Commentary on Hearing voices and other matters of mind: What mental abnormalities teach us about religions by Robert McCauley and George Graham

IF 3.6 3区 哲学 0 RELIGION Religion Brain & Behavior Pub Date : 2021-10-02 DOI:10.1080/2153599X.2021.1987310
R. Bentall
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Abstract

As a recent survey of religious artifacts in the British Museum attests (MacGregor, 2018), religions exist in enormous varieties and have been ubiquitous globally and throughout history. This observation has led to the creation of the subdiscipline of psychology focused on religion which, although not as well-established as older subdisciplines such as social, cognitive and developmental psychology, is certainly thriving (Hood et al., 2009). Robert McCauley and George Graham’s book,Hearing voices and other matters of mind: What mental abnormalities teach us about religions, introduces a novel perspective to this field and delivers a thoughtful and stimulating exploration of the borderlines between psychopathology and religious experience and behavior. The authors approach this task within a framework which they describe as ‘ecumenical naturalism’, which stands on three claims. First, they accept the widespread assumption by researchers working on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), that many features of religion are by-products of the mental processes that underpin much of ordinary life. Second, they argue that many religious experiences share features with the experiences of people suffering from psychiatric disorders. Finally, they claim that findings from cognitive science will therefore be informative in understanding features of mental disorders that are also evident in religious experience. Importantly, although they claim that their approach is “free of presumptive ontological commitment or reference to anything supernatural” (p. 214), they say their aim is not to delegitimise or debunk religion, which they see as a natural feature of human life. They contrast this attitude to that taken by some notable previous contributors to what might be called the religion-psychopathology debate (they cite, in particular, Freud’s view that religion is a childish illusion). The core of the book is a series of chapters focusing on four types of mental illness: hearing voices, depression, obsessions and compulsions, and finally autism. In the chapter on hearing voices, they review the research literature showing that auditory-verbal hallucinations (one of the most common experiences reported by patients diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia) are the consequence of a failure of ‘source monitoring’, which leads to the misattribution of mental events, especially inner speech, to a source external or alien to the self. They then argue that “there is no categorical difference, at a subpersonal level, between the mental systems or cognitive dispositions involved in believing that God is speaking to you... . and the systems involved in believing that a secular agent is talking” (p. 75); religious belief simply provides a context in which the voice-hearer may interpret these experiences and thereby come to the conclusion that they are being addressed by God.
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罗伯特·麦考利和乔治·格雷厄姆的《幻听和其他心理问题:心理异常教给我们的宗教知识》书评
正如最近对大英博物馆宗教文物的调查所证明的那样(MacGregor, 2018),宗教存在于各种各样的宗教中,并且在全球和整个历史中无处不在。这一观察导致了以宗教为重点的心理学分支学科的创建,尽管它不像社会、认知和发展心理学等较早的分支学科那样成熟,但它肯定是蓬勃发展的(Hood et al., 2009)。罗伯特·麦考利(Robert McCauley)和乔治·格雷厄姆(George Graham)合著的《听到声音和其他心灵问题:精神异常教给我们的关于宗教的东西》(Hearing voices and other matters: mental abnormal教给我们的东西)为这一领域引入了一种新颖的视角,并对精神病理学与宗教体验和行为之间的界限进行了深思熟虑和令人兴奋的探索。作者在他们称之为“普世自然主义”的框架内完成这项任务,该框架基于三个主张。首先,他们接受研究宗教认知科学(CSR)的研究人员的普遍假设,即宗教的许多特征是支撑日常生活的心理过程的副产品。其次,他们认为许多宗教经历与患有精神疾病的人的经历有共同的特点。最后,他们声称,认知科学的发现因此将有助于理解精神障碍的特征,这些特征在宗教体验中也很明显。重要的是,尽管他们声称他们的方法是“没有假定的本体论承诺或任何超自然的参考”(第214页),他们说他们的目的不是使宗教合法化或揭穿宗教,他们认为宗教是人类生活的自然特征。他们将这种态度与之前一些可能被称为宗教-精神病理学辩论的著名贡献者的态度进行了对比(他们特别引用了弗洛伊德的观点,即宗教是一种幼稚的幻觉)。这本书的核心是围绕四种精神疾病的一系列章节:幻听、抑郁症、强迫症和强迫症,最后是自闭症。在关于听觉的章节中,他们回顾了研究文献,表明听觉语言幻觉(被诊断为患有精神分裂症的患者报告的最常见的经历之一)是“源监测”失败的结果,这导致精神事件,特别是内心的言语,错误地归因到外部或陌生的自我来源。然后他们认为,“在亚个人层面上,在相信上帝在对你说话的心理系统或认知倾向之间,没有绝对的区别... .。以及相信一个世俗的人在说话的系统"(第75页);宗教信仰只是提供了一个背景,听者可以在其中解释这些经历,从而得出他们是由上帝说话的结论。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.00
自引率
13.60%
发文量
93
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