Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind

Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind

by Robert N. McCauley and George Graham
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 28/05/2020

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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.

ISBN:
9780190091163
9780190091163
Category:
Psychology
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
28-05-2020
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
George Graham

George Graham has lived in South Louisiana for all his life. He has been an avid student, chronicler, and photographer of the regions culture and culinary traditions. Born into a restaurant family and a former restaurateur himself, he has written about Cajun and Creole cuisine for newspapers and magazines, and he has been a finalist on televisions Food Network Challenge.

George's blog Acadiana Table: George Graham's Stories of Louisiana Cooking and Cajun/Creole Culture has been a finalist for Best Food Blog: Regional Cuisine in Saveur magazines 2014 Best Food Blog Awards and also for Best Food Blog in the 2015 IACP Digital Media Awards. He lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, with his wife and daughter.

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