Hearing Voices, Epilepsy, and Religious Experience: McCauley and Graham’s New Solutions to Old Problems

Approaching religious or mystical experience in association with mental or brain disorder has been a widespread practice in psychology and neuropsychology, but not so much in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). By their recent book, McCauley and Graham balance the disproportion within CSR. In t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cigán, Jakub (Author)
Format: Electronic Review
Language:English
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Published: Equinox Publ. 2021
In: Journal for the cognitive science of religion
Year: 2019, Volume: 7, Issue: 1, Pages: 85-93
Review of:Hearing voices and other matters of the mind (New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2020) (Cigán, Jakub)
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Religious experience / Mental illness / Epilepsy / Culture / Kognitive Religionswissenschaft
IxTheo Classification:AE Psychology of religion
AG Religious life; material religion
Further subjects:B Book review
B Graham
B Religious Experience
B CSR
B Mental Illness
B brain disorder
B Epilepsy
B St. Paul
B McCauley
B Mystical Experience
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Summary:Approaching religious or mystical experience in association with mental or brain disorder has been a widespread practice in psychology and neuropsychology, but not so much in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). By their recent book, McCauley and Graham balance the disproportion within CSR. In the commentary, I address McCauley and Graham’s solutions to fundamental problems typical for the psychiatric approach to a religious experience. This approach understands religious experience as a mental or a brain disorder, diagnoses the disorder based on insufficient data in historical cases, and neglects cultural and historical aspects of religious experience and mental disorders. McCauley and Graham handle the diagnosis problem by focusing on the particular aspect of the religious experience (e.g., "hearing voices") and analyzing its pathological and non-pathological aspects, instead of simply assuming disorder. In regards to the neglect of historical and cultural aspects of religious experience and mental illness, McCauley and Graham stress the importance of the cultural domestication of unusual aspects of religious experience. In dealing with the psychiatric approach problems, McCauley and Graham introduce a new complementary and complex theoretical model for embracing mental abnormalities into the framework of CSR.
ISSN:2049-7563
Reference:Kritik in "Gods in Disorder (2021)"
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal for the cognitive science of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1558/jcsr.20219