Psychiatry and Jesus in the 21st century (original) (raw)
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This paper will examine the exorcisms and other miracles of Jesus in the light of modern psychiatric thinking, and in the light of personal experience. It will be shown that that psychiatric models fit the Gospel descriptions only partly. It will also be suggested that pastoral experience sometimes mirrors the New Testament picture of evil personalities which are dispersed by exorcism. These two models are each applied to the text with interesting results.
Psychological method and the historical Jesus: The contribution of psychobiography
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2007
This article reviews a number of psychologically informed studies of Jesus in view of the criteria pertaining to psychobiography. It argues that the studies have produced divergent interpretations of Jesus because of a lack of data and the nature of the sources. This is especially true of these studies as they used psychological approaches based on childhood experiences. The framework for psychobiography also allows for the use of other methods that are more concerned with religious adults in coping situations. These may be applied to explore theories about the psychological development of the adult Jesus. The article shows also that the use of the New Testament sources also implies assumptions with regard to the nature of these sources and the people who had produced those sources.
A Christian's Response to the Crisis in Psychiatry
Psychiatry is intimately connected to the problems of our time and those of people. However, psychiatry is facing a crisis, and it is well known that psychiatry has taken over many concepts from the Bible and secularized them. The first part of the paper focuses on seven problems facing psychiatry, which explain why psychiatrists are unable to escape their crisis. It then stipulates two crucial areas in which psychiatry conflicts with the book of Genesis. The second part of the paper focuses on, respectively, 1) shame, guilt, the conscience, and remorse, and 2) psychosomatic illnesses. The aim is to show that scientific discoveries in each of these areas are consistent with the teachings of Scripture, and is therefore a powerful apologetic for Christian witness in our medicalized world. It suggests that it would be wise if psychiatrists and their service-users accept the Bible as serious on all matters about which it speaks.
Medical Humanities, 2014
When read as a fictional psychosis narrative, Jesus' Son, a collection of short stories by Denis Johnson, reveals important elements of the phenomenology of schizophrenia and recovery. It is possible that Jesus' Son, as a work of fiction, may be able to uniquely add depth and nuance to an understanding of the phenomenology of schizophrenia involving a state of psychological fragmentation, an ever-changing interpersonal field and a loss of personal agency. In addition, by following the protagonist in Jesus' Son as he begins to resolve some of his difficulties, the book also offers an individualised account of recovery. The authors detail how the book reveals these insights about schizophrenia and recovery and suggest that these elements are intertwined in such a manner that leads to a profound disruption of selfexperience, characterised by a collapse of metacognitive processes. Jesus' Son may add depth to our understanding of the subjective experience of schizophrenia and recovery, and also may serve as one example in which the study of humanities offers an opportunity to explore the human elements in the most profound forms of suffering.
KING SAUL'S MADNESS AND MODERN PSYCHIATRY
King Saul's madness and modern psychiatry, 2019
A look at the few descriptions of madness available to us in the past and how its aetiology differs from psychiatric descriptors. A brief look also at different approaches to religious manifestations such as trances.