Religious madness

In psychopathology , religious delusion describes a specific type of delusion that manifests itself as a symptom in a delusional experience with religious themes.

definition

A religious delusion is a false, unshakable idea or belief of a religious nature, which does not fit the educational level or cultural and social background of the patient and is represented with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty, despite the incompatibility with the objectively verifiable reality and also in the face of evidence to the contrary. The most common contents of the religious madness are the conviction of being in direct communication with God or of being a new messiah who redeems the world (religious madness with a salvation mission). Religious delusions in particular appear particularly unreal, irritating and nonsensical. The religious delusions does not have to develop from religious experience, but rather arises from very "human conflicts" such as marriage problems.

According to recent studies, religious topics occur in around 20 to 30 percent of cases of schizophrenic madness. This form is therefore one of the most common delusions. In clinical practice, religious madness is also an important topic because it is often associated with severe physical harm to oneself.

Diagnosis

The person concerned is egocentrically fixed on his delusional content, ie all his thoughts and actions are fed from it. Trapped in his "delusional system", he is immune to critical argument. The change from dialogue forms to constantly repeating monologue structures is characteristic of the religious madness.

Effects on social experience

The religious madness usually leads to an alienation or at least a partial alienation of the person concerned from his environment. This is mainly due to the fact that the person concerned is alone with his delusional ideas, i.e. has no one who shares the same convictions. In principle, there are ways to carefully integrate a psychotic into an existing community life and thus to be at his side. Often, however, communities are overwhelmed by the mostly very divergent beliefs of a psychotic. Integration becomes almost impossible if the psychotic claims certain religious titles or believes he is a certain religious figure in the religious tradition.

therapy

Religious delusional symptoms are signs of a mental disorder, to be found, for example, in schizophrenic psychosis , but also in a variety of other mental disorders, such as depression or mania . The religious madness, like many other forms of madness, is not the actual illness, but the illness finds its expression in delusional ideas. Therefore, treatment varies depending on the underlying mental disorder. One treatment option is the use of psychotropic drugs .

Trivia

Differentiation of religious belief from religious madness

Religious belief and religious delusion are two different things. In both cases, the ideas believed to be true are of a religious nature and cannot be checked. However, religious madness is distinguished from religious belief by some specific differences:

Religious belief enables inner distancing and, indeed, rare but occasional questioning of religious content, whereas in religious delusion fixed ideas determine the thoughts of the person concerned. A delusion asserts knowledge , not belief.

Religious belief allows a more or less realistic self-assessment, with religious madness this is overlaid by an arrogant self-assessment. Thus, in the midst of everyday conversation, a person who is delusional can refer to himself as the Virgin Mary . This is not a declaration of their belief, but a statement about how this person perceives reality.

Religious delusions are mostly inconsistent with the beliefs of the respective religious community .

Polemical extensions in the debate between atheism and theism

The topic of religious madness is taken up in the book Der Gotteswahn by Richard Dawkins and expanded polemically. In his book The Atheismus Wahn , Alister McGrath tries to refute Dawkins' arguments, alluding to his delusional obsession with atheism .

See also

• Jerusalem Syndrome

literature

• Wilhelm Arnold, Hans Jürgen Eysenck , Richard Meili : Lexicon of Psychology . Volume 1-3. Freiburg im Breisgau 1971, 1980.
• Helmut Hark: Religious Neuroses. Causes and Cure . Stuttgart 1988.
• Christian Henning, Jacob van Belzen (ed.): Crazy about God. To deal with extraordinary religious phenomena in psychology, psychotherapy and theology. Paderborn 2007.
• Rainer Tölle : Wahn: illness, history, literature . Stuttgart 2007 ( excerpts from googlebooks ).
• Ronald Mundhenk: Being like God: Aspects of the religious in schizophrenic experience and thinking . Neumünster 2007. ISBN 978-3926200365

Individual evidence

1. ↑ After Andrew Sims: Religious delusions. (PDF; 268 kB) 2012, on the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists . Sims first defines delusion in general there, but then applies this definition to religious delusion: A delusion is a false, unshakeable idea or belief, which is out of keeping with the patient's educational, cultural and social background; it is held with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty. - See Andrew Sims: Symptoms in the Mind: An Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology. 3rd ed., Saunders, Edinburgh 2003.
2. ^ Matthias Lammel et al .: Madness and schizophrenia: Psychopathology and forensic relevance. Berlin 2011.
3. ↑ Michael Pfaff: Schizophrenia and religious madness. A comparative study at the time of the German division. (PDF; 4.2 MB) Dissertation, Ruhr University Bochum, 2008, p. 5
4. ↑ see Mundhenk. 2007
5. ↑ Andrew Sims: Religious delusions. (PDF; 268 kB) 2012, on the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , p. 2, with reference to M. Spitzer: The basis of psychiatric diagnosis. In: JZ Sadler, OP Wiggins, MA Schwartz (Ed.): Philosophical Perspectives on Psychiatric Diagnostic Classification. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1994.
6. ↑ Andrew Sims: Religious delusions. (PDF; 268 kB) 2012, on the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , p. 2.
7. ↑ Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion. 2007, ISBN 978-3-550-08688-5
8. ^ Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion. 2006, ISBN 9780593055489
9. ↑ Alister McGrath: The Atheism Mania: An Answer to Richard Dawkins and Atheistic Fundamentalism. 2007, ISBN 978-3-86591-289-3
10. ^ Alister McGrath: The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist fundamentalism and the denial of the divine. 2007, ISBN 978-0-281-05927-0
11. ↑ Richard Schröder: Abolition of Religion? Scientific fanaticism and the consequences. Freiburg im Breisgau 2008.

This article is about a health issue. It is not used for self-diagnosis and does not replace a diagnosis by a doctor. Please note the information on health issues !