader context by critically examining its history. From this basis, we will recommend means for embracing postmodern thought in the integration movement and discuss implications for practice. In making such a pronouncement, the question of how integration is defined seems an important issue. However, we have chosen to follow the lead of Sorenson (2004a) who states, " integration means different things to different people " (p. 181). This paper will reflect different approaches to how integration is understood. Avoiding the confinement of labeling integration is a form of embracing more of a postmodern approach through allowing for greater adaptability of this term. 1 Because this paper will be talking about more than one type of integration and more than one integration movement, we will use the term religious integration to specifically refer to the broad movement or tradition of theorists, researchers, and schools who have placed the dialogue between psychology and religion (most frequently Christianity) at the forefront of their concern. We maintain a limited historical perspective fuels much of the current debate regarding postmodern thought, especially within religious circles. To address this, we begin by briefly journeying through a history of intellectual thought. In so doing, we state upfront that any such overview necessitates many overgeneralizations and oversimplifications. For example, ways of knowing now labeled modern and postmodern existed during premodern times while many premodern philosophies are still influential today. Thus, we interpret the three historical epochs of premodern, modern, and postmodern as paradigms or schemas that coexist; within specific historical context, cultures tend to privilege one of the three over the other. Western societies currently are transitioning the modern to the …