Call for Papers: Continuation and Disruption in Psychiatry and Religion (original) (raw)

Religions and Psychotherapies—Special Issue

Religions, 2014

The birth of modern psychotherapies-along with the birth of psychology as a science on one side and with psychoanalysis, other depth-psychological treatments and behavioral therapies in addition to medical treatments of psychological disorders on the other side-in the 19th and 20th centuries was accompanied by positivistic and mechanistic paradigms underlying empirical research and claims of scientific dignity [1]. Affirmations which could not be tested or observed empirically had to be excluded from science-including any kind of metaphysics and religious belief, notwithstanding pioneering studies by William James [2], Granville Stanley Hall, James Henry Leuba and Edwin Diller Starbuck [3] for psychology in general and for psychology of religion(s) in particular. In particular, the critique of religions by Sigmund Freud has continuously exerted a strong impact in the fields of psychiatry and psychotherapies; in addition, regarding psychodynamics and symptoms of psychic disorders, religious phenomena in the lives of patients may be just as affected as other cognitive and emotional aspects and behaviors . Consequently, religious experience and religious behavior of patients in psychiatry and psychotherapies have rarely been object of research and teaching apart from predominantly symptomatic and pathogenic perspectives .

Religious Experience and Psychiatry: Analysis of the Conflict and Proposal for a Way Forward

Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology, 2010

Attempts to distinguish religious from pathological psychotic states have received considerable attention in the recent literature. It has been proposed that the distinction can be drawn in terms of subjects’ evaluation of their experiences and ultimately outcome, conceived of as action enhancement or failure. Such an approach does not take in to account the contexts where the meaning of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ outcome are defined and hence are an overriding factor in subjects’ evaluations of psychotic experiences. This suggests a need to examine the contribution of these contexts to the process of evaluation. In this paper, and with reference to an illustrative case study, I attend to psychiatry—an authority on unusual experience and belief—demonstrating an essential conflict between religious experiences and the assumptions and procedures of psychiatric practice. It is argued that the theoretical commitments of psychiatric science, the values embedded in the social dysfunction criterion, and a deficient understanding of culture promote the pathologization of unusual experiences and contribute to the generation of negative outcomes. I conclude with a proposed solution: by adopting an open-ended process of communication with the aim of achieving a degree of linguistic resonance among the involved parties, clinicians would be fostering mutual change rather than one-sided judgment. This would increase the chances of securing agreement and would put us in a better position to plan noncoercive intervention. Implications of the proposed approach for diagnosis and management of risk are discussed.

An essay on psychotherapy and religion

Journal of Religion and Health, 1983

Cultural innovation by thinkers of the early twentieth century created an intellectual impasse between competing understandings of religion. Religion was understood as either transcendence and the sacred (e.g., Otto) or as fantasy and projection (e.g., Freud). Whether a cooperative symbiosis of these orientations toward religion can be achieved is the central and unresolved issue of this paper. "Examined experience" is considered within religious studies and psychotherapy. Although not conclusive, the argument is that examined experience is a means by which the desired symbiosis can be achieved. The essay is personal in that it reflects the author's struggle for understanding, especially as Western (e.g., Christian) and Eastern (e.g., Zen) experiences are examined.

Religious Experience and Psychopathology

with Antares and followed by Anteritis, and so on; the creation and destruction of the world, such as when a patient keeps his fist closed all the time because if he opens it, the world will disappear, a delusion reminiscent of the myth of Atlas holding up the globe of the world; the fight between good and evil, in which the patient may be the protagonist; immortality as in the d elire d'immortalit e of Cotard; the ourobouros, the androgynus and so on.

Missing Stories: Psychosis, Spirituality and the Development of Western Religious Hermeneutics

Consolidating the New Paradigm, 2010

This chapter puts the discussion of the 'spiritual' and the 'psychotic' in the context of the tension between the way Christianity has developed in the West and the language of Middle Eastern mysticism from which it springs. For the West, this is an alien and misunderstood culture. The history of Western interpretation theory (i.e. hermeneutics) sheds new light on the split between Western "religion" and "science, which underlies questions about the differences or similarities between spiritual and psychotic states.

Psychiatry and religion: consensus reached!

Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 2017

In December 2015 the Executive Committee of the World Psychiatric Association accepted a position statement on spirituality and religion in psychiatry. In this contribution the author will (briefly) sketch the background of the development of this position statement, and the criteria it needs to fulfil. The aim of the final result will be explained, and some desiderata with regard to its future will be expressed. The full text of the Position Statement as it has been published in World Psychiatry