Psychopathology and religious experience: could someone be experiencing a mental illness and having a religious experience at one and the same time?

Start date: 1 January 2021
End date: 31 July 2022
Funder: Science-Engaged Theology, New Visions in Theological Anthropology, John Templeton Foundation
Primary investigator: Dr Tasia Scrutton

Value

£16,243.50

Partners and collaborators

St Andrews University

Description

Currently, psychiatrists and psychologists, and spiritual advisors from religious traditions, independently debate a similar puzzle: how can we tell the difference between psychopathology and genuine/salutary religious experience?

This debate relates to a number of different experiences, including hearing/seeming to hear voices, seeing/seeming to see visions, and religiously-inflected sadness or anhedonia. In presupposing that someone might only be experiencing either psychopathology or genuine/salutary religious experience, these debates overlook instances of people – including significant holy figures within religious traditions - whose experiences seem to be diagnosable or discernible as both.

I will test the hypothesis that people might experience both psychopathology and religious experience simultaneously (the ‘both-and’ view). If correct, my hypothesis will revolutionise theory and practice in both medical and religious domains.

People with pastoral roles in churches want to know when to provide people with spiritual encouragement and when to refer them to a doctor – if my hypothesis proves to be correct, both may be appropriate.

Psychiatrists and psychologists currently refrain from diagnosing someone if they’re thought to be having a religious experience by their religious community. This can lead to underdiagnosis and prolonged suffering.

Conversely, when a diagnosis is made, people can come to assume that their experience has no religious meaning. If my hypothesis is correct, it is possible for medical/psychological help to be given and for meaning to be recognised and preserved.

Event: Psychopathology and Religious Experience symposium, April 2022, Saltaire

Publications and outputs

Forthcoming. A conjunctive explanation in psychopathology? Hearing voices, psychosis, and religious experience. For a volume on Conjunctive Explanations in Science and Religion, ed. Diarmid Finnegan, Mikael Leidenhag, and David Brown
Under review. Why William James is almost completely wrong about extraordinary religious experience: towards as Teresian account of voices and visions. For a volume on Knowing God Personally: Essays in Analytic Spirituality, ed. Joshua Cockayne and David Worsley. Oxford: Oxford University Press
2021. Can a period of mental distress be both a Dark Night of the Soul and a mental illness at the same time?. For the Theological Puzzles online resource, available at Can a Period of Mental Distress be Both a Dark Night of the Soul and a Mental Illness at the Same Time? – Theological Puzzles.
2021. Might a disruptive episode involving hearing voices be a mental illness and a genuine religious experience at one and the same time?. For the Theological Puzzles online resource, available at Might a Disruptive Episode Involving Hearing Voices Be Both a Mental Illness and a Genuine Religious Experience? – Theological Puzzles
Three interviews for the Reluctant Theologian Podcast of Symposium speakers (Kate Finley, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, José Porcher)