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.Karl Menninger,often recognised as a founder of American psychiatry, noted:Some patients have a mental illness and then get well and then they get weller! I meanthey get better than they ever were.This is an extraordinary and little-realised truth (Silverman, 1967).Boisen (1962), who was hospitalised for a psychotic episode and then becamea minister who founded the field of pastoral counselling, maintained:Psychosis and Spirituality: Consolidating the New Paradigm, Second Edition Edited by Isabel Clarke© 2010 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.ISBN: 978-0-470-68348-4206Psychosis and SpiritualityMany of the more serious psychoses are essentially problem solving experiences whichare closely related to certain types of religious experiences (Bowers, 1979).But these episodes will resolve spontaneously with appropriate support, and can leadto improvements in well-being, psychological health, and awareness of the spiritualdimension in life.There are scores of self-reports and case studies documenting suchoutcomes (Chapman and Lukoff, 1996; Dorman, 2004; Lukoff and Everest, 1985).Many view the episode as a spiritual awakening and initiation.Jungian analyst JohnPerry (1998) noted that after a VSE:What remains.is an ideal model and a sense of direction which one can use tocomplete the transformation through his own purposeful methods.Cross-Cultural and Historical Perspectives on VSESBased on a cross-cultural survey, anthropologist Prince (1992) concluded that:Highly similar mental and behavioural states may be designated psychiatric disordersin some cultural settings and religious experiences in others.Within cultures thatinvest these unusual states with meaning and provide the individual experiencing themwith institutional support, at least a proportion of them may be contained andchannelled into socially valuable roles.For example, anthropological accounts show that babbling confused words,displaying curious eating habits, singing continuously, dancing wildly, and being‘tormented by spirits’ are common elements in shamanic initiatory crises.Inshamanic cultures, such crises are interpreted as an indication of an individual’sdestiny to become a shaman, rather than a sign of mental illness (Halifax,1979).In Asian cultures, problems associated with spiritual practices are recognised andare distinguished from psychopathology.For example, a well-known pitfall ofmeditation practice is ‘false enlightenment’, associated with delightful or terrifyingvisions, especially of light (Epstein and Topgay, 1982).Beginning in the 1960s,interest in Asian spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi, as well asexperimentation with psychedelic drugs, triggered many VSEs, some of which wereproblematic for their practitioners:The contemporary spiritual scene is like a candy store where any casual spiritual‘tourist’ can sample the ‘goodies’ that promise a variety of mystical highs.Whennovices who don’t have the proper education or guidance begin to naively andcarelessly engage mystical experiences, they are playing with fire (Caplan, 1999:p.74).The similarity between psychotic symptoms and mystical experiences hasreceived acknowledgment and discussion in the mental health field (Arieti,1976; Boisen, 1962; Buckley, 1981; James, 1958).Both involve escaping the limitingboundaries of the self, which leads to an immense elation and freedom as theVisionary Spiritual Experiences207outlines of the confining selfhood melt down.The need to transcend the limitingboundaries of the self has been postulated to be a basic neurobiological need of allliving things (Newberg, D’Aquili and Rause, 2001).However, during psychoticepisodes, if ‘the sense of embodied self is transcended before it has been firmlyestablished.disintegration and further fragmentation are the likely results’(Mills, 2001, p.214).People who have undergone VSEs have, in ancient western, as well as traditionalcultures, been esteemed and enjoyed privileged status as shamans, prophets, orsaints.However, in contemporary Western society, experiences such as seeingvisions and hearing voices, experiencing oneself communicating with or being areligious figure are viewed as delusions and hallucinations, symptoms of a psychoticdisorder.People in the midst of VSEs have difficulty obtaining support from eitherthe healthcare system or religious institutions.‘If a member of a typical congregationwere to have a profound religious experience, its minister would very likely send himor her to a psychiatrist for medical treatment’ (Grof, 1986).Religion and spiritualityhave also been suspected of triggering and exacerbating symptoms of a psychoticdisorder although comprehensive literature reviews show positive associationsbetween religion and outcomes from psychotic disorders (Koenig, McCulloughand Larson, 2001).Some individuals who have been through it consider religion and spirituality tobe integral in the makeup and working through of psychosis (Lukoff and Lu,2005).Clinicians with this perspective, mainly transpersonal psychologists, havedescribed psychosis as a natural developmental process with both spiritual andpsychological components
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