Research Center for Biographical Studies in Contemporary Religion
		Fascination with the Occult

Homepage Introduction Research Projects Study of Deconversion Children's Drawings I Children's Drawings II Inter-religious Learning Adolescent Melancholia Turkish Immigrants Fundamentalism Right-Wing Extremism Fascination with Occult Moral Identity Internat. Partners The Bielefeld Team

Empirical Research Project (completed 1998) Ways of Dis-Enchantment Prof. Heinz Streib, Ph.D./ Emory Univ. and Dr. Albrecht Schöll, Comenius-Institut, Münster have concluded the project "Ways of Dis-Enchantment. Case Studies of Adolescents Who Are Fascinated With the Occult" by the end of 1998. The project was funded by the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene, Freiburg; it was installed as research project at the Universität Bielefeld in co-operation with the Comenius-Institut, Münster. The results are case studies which focus on the analysis of biographical relations and developmental careers of the fascination with the occult of adolescents (mainly 13 to 18 years old). Project design and method of analysis took the qualitative approach of biographical-reconstructive social research (Schütze; Oevermann). Out of a total of 29 narrative interviews 15 have been selected for interpretation and elaboration of case studies. Special attention has been paid to life-themes (biographical themata); to the ways of dealing with and coping with theses occult experiences; and to the relation between religion and fascination with the occult. They allow deep insights into the tension between life-thematic insecurity on the one hand and developments of coping and transformation on the other. The rule of maximal contrast lead to develop a typology which confirmed and qualified Streib's (1996) classifications of: (a) ' magical and religious ritualizations;' (b) 'adolescents' fascination with the occult;' (c) 'styles of dealing with magic'. The cases fall into one of our three types: "Occult praxis as playful-experimental test-praxis" (Type 1) and "Fascination with the Occult as serious praxis of inclusion or exclusion where life themes are prevalent" (Type 2); and third, between type one and two, we found a third type of "Occult practice as ambivalent praxis and challenged biographical phase of transition". The results and case studies are published in: STREIB, Heinz & SCHÖLL, Albrecht . (2000). Wege der Entzauberung. Jugendliche Sinnsuche und Okkultfaszination - Kontexte und Analysen, Münster: Lit-Verlag. A brief summary of research results is published in: STREIB, Heinz . (1999). "Off-Road Religion? A Narrative Approach to Fundamentalist and Occult Orientations of Adolescents", in: Journal of Adolescence 22: 255-267.

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