Hearing Voices or Hearing God?

Historically of course when psychology, psychiatry, or psychoanalysis has turned to something called "religion" (a definition of which is not at all an agreed-upon thing), it is very often done so in reductionist and simplistic ways at best; at worst it has pathologized "religion" as the province of neurotic people.

More recently, however, some clinicians and others have attempted to move beyond such an approach, trying to understand "religious" practices and beliefs on their own terms, and even realizing that some of them are practiced by perfectly healthy people. I have shown some examples of this on this blog and elsewhere.

Now we have a new book that will add to and enrich this discussion. I'm looking forward to reading Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Mental Abnormalities Can Teach Us About Religions by Robert N. McCauley and George Graham (Oxford University Press, 2020), 280pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

A man with schizophrenia believes that God is instructing him through the public address system in a bus station. A nun falls into a decades-long depression because she believes that God refuses to answer her prayers. A neighborhood parishioner is bedeviled with anxiety because he believes that a certain religious ritual must be repeated, repeated, and repeated lest God punish him. To what extent are such manifestations of religious thinking analogous to mental disorder? Does mental dysfunction bring an individual closer to religious experience or thought? Hearing Voices and Other Unusual Experiences explores these questions using the tools of the cognitive science of religion and the philosophy of psychopathology.

Robert McCauley and George Graham emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained as the cultural activation of our natural cognitive systems, which address matters that are essential to human survival: hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. Those systems produce responses to cultural stimuli that may mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders, but which are sometimes coded as "religious" depending on the context.

The authors examine hallucinations of the voice of God and of other supernatural agents, spiritual depression often described as a "dark night of the soul," religious scrupulosity and compulsiveness, and challenges to theistic cognition that Autistic Spectrum Disorder poses. Their approach promises to shed light on both mental abnormalities and religiosity.

Therapists and Spiritual Directors: Learning from Each Other

This has been out for a couple of years now, but I just came across it. For those interested in the very fluid boundary between therapy and spiritual direction this looks to be a promising collection edited by Peter Madsen Gubi, What Counsellors and Spiritual Directors Can Learn from Each Other (2017), 192pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This new edited collection explores the intersection of spiritual direction and counselling/psychotherapy, and the relationship between the two. Citing the influencing effect prayer and counselling have had on each other, the contributors offer insight into the similarities and differences of spiritual direction and counselling, and of what the disciplines have to learn from each other.

Advocating the importance of addressing the spiritual dimension of care in areas such as mental health and social care, this book promotes a synthesis of pastoral guidance and psychological counselling. The chapters offer insight to the healing role spirituality and prayer can play when counselling for trauma, sexual abuse or loss of a loved one. Whether discussing training counsellors to be spiritually literate, or exploring how spiritual accompaniers can take a psychologically-informed approach, all the contributors bring their extensive experience to bear working with spiritual and psychological issues.

Psychopathology and Religion

Since at least 1913 and Freud's essay "Totem and Taboo," and then especially since 1927 and his jejune polemic against "religion," Future of an Illusion (which he almost instantly began distancing himself from, telling more than one friend in his letters that it was "my worst book--the book of an old man!"), there has often been an assumed hostility between modern psychology (especially in its classical Freudian psychoanalytic variants) and that ill-defined beast called "religion." But as many people have shown--not least William Meissner and Ana-Maria Rizzuto--the idea that religious practice, especially that of Judaism and Christianity, is ipso facto proof of mental disorder is a silly baseless bit of adolescent posturing and bigotry unworthy of serious scholars and clinicians alike. Today many clinicians are not only genuinely open to religious and spiritual practices, but even see in them some potential allies to assist in various therapeutic tasks.

That said, a blanket excuse of religious practice is just as undeserved as a blanket condemnation. Pathology can and often does come wreathed about in the stale smoke of religious practices and their abuse. People can and often do have profoundly unhealthy projective identifications with God which end up doing them enormous harm. For this reason, as Paul Ricoeur rightly said, Christians should welcome Freud's critique as an important, necessary, and healthful form of "iconoclasm," attacking false images of God so that in their place the real and living God can appear.

Along comes a new book from a Polish academic and therapist to take a fresh look at all these questions. I have just started it and will say more about it later, but for now wanted to draw your attention to Damian Janus, Psychopathology and Religion: Structural Convergences Between Mental Disorders and Religion (Lexington Books, 2019), 239pp.

About this book we are told

In this book, Damian Janus examines the connections between psychopathological phenomena and religion. Janus contends that there are certain factors—fear of death, desire for power and longevity, and need for predictability of life and longing for care—which reside within the framework of religion and mental disorders. These factors shapethe psychopathological image and contribute to the genesis of religiosity. He explores this contention in his analysis of various mental disorders (neuroses, personality disorders, dissociative disorders, psychoses, eating disorders) and symptoms (delusions, hallucinations, self-destructive behaviors), as well as more common psychological phenomena.This book is recommended for scholars of psychology, religion, and philosophy as well as psychotherapists.

Hysteria Lives--in the Catholic Church

The carryings-on around this pseudo-synod in Rome (so called not because of its content but because, as I argued almost a year ago, nothing in Rome called a "synod" since 1965 has really been such properly so called) are really a sight to behold. The reaction to this synod is merely a more advanced case of the reaction to Pope Francis, which has been growing worse over the last three years especially. But in the last day or so things really seem to have crossed a line with the adolescent antics around some of the Amazonian art which was pitched into the Tiber and has caused rejoicing among a certain sector of Catholics (largely white, North American and Western European, upper middle class at least, and right-wing) on social media.

This sector, I'm convinced, is astonishingly well described by the Anglo-American psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas in his book Hysteria. Bollas defines hysterics as those who are

“indifferent to conversion, who are over-identified with the other, who express themselves in a theatrical manner; who daydream existence rather than engage it; and who prefer the illusion of childlike innocence to the worldliness of the adult. They also suffer from suggestion, either easily influenced by the other or in turn passing on ideas to fellow hysterics.” 

Elsewhere in this book he notes that "there are as many male as there are female hysterics" and the especially advanced cases are "malignant hysterics" prone to, inter alia, being "transference junkies."