Leading neuroscientist: Religious fundamentalism may be "curable mental illness"

[All Along The Watchtower]

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/leading-neuroscientist-religious-fundamentalism-may-be-a-mental-illness-that-can-be-cured/


Um......

 

[Zioneer]

I get that she doesn't like the extremes of fundementalists, but to say it's a mental illness is a slippery slope away from declaring all religion "mental illness". And that's unacceptable.

[© tweed]

Varg Vikernes was ahead of the curve.

"Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. It is like handcuffs to the mind and spirit and is nothing but destructive to mankind. In fact, I don't really see Christianity as a religion. It is more like a spiritual plague, a mass psychosis, and it should first and foremost be treated as a problem to be solved by the medical science. Christianity is a diagnosis. It's like Islam and the other Asian religions, a HIV/AIDS of the spirit and mind."

[DC Al Fine]

Varg Vikernes was ahead of the curve.

"Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. "

Where do these people come from? I swear some of these hardcore secularists (is that a word?) know as much history as fundamentalists know biology.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Varg Vikernes was ahead of the curve.

"Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. It is like handcuffs to the mind and spirit and is nothing but destructive to mankind. In fact, I don't really see Christianity as a religion. It is more like a spiritual plague, a mass psychosis, and it should first and foremost be treated as a problem to be solved by the medical science. Christianity is a diagnosis. It's like Islam and the other Asian religions, a HIV/AIDS of the spirit and mind."

Because a neo-Nazi murderer is sooo credible.

[Zioneer]

Varg Vikernes was ahead of the curve.

"Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. It is like handcuffs to the mind and spirit and is nothing but destructive to mankind. In fact, I don't really see Christianity as a religion. It is more like a spiritual plague, a mass psychosis, and it should first and foremost be treated as a problem to be solved by the medical science. Christianity is a diagnosis. It's like Islam and the other Asian religions, a HIV/AIDS of the spirit and mind."

Because a neo-Nazi murderer is sooo credible.

Isn't he essentially a Norse pagan fundamentalist, anyway?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Varg Vikernes was ahead of the curve.

"Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. It is like handcuffs to the mind and spirit and is nothing but destructive to mankind. In fact, I don't really see Christianity as a religion. It is more like a spiritual plague, a mass psychosis, and it should first and foremost be treated as a problem to be solved by the medical science. Christianity is a diagnosis. It's like Islam and the other Asian religions, a HIV/AIDS of the spirit and mind."

Because a neo-Nazi murderer is sooo credible.

I don't want to speak for Tweed but I suspect that may be his point.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

This is why leading neuroscientists should not be in charge of public policy and/or mental health.

[DemPGH]

Well, that Varg character is into "heathen nationalism" additionally, it appears - incidentally, I would love to see the psychological profile of the people caught up in that.

To be fair, she is talking about full-blown cult material, probably like Varg (which is the irony of bringing up someone like him), and if anyone has ever met any serious cult material, those people really do tend to be messed up, including ones willing to blow themselves up. We're not talking about people who go to some conservative Republican church in Dixie; rather, I get that she's talking about cult types. And sure, there may be some mental illness there (or at least neuroses). In prior centuries there were no diagnoses for people like that - schizophrenics, for example, were thought to be possessed. That's just an example. The point is to understand and help these people from a psychiatric point of view. So I see nothing draconian or overtly anti-religious here.

[© tweed]

obviously people who are involved in 'cults' are to be considered 'abnormal' by the mainstream society.  this is a tautology.

[DemPGH]

Cult behavior goes well beyond "abnormal."

But there are legitimate questions in this field about what the brain does (i.e., the parts of the brain that light up) when one is having some sort of spiritual or religious experience - as in feeling close to God. They've also learned that magnetic fields tend to correspond to people feeling spectral presences or apparitions - in addition to high frequencies, sudden pressure changes, and drafts of various kinds being responsible for animals, like cats, going berserk for no apparent reason.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Varg Vikernes was ahead of the curve.

"Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. It is like handcuffs to the mind and spirit and is nothing but destructive to mankind. In fact, I don't really see Christianity as a religion. It is more like a spiritual plague, a mass psychosis, and it should first and foremost be treated as a problem to be solved by the medical science. Christianity is a diagnosis. It's like Islam and the other Asian religions, a HIV/AIDS of the spirit and mind."

Because a neo-Nazi murderer is sooo credible.

I don't want to speak for Tweed but I suspect that may be his point.

And Hitler was a vegetarian.  The character of a advocate of a position has no bearing on the validity of that position.  That said Kathleen Taylor's statements make me think she has a mental illness.

[© tweed]

Cult behavior goes well beyond "abnormal."

how's that?

more specifically here I'm groping towards one of the key arguments of the 'anti-psychiatry movement', somewhat inappropriately named, and first brought into my conscience by RD Laing.  writing in the long shadow cast by the two World Wars, he pointed out that the allegedly 'normal' people had organized the largest and most barbaric mass slaughters in human history, leading him to question the whole enterprise.  state power is more-or-less cult behavior on a mass scale, thus normalized.

[DemPGH]

Cult behavior goes well beyond "abnormal."

how's that?

Abnormal would be shopping at really odd hours because you cannot stand to run into anyone or to be around people, like at 4:30 a.m. or something. There's nothing cultish about that or dangerous. It's just odd. There are easily treatable neuroses that would be considered abnormal, yet they are not cultish at all.

Cult behavior is what you see out of David Koresh or doomsday people; cult behavior is an extreme, often dangerous or damaging devotion to an individual or the individual's ideas. The kind of devotion that leads one to lose sight of reality.

Cult behavior goes well beyond "abnormal."

more specifically here I'm groping towards one of the key arguments of the 'anti-psychiatry movement', somewhat inappropriately named, and first brought into my conscience by RD Laing.  writing in the long shadow cast by the two World Wars, he pointed out that the allegedly 'normal' people had organized the largest and most barbaric mass slaughters in human history, leading him to question the whole enterprise.  state power is more-or-less cult behavior on a mass scale, thus normalized.

And I would reject that plus add that I think psychiatry has done a lot of good, and I only need to cite the example with schizophrenia as a case in point. The more we learn about the brain and how it works, the better. Another example would be the current research concerning "near death" sensory experiences that some report.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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Yes, but diagnosing mental illness should absolutely NOT be based on normative judgements on what a 'normal' individual should act or think like. To do otherwise is repeat the entire history of Soviet psychiatry and indeed a lot of US psychiatry even up to the present day.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is why leading neuroscientists should not be in charge of public policy and/or mental health.

^^^

Absolutely, yes.

[Mehmentum]

Now radical Christians know how gays feel when they call homosexuality a curable metal illness.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Why am I reminded of what homosexuality was considered by the DSM up until the 1970s (to list just one example)...

EDIT: I see Mehmentum pre-empted my response.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

By "beating your children" do they mean a "spanking"? Good to know my Dad had a mental illness in my early days.

[afleitch]

Certainly those involved in extreme religious/cult fundamentalism may have mental issues. But they won't admit it, for the same reasons people who think there are bugs under their skin think there is nothing wrong with their world view.

[anvi]

Does Taylor also think there is medical treatment available for those who insist on believing in as-yet-unfounded scientific hypotheses? 

[Antonio the Sixth]

There is a certain form of mental alienation that can result from extreme religious fervor, especially when associated with seclusion from the rest of society. This is not the case for most fundamentalist, who are just sane but stupid. But there is certainly a minority of them who is actually mentally ill.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

There is a certain form of mental alienation that can result from extreme religious fervor, especially when associated with seclusion from the rest of society. This is not the case for most fundamentalist, who are just sane but stupid. But there is certainly a minority of them who is actually mentally ill.

... And this differs them from the rest of the population, how?

[ilikeverin]

This is why leading neuroscientists should not be in charge of public policy and/or mental health.

She's certainly not a leading neuroscientist; she's not even a tenure-track faculty member or lecturer.  (In her own words: "I’m a freelance science writer affiliated to the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford")

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mental illness is very, very common (you will all know large numbers of people who have - or do, or sometimes do - suffer from some kind of depression, for instance) and the stigma around it is very, very unhelpful to all concerned. Most mental illness is not 'serious' in the sense in which that word is used (though can be debilitating and sometimes fatal), and those conditions that are 'serious' ought to be treated as the things that they are: extremely serious medical conditions. Oh the people that suffer from it, by the way, are people too.

Using accusations of mental illness (actually using it, that is: generic terms of abuse such as 'crazy' don't count because they are now just generic terms of abuse) as a stick to beat people you (small 'p') politically disagree with is an example of entrenching said stigma.

Moreover, labeling all forms of 'deviant' (from your perspective) behavior, views, beliefs or whatever as examples of 'mental illness' ought to be a massive no-no for all kinds of reasons that ought to be pretty obvious.

Etc, etc, etc.