Psychiatry and Mysticism

Psychiatry and Mysticism PDF Author: Stanley R. Dean
Publisher: Burnham, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This volume is aimed at bridging the gap and establishing rapport between medical science and psychic research. It attempts to demonstrate that only an integral approach, that considers man in his wholeness with his spiritual needs as well as the physical and mental ones, can lead to genuine health and growth. This book grew out of three historic panel-symposia on psychic phenomena that were presented at annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. More than half of the thirty contributors to it are physicians, making this the most comprehensive interdisciplinary collaboration on the subject published to date.

Psychiatry and Mysticism

Psychiatry and Mysticism PDF Author: Stanley R. Dean
Publisher: Burnham, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
This volume is aimed at bridging the gap and establishing rapport between medical science and psychic research. It attempts to demonstrate that only an integral approach, that considers man in his wholeness with his spiritual needs as well as the physical and mental ones, can lead to genuine health and growth. This book grew out of three historic panel-symposia on psychic phenomena that were presented at annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association. More than half of the thirty contributors to it are physicians, making this the most comprehensive interdisciplinary collaboration on the subject published to date.

The Mystic Mind

The Mystic Mind PDF Author: Jerome Kroll
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113429767X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
A fascinating collaboration between a medieval historian and a professor of psychiatry, this enthralling book applies modern biological and psychological research findings to the lives of medieval mystics and ascetics. Drawing upon a database of over 1,400 medieval holy persons and in-depth studies of individual saints, this illuminating study examines the relationship between medieval mystical experiences, the religious practices of mortification; laceration of the flesh, sleep deprivation and extreme starvation, and how these actions produced altered states of consciousness and brain function in the heroic ascetics. Examining and disputing much contemporary writing about the political and gender motivations in the medieval quest for a closeness with God, this is essential reading for anyone with an interest in medieval religion or the effects of self-injurious behaviour on the mind.

The Mystic Mind

The Mystic Mind PDF Author: Jerome Kroll
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134297688
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Drawing on a database of over 1400 medieval holy persons and in-depth studies of individual saints, this fascinating collaboration between a medieval historian and a professor of psychiatry applies modern biological and psychological research to the lives of medieval mystics and ascetics.

How to Be an Excellent Human: Mysticism, Evolutionary Psychology and the Good Life

How to Be an Excellent Human: Mysticism, Evolutionary Psychology and the Good Life PDF Author: Bill Meacham
Publisher: Earth Harmony Incorporated
ISBN: 9780615727004
Category : Conduct of life
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
How can we live good, fulfilling lives? How can we be happy? These questions have been at the forefront of philosophy ever since Socrates, and this engaging book attempts an answer. It addresses the big questions of life: How should we live our lives? How should we decide how to live our lives? How should we even frame the question in the first place? What is it to be human? What are we like, how do we function? What is our place in universe? How do we fit into the bigger picture? What is the bigger picture, the basic nature of all of reality? The book is exciting and wide-ranging. It is incisive philosophy made accessible to the general reader. The author is equally at home lucidly explaining how mystics make sense when they say that all is one and how evolution has provided us with powerful but fallible mental capacities. The book offers an exhilarating journey with stops along the way to consider consciousness, panpsychism, brain science, quantum physics, how we are like and unlike chimpanzees and bonobos, where morality comes from, how our emotions both guide us and trip us up, how our thinking works, how it sometimes fails and what we can do to fix it. Throughout, it recommends an approach to life that maximizes well-being, leading to the possibility of happiness and abundance for all. The book covers a lot of ground, but it is quite approachable. You can read it straight through as an intellectually exciting story. Or you can dive in anywhere, dipping into chapters that pique your interest. In either case you will have fun reading it, and you will be rewarded with insights and ideas that will stimulate and delight your thinking.

Yoga and Psychology

Yoga and Psychology PDF Author: Harold Coward
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791487911
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
Harold Coward explores how the psychological aspects of Yoga philosophy have been important to intellectual developments both East and West. Foundational for Hindu, Jaina, and Buddhist thought and spiritual practice, Patañjali's Yoga Sutras, the classical statement of Eastern Yoga, are unique in their emphasis on the nature and importance of psychological processes. Yoga's influence is explored in the work of both the seminal Indian thinker Bhartrhari (c. 600 C.E.) and among key figures in Western psychology: founders Freud and Jung, as well as contemporary transpersonalists such as Washburn, Tart, and Ornstein.. Coward shows how the yogic notion of psychological processes makes Bhartrhari's philosophy of language and his theology of revelation possible. He goes on to explore how Western psychology has been influenced by incorporating or rejecting Patañjali's Yoga. The implications of these trends in Western thought for mysticism and memory are examined as well. This analysis results in a notable insight, namely, that there is a crucial difference between Eastern and Western thought with regard to how limited or perfectible human nature is—the West maintaining that we as humans are psychologically, philosophically, and spiritually limited or flawed in nature and thus not perfectible, while Patañjali's Yoga and Eastern thought generally maintain the opposite. Different Western responses to the Eastern position are noted, from complete rejection by Freud, Jung, and Hick, to varying degrees of acceptance by transpersonal thinkers.

Mysticism

Mysticism PDF Author: Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. Committee on Psychiatry and Religion
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mysticism
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description


Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives PDF Author: Alex S. Kohav
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 193148340X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The volume investigates the question of meaning of mystical phenomena and, conversely, queries the concept of "meaning" itself, via insights afforded by mystical experiences. The collection brings together researchers from such disparate fields as philosophy, psychology, history of religion, cognitive poetics, and semiotics, in an effort to ascertain the question of mysticism's meaning through pertinent, up-to-date multidisciplinarity. The discussion commences with Editor's Introduction that probes persistent questions of complexity as well as perplexity of mysticism and the reasons why problematizing mysticism leads to even greater enigmas. One thread within the volume provides the contextual framework for continuing fascination of mysticism that includes a consideration of several historical traditions as well as personal accounts of mystical experiences: Two contributions showcase ancient Egyptian and ancient Israelite involvements with mystical alterations of consciousness and Christianity's origins being steeped in mystical praxis; and four essays highlight mysticism's formative presence in Chinese traditions and Tibetan Buddhism as well as medieval Judaism and Kabbalah mysticism. A second, more overarching strand within the volume is concerned with multidisciplinary investigations of the phenomenon of mysticism, including philosophical, psychological, cognitive, and semiotic analyses. To this effect, the volume explores the question of philosophy's relation to mysticism and vice versa, together with a Wittgensteinian nexus between mysticism, facticity, and truth; language mysticism and "supernormal meaning" engendered by certain mystical states; cognitive-poetic analysis of mystical poetry; and a semiotic scrutiny of some mystical experiences and their ineffability. Finally, the volume includes an assessment of the so-called New Age authors' contention of the convergence of scientific and mystical claims about reality. The above two tracks are appended with personal, contemporary accounts of mystical experiences, in the Prologue; and a futuristic envisioning, as a fictitious chronicle from the time-to-come, of life without things mystical, in the Postscript. The volume contains fourteen chapters; its international contributors are based in Canada, Israel, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Spirituality and Psychiatry

Spirituality and Psychiatry PDF Author: Christopher C. H. Cook
Publisher: RCPsych Publications
ISBN: 1009302353
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Spirituality and Psychiatry addresses the crucial but often overlooked relevance of spirituality to mental well-being and psychiatric care. This updated and expanded second edition explores the nature of spirituality, its relationship to religion, and the reasons for its importance in clinical practice. Contributors discuss the prevention and management of illness, and the maintenance of recovery. Different chapters focus on the subspecialties of psychiatry, including psychotherapy, child and adolescent psychiatry, intellectual disability, forensic psychiatry, substance misuse, and old age psychiatry. The book provides a critical review of the literature and a response to the questions posed by researchers, service users and clinicians, concerning the importance of spirituality in mental healthcare. With contributions from psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, nurses, mental healthcare chaplains and neuroscientists, and a patient perspective, this book is an invaluable clinical handbook for anyone interested in the place of spirituality in psychiatric practice.

Hearing Spiritual Voices

Hearing Spiritual Voices PDF Author: Christopher C.H. Cook
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780567708007
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This open access book explores unusual perceptual, or perception-like, experiences. These are often meaningful to those who have them and may be sympathetically or unsympathetically interpreted by others. One interpretation, especially when voices are associated with unusual behaviour, is that they are evidence of mental disorder. Ostensibly such interpretations are sympathetic (showing concern for someone who is ill) but in practice they are used to deny the meaning and value of the experiences for those concerned, thus depriving them (and others) of creative and innovative ways of understanding the human condition. The question is thus one of the meaning. Are such experiences meaningful only as indicators of a diagnosis, or are they meaningful in other ways, shedding light on human self-understanding and perhaps even a wider spiritual reality? Psychiatry has tended to see such phenomena as diagnostically meaningful but not as sources of deeper insight into the human condition. This book takes three 14th century examples of women who heard spiritually significant voices: Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, and Joan of Arc. Each of these women, in different ways, has left an enduring legacy in literature and history. Modern psychiatric commentary on the voices that they reported has generally focussed on diagnosis rather than on wider questions of meaning. These commentaries will be used as a lens through which to consider how contemporary psychiatric practice might be enriched by the humanities and enabled to find a more spiritually empathetic, if not also sympathetic, enriching and meaning enhancing perspective on unusual mental phenomena. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Wellcome Trust.

Muses, Mystics, Madness: The Diagnosis and Celebration of Mental Illness

Muses, Mystics, Madness: The Diagnosis and Celebration of Mental Illness PDF Author: Anna Klambauer
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 184888432X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description