Spiritual symptoms: The fine line between spirituality & psychology
Callahan, Sidney
SIDNEY CALLAHAN SPIRITUAL SYHPTOMS Does religion make you crazy? The shades of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor, and Girl Interrupted hovered around the auditorium of...
...The numinous and the ethical become fused...
...Joan of Arc heard voices but she was a fount of common sense and courageous leadership...
...But how can you tell pathological psychotic episodes from positive spiritual experiences...
...Recently, DSM IV, or the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, the bible of the mental-health establishment, has been amended to include an entry for nonpathological symptoms of "religious crises" or "spiritual emergencies...
...Many practices that give pleasure and heightened cognitive awareness are meaningful to persons without being attributed to divine reality...
...With the Christian doctrine of Incarnation firmly in place, embodied humans keep their unique identities for eternity...
...Once, however, you assert that the creation is not God but God's good work, doctrines of pantheism will not apply...
...Once a seeker gets caught up in a "nonstripped-down" "nonsecular" spirituality of a traditional high religion, the way to holiness requires blood, sweat, and tears...
...Under this rubric, folks like Francis of Assisi, Ignatius Loyola, or Teresa of Avila might be able to escape hospitalization despite their strange mystical experiences...
...In a secular milieu, religion can be the original "don't ask, don't tell" topic...
...While nearly 90 percent of Americans report a belief in God, only 40 percent of psychologists do...
...I keep her words on my desk: "Today rather than tomorrow, tomorrow rather than the next day—the Holy Spirit has no love for the lazy...
...The arduous path of discipline leads away from egotism, illusion, and self-deception—as well as toward joyful celebration, thank God...
...Spiritual autobiographies are enlightening, especially for atheists and agnostics...
...If, however, mystical effusions produce grandiosity, arrogant hostility, and an inability to work or get along with people, watch out...
...The shades of Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor, and Girl Interrupted hovered around the auditorium of McLean, the famed psychiatric hospital outside Boston—haven of celebrated patients...
...But in a discussion of spirituality you don't have to start at the top, with the Holy Spirit, identified as one divine person of the triune God...
...Why not take a spiritual history on intake...
...As William James pointed out long ago, if Saint Teresa had extremely abnormal mental states, no matter...
...You may not end up wealthy or healthy, or die safely in bed, but the Holy Spirit does not lead to mental pathology...
...As both a defender of faith and a devout believer in psychology, I tried to provide my audience with a DSM I, or Diagnoses of Spiritual Movements...
...Secular spiritualities can emerge in art, music, nature, exercise, sex, diet, crystal gazing, dreams, creative work, martial arts, or fly-fishing...
...More to the point, a full-strength, hightest spirituality propels a seeker toward sanity and wisdom...
...When the Good is identified with the Spirit, then a demand for right action becomes necessary...
...Traditional worldwide high religions have prophets and scriptures, and they give birth to historical communities of continuity and reforming sects...
...By contrast there is nothing strippeddown about the high traditional monotheistic religions in which the Spirit is a personal, transcendent wholly Other, Holy One...
...Seekers must embrace the ethical requirements of truth and compassion, whether in an eightfold way or a twelve-step program...
...Or they may be referring to forms of "stripped-down spirituality," which go beyond the natural and seek transcendent meaning...
...Many eclectic forms of stripped-down spirituality exist in America and attract seekers who have an allergy to doctrine and religious institutions...
...Peak experiences," or epiphanies, can ensue and induce a belief in a benevolent ordered reality...
...Her visions, ecstasies, and levitations coexisted with whirlwind efficiency, lively charm, and astute charitable work...
...I think a Christian could be justified in claiming that the aspirations of the human spirit in secular spiritualities and in stripped-down spiritualities are manifestations of the Holy Spirit...
...They provide well-winnowed guidance for the spiritual seeker...
...That's a shame, for both the staff and the patients...
...A "secular spirituality" can consist of ad hoc heightened responses to the world, without any recognition of a transcendent reality beyond the powers of the human organism...
...Better to begin with a bottom-up analysis of the slippery word "spirit...
...Therapists should not be afraid or censor explorations of spirituality...
...For years, McLean Hospital's chapel has gone unused, with no chaplain or pastoral counseling program any longer in place...
...Today, differential diagnosis, or in religious language, discernment of spirits, will follow the traditional gospel criteria: By their fruits you shall know them...
...The resurrection of the body ensures that devotees do not melt away into some form of Nirvana...
...In Christianity the Holy Spirit is worshiped as working in the world to inspire, heal, console, empower, and sancJ_ tify human hearts, the church community, and the whole of creation...
...The children of Abraham—following Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as peoples of the book—worship a God who is a self-revealing creator and who exists as both transcendent and immanent...
...But I had been invited to speak to the staff association about spirituality—still a taboo subject in certain psychiatric circles...
...A client might easily feel more free to mention intimate sexual matters than prayers or mystical experiences...
...Here the spiritual person tries to get in touch with, or become attuned to, some larger reality of Spirit, with a capital S-—a Great Spirit, World Spirit, or Higher Power...
...Persons pursue the Spirit through meditation, prayer, worship, vision quests, or a disciplined practice...
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...When people tell you, "I'm spiritual but not religious," they can be referring to their meaningful moments of secular spirituality...
...The human spirit with a small s can refer to personal consciousness and moments of awareness which are heightened by an investment of emotion and aesthetic response...
Vol. 128 • April 2001 • No. 8
