Quote:
Originally Posted by chielgirl
Delusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Although non-specific concepts of madness have been around for several thousand years, the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers was the first to define the three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional in his book General Psychopathology. These criteria are:
* certainty (held with absolute conviction)
* incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
* impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)
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For what it's worth:
Chielgirl, the link you posted was actually quite good, albiet, it
disproves the point I think you are trying to make. You need to also consider the quote you cited, above, (regarding Jasper's criteria for delusion) within the context of what was stated:
"These criteria still live on in modern psychiatric diagnosis. In the most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a delusion is defined as:
A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.
The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is
not an article of
religious faith)."
I'm going to try and make this all as painless as humanly possible; hopefully validating both sides of the court: the believers vs. the unbelievers.
There is a difference between neurosis and psychosis.
Is mankind capable of engaging in mass delusion? Yes. Anyone who remembers "War of the Worlds" or Bigfoot, etc., knows what a mass delusionary state is. However, when we are talking about psychiatric delusional states as they pertain to religious content within the delusion, we are implying that the belief is pathologically based; meaning that it stems from some sort of illness. Unless we are prepared to enter into the dicey territory of declaring every single believer on this forum and in the world at large "mentally ill" then I think this whole topic needs to be seen in the context in which it exists.
Culturally engendered beliefs are NOT delusions. They are not delusions because they fail to meet the psychological criteria. -And that includes religion, folks. Just as Jasper's attempted to address the nature of delusional states, on the other side we have equally esteemed psychoanalysts arguing for the nondelusional aspects of religious belief. Freud, Jung, Erikson, Maslow, et al all attempted to define what religious belief is and what role it plays in mankind's psyche.
As I have said before, there is a difference when it comes to truly relgious delusional states, and the beliefs of the "masses." If I have ten psychotic patients in a group, all of whom are experiencing religious delusions, they are not able to enter into on another's delusion. That's important. In contrast, if I have ten nonpsychotic believers in my group, they are able to engage with one another and carry on a meaningful converstation about god. Some of you would call it Bible study, or a prayer group, or just posting on this forum. It does
not rise to the level of a psychiatric delusionally based state.
When I was trained, the emphasis was mostly on the bio-psycho-social aspects of patients. That's changed over time, to the point that we now include the spiritual apsects of our patients and human beings in general. Consider Maslow's hierarchy. Self actualization is on the top rung. The same holds true for Erikson. (Although only 2 percent of the population supposedly make it that far.) There are those theorists that would say that for a human being to be fully "mature" that there is necessarily implied some sort of spiritual element/aspect to their personality or nature. Relgious belief is not pathologized in the world of psychiatry/psychology. There is a difference between the patient I see every week who believes that God sent him "religious creatures" in a dream, and as a result, went to church in order to ask God whether He had sent the "creatures" for purposes of good or evil, and the patient who sits in my office telling me that their belief in God is one of the things that helps sustain them. June takes
both seriously, with equal amounts of validation and respect.
Read about or google "core religious beliefs" or mystical experiences or Maslow, for that matter. Can those experiences be replicated in a laboratory by stimulating parts of a human's brain? -Yes, they can. However, does that necessarily invalidate the reality of what the individual experiences outside of the laboratory, or (more importantly) the meaning that the individual attributes to the experience? I don't think so. Read what William Jame's cites as the criteria for religious experience. Read about what Jung says about spirituality and the collective conscious/unconscious. Or, (for atheists in particular) read what Freud believes religious belief is really all about. Would you prefer to believe that religous belief has it's basis in delusion, or should we all pay more attention to our Oedipal complexes/strivings?
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Spirituality, religious belief, etc. is regarded as a human strength within the psychiatric world. Your average individual who gets up each morning and prays is
not regarded as delusional. Alot of psychiatrists are getting up each morning and praying. I sure hope they aren't "delusional" in the strict sense of the word...
I know this was a dreadfully long post, but under the circumstances, what's a June to do? In the end, all I can say is it is time for me to go off to work, and to remind everyone:
Take gentle care.
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One...more...time...
