De la mortificación a la new age: genealogía y política de las espiritualidades terapéuticas contemporáneas

Abstract

Wellbeing, happiness and personal growth have become central issues in contemporary spiritualties, despite of suffering, physiological pain or mortification. As Talal Asad (2009) has pointed out in his ‘Genealogies of Religion’, medieval theologies considered torment of the body and suffering in general as an optimum of spiritual discipline, while modern theology as well as secular morality agree to consider mortification and pain as archaic methods of uncivilized spirituality. Considering it, we wonder how this radical turn has been possible. The point of this paper is take into account the many and complex factors which converged to give birth contemporary therapeutic spirituality, while it is seen here as an historical result of Modernity. For that, we will explore the general relationship between religious experience and wellbeing/sickness, the convergence between therapeutic practices and spirituality understandings, and the historical contexts in which the notion of ‘spirituality’ gained autonomy from ‘religious’ realm.