Religious Experience and Self-Psychology: Korean Christianity and the 1907 Revival Movement

This book explores the 1907 Korean Revival Movement from a self psychological perspective. The examination of the psychological processes in the movement based on Heinz Kohut’s self psychology can shed light on religious experiences as selfobject experiences by identifying the sense of defeatedness and helplessness that Korean people experienced under Japanese occupation as what Kohut calls self-fragmentation of the Korean group self and explaining its therapeutic functions which facilitate potential for the narcissistic nourishment of the fragmented group self leading to renewed self-esteem, transformation, and empowerment of the Korean people. Korean people in the early 1900s experienced abuses and oppression by corrupt officials and exploitation by Japanese government. Through religious experiences which emphasized the individual repentance, the experience of God through the spirit, emphasis on prayer, and eschatological faith, the Korean Revival Movement in 1907 enabled its followers to experience mirroring and idealizing selfobjects which function as a role of transforming the lower shape of narcissism into the higher one.

Jung Eun Jang is Assistant Professor at Ewha Womans University, South Korea, who is teaching pastoral care and counseling in the department of Christian Studies. He is an ordained pastor of the Korean Presbyterian Church, as well as a Nationally Certified Psychoanalyst(NCPsyA), certified by NAAP (National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis).