ABSTRACT
It is important to consider how the discipline of psychology has viewed the idea of spirituality to understand why sport psychology has largely been unwilling to accept this topic as a legitimate area of study. Despite recent work arguing for greater attention to the importance of spirituality in applied work (Ravizza and Fazio 2002) and sport research (Watson and Nesti 2005), most journals and text books in sport psychology do not include anything on this subject. This is very surprising in many ways, not least because of the burgeoning interest in different forms of spirituality in contemporary society and the increase in research investigating its links to health (McCullough 1995) and medical practice (Firshein 1997). Beyond the academic community and empirical research there is an even more remarkable fact that seems to have been overlooked. A survey of the reports of sports journalists, interviews with top coaches and athletes, and the conversations of the fans would reveal that alongside reference to character, ‘guts’ and ‘bottle’, the term ‘spirit’ is frequently used. Often mentioned in relation to team spirit, spirited fight-backs and individual performers showing great spirit, this word is one of the most used in the world of sport. When asked to justify the limited references to the spirit in sport psychology it is common to hear the argument that concepts like confidence, self-belief and motivation fully capture this term. The general view of most within academic sport psychology is that the world outside is still reluctant to let go of their belief in empirically false and dated notions like spirit and the spiritual. Apart from the incredible arrogance that this position conveys it also suffers from one very important weakness. Some of the most famous scientists ever, such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein and current world leading figures, such as the physicist Professor John Polkinghorne and Dr Peter Hodgson, fellow of the Oxford Institute of Physics, are in agreement with the sports fan, coach and performers that the spiritual dimension exists. This should be very embarrassing for academic sport psychology, particularly when the advocates of the reality of the spiritual are not just ‘woolly’ social scientists and those from the Arts and Humanities, but are a group of eminent natural scientists! It seems that the everyday language of the people has found some support from the work of scientists, researchers and scholars of the very highest standing. As will be discussed later
in this section, this connects very closely with the idea of phenomenology which is the preferred research method in existential psychology. Phenomenology is a method that is used to access individual consciousness of an event or experience. It does this by attempting to go directly to the phenomenon as described by the participant in the research study.
