Religious Insanity

Abstract

Among the more common admission diagnoses of patients admitted to 19th century American asylums that have now disappeared completely from the psychiatric nosology is “religious insanity.” This article presents a review of the historical and sociological research, which suggests the theory that religious belief and practice was a common cause of insanity, hence the diagnosis of “religious insanity.” The way in which the diagnosis developed at the intersection of Protestant revival movements and the growth of modern asylum psychiatry in the United States, and thereby served several important functions in psychiatry and society, is discussed. The article concludes with reflections on how the rise and fall of the theory of religion as a primary cause or contributor to insanity in the 19th century mirrors the often conflicted relationship between religion and psychiatry in modern history and the difficulty in drawing scientifically reliable and morally justifiable lines between spiritual experience and mental illness in any cultural period.

Spiritualizing psychiatry: Transpersonal psychology, DSM, and Brazilian research about spirituality

“…Perhaps the most known case is the French school of physiological psychiatry of the second half of the nineteenth century, headed by Jean-Martin Charcot, and its interest in the analogies between demonic possessions and the hysterical women under his care (Andriopoulos, 2014(Andriopoulos, [2008). But such concerns continued to exist throughout the more recent history of the medical discipline, with examples such as the use of the category 'religious insanity' throughout the nineteenth century in the United States (Geppert, 2019); the emphasis on the perception of mysticism as a pathological manifestation (Deikman, 1977); and, notably, the opening of Civilization and Its Discontents, in which Sigmund Freud (1989) claims that the 'oceanic feeling' of religions was a type of narcissistic regression.…”

Transes, crises e diagnósticos

“…Por outro lado, como ressalta o literato Stefan Andriopoulos (2014, pp.86-88), é bem conhecido o interesse da escola francesa de psiquiatria fisiológica da segunda metade do século XIX, encabeçada por Jean-Martin Charcot, nas analogias estabelecidas entre as possessões demoníacas e as mulheres histéricas sob seus cuidados -chegando-se à realização de uma leitura em retrospecto dos fenômenos da Idade Média e do início da modernidade como verdadeiros ataques histéricos. Em relação aos Estados Unidos, a utilização da categoria de "insanidade religiosa" ao longo do século XIX (Geppert, 2019) e a mais recente ênfase da percepção do misticismo como uma manifestação patológica (Deikman, 1977) ou da ilustração dos transtornos mentais a partir da descrição de certas crenças religiosas como pensamentos delirantes (Post, 1992) atestam a continuidade e transversalidade dessa tendência geral da área.…”