Continuity and Discontinuity in Psychiatry and the study of Religion (original) (raw)

There's method in the madness - Religious Studies, Psychiatry and Mad Studies

There’s method in the madness Religious Studies, Psychiatry and Mad Studies 2016 British Association for the Study of Religion – Religion beyond the textbook - Abstract: In the secure psychiatric units of the Western World 25% articulate their experience in religious terms. Historically, some Western psychiatrists retrospectively diagnosed the likes of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, a host of saints and whole traditions, Sufis, Sadhus and the Spirit Possessed, finding them victims of mental disorders. Some contemporary Psychiatrics suggest that, apart from language, “there is no difference between a religious experience (with psychotic phenomenology) and other psychotic experiences.” If there might be something ‘not mad’ about religious ‘innovators and entrepreneurs’ like Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, etc., might there be something ‘not mad’ about some of the 25% in secure psychiatric units. What are we supposed to do with this idea? One obvious approach might be to listen to the people in secure units, beyond the text. However recent evidence shows NHS ethics committees reluctant to support non-medical research among ‘very sick people’. Whilst this raises questions about whose interests they serve, it perpetuates the silence of the mad. Mad studies suggests another response. By including the voices of the Mad within the Academy it may be possible to engage in different ways of seeing which are not so obvious to the Religious Studies text(s).

Psychiatry and Jesus in the 21st century

This is a paper I gave at the European Association of Biblical Studies on 17th July 2024. The 20th century saw conflict between the upstart discipline of psychiatry which sought to render Jesus mad to destroy Christianity. In the 21st century psychiatrists are a little more chilled out. But I am not persuaded that Biblical Scholars have recovered enough to think about how psychiatry might assist their work. In this paper I draw attention to the two episodes where Jesus saw visions and heard voice (at the baptism and the transfiguration) and show how these two events can be read as key pivots in Jesus life.

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.

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.

Jesus and the Psychiatrists

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.

Religion, spirituality, and psychosis

This review discusses the relationships between religion, spirituality, and psychosis. Based on the DSM-IV, we comment on the concept of spiritual and religious problems, which, although they may seem to be psychotic episodes, are actually manifestations of nonpathological spiritual and religious experiences. Studies reporting that hallucinations also occur in the nonclinical population and thus are not exclusive to the diagnosed population are presented. Then, other studies pointing to the strong presence of religious content in psychotic patients are also presented. Finally, the criteria that could be used to make a differential diagnosis between healthy spiritual experiences and mental disorders of religious content are discussed. We conclude that the importance of this theme and the lack of quality investigations point to the necessity of further investigation.

A Thematic Analysis of Delusion With Religious Contents in Schizophrenia

Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease, 2013

The aim of the present study was to elicit how patients with delusions with religious contents conceptualized or experienced their spirituality and religiousness. Sixty-two patients with present or past religious delusions went through semistructured interviews, which were analyzed using the three coding steps described in the grounded theory. Three major themes were found in religious delusions: ''spiritual identity,'' ''meaning of illness,'' and ''spiritual figures.'' One higher-order concept was found: ''structure of beliefs.'' We identified dynamics that put these personal beliefs into a constant reconstruction through interaction with the world and others (i.e., open dynamics) and conversely structural dynamics that created a complete rupture with the surrounding world and others (i.e., closed structural dynamics); those dynamics may coexist. These analyses may help to identify psychological functions of delusions with religious content and, therefore, to better conceptualize interventions when dealing with it in psychotherapy.

Did Christianity lead to schizophrenia? Psychosis, psychology and self reference

Transcultural psychiatry, 2013

Both geographically and historically, schizophrenia may have emerged from a psychosis that was more florid, affective, labile, shorter lived and with a better prognosis. It is conjectured that this has occurred with a reflexive self-consciousness in Western and globalising societies, a development whose roots lie in Christianity. Every theology also presents a psychology. Six novel aspects of Christianity may be significant for the emergence of schizophrenia-an omniscient deity, a decontexualised self, ambiguous agency, a downplaying of immediate sensory data, and a scrutiny of the self and its reconstitution in conversion.

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