What psychological disorder would apply to religious people?!
Question: I know there has to be a name for having imaginary friends, and believing something based on nothing but faith despite evidence to the contrary. I know that if someone believes they talk to this imaginary person, and he talks back, there is a psychological disorder going on here.
Answers: I know there has to be a name for having imaginary friends, and believing something based on nothing but faith despite evidence to the contrary. I know that if someone believes they talk to this imaginary person, and he talks back, there is a psychological disorder going on here.
Okay, I know this question could be flagged, but I hope no one reports me just for giving my opinion to a question that I think is relevant, and that is worth a good answer...
I would have to say that, to the degree a person is religious, they suffer to that degree from what is called "delusional disorder", a psychotic illness.
Here are the diagnostic criteria for delusions:
1. The patient expresses an idea or belief with unusual persistence or force.
2. That idea appears to exert an undue influence on his or her life, and the way of life is often altered to an inexplicable extent.
3. Despite his profound conviction, there is often a quality of secretiveness or suspicion when the patient is questioned about it.
4. The individual tends to be humorless and oversensitive, especially about the belief.
5. There is a quality of centrality: no matter how unlikely it is that these strange things are happening to him, the patient accepts them relatively unquestioningly.
6. An attempt to contradict the belief is likely to arouse an inappropriately strong emotional reaction, often with irritability and hostility.
7. The belief is, at the least, unlikely.
8. The patient is emotionally over-invested in the idea and it overwhelms other elements of his psyche (psychology).
9. The delusion, if acted out, often leads to behaviors which are abnormal and/or out of character, although perhaps understandable in the light of the delusional beliefs.
10. Individuals who know the patient will observe that his belief and behavior are uncharacteristic and alien.
Based on those criteria, religious belief in virtually all cases matches up with the official psychiatric definition for what constitutes a delusional belief - the hallmark and sole criteria of delusional disorder.
Your point about imaginary friends and them talking back isn't strictly accurate or relevant. Most religious people, even extremely religious people, don't actually hear God or any other supernatural mythological entity talking to them - they just claim to feel them emotionally guiding them.
However, many people classified as prophets and saints could easily be classified as schizophrenics - schizophrenia being closely related to delusional disorder, but with disorganized thinking and hallucinations. St. Francis, for instance, experienced "stigmata" in private (basically, he cut himself to give himself the wounds of Christ, but no one ever witnessed them spontaneously appear), and his transformation into someone who had the stigmata and heard God talk to him occurred after a period of severe fever and delirium when he was involved in the Crusades as a warrior. He not only respected the lives of animals (which is good, and normal), but also called rocks, the Moon, the Sun, Earth, and even Death is brothers and sisters. He also was pretty clearly sexist, but that probably was more a sign of the times than his illness.
ummm i have trichotoillomania
but i don't think that has any correlation with my religion.
i think it's great and all that you think you're pretty smart and funny
but the thing is, not many other people will agree
so it's probably best to keep your dumb questions to yourself
people who are internalized are often hard to persuay but if the person is talking to someone who isn't there then they are probably schizophrenic
You're confusing belief and schizoid disorders. Just because you don't like something, doesn't make everyone who does crazy.
What you're describing is called psychosis - an umbrella term for having all kinds of delusions, hallucinations, etc.
I don't know how much it applies to NORMAL religious people though. There's nothing wrong with believing in something bigger than yourself, but I tend to agree with you that there's something wrong when religion is taken to the extreme...
*yawn* Joan of Arcimania.
In order to be diagnosed, there must be impairment in functioning of an occupation, interpersonal life, leisure life, and social life. The impairment is based on personal discomfort not just outside observations. Most religious people will not report faith as an impairment to their functioning. Therefore, they would not be diagnosable.
Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality, most commonly manifesting as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions or disorganized speech and thinking in the context of significant social or occupational dysfunction.
I think it fits pretty well. They have impairments in the perception or expression or reality, and we know this to be true because of their subjective claims. We also know that they are socially and sometimes occupationally dysfunctional due to the mistreatment many receive at their hands. How many gays, atheist and sinners must suffer their abuse before these people are considered mentally impaired. How many more planes have to be flown into buildings? How many more people have to blow themselves up, before they are given treatment? Granted, many Christians of today have better control of their social dysfunctions than some of other religions, but that hold is tenuous at best. I promise you that it would only take one influential leader to have certain Christians committing acts which we would find atrocious.
What psychological disorder would apply to religious people?
Ask the George Bush, Jr. Texas Methodist Republican Party White House which invented the Office of Faiths-Based Initiatives:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/fbc...
http://www.ed.gov/about/inits/list/fbci/...
---
Ask John Bunyan and Shakespeare. They both had pretty active imaginations.
---
There may be a connection between some of the epilepsies (TLE - Temporal Lobe Epilepsy/Complex Partial Seizures) with visions - religious visions in a few people (not everyone and also not everyone with epilepsy).
http://www.ellenwhiteexposed.com/headinj...
http://www.ellenwhiteexposed.com/seizure...
Whether the religious person has it wrong is not the point.
Atheists on their own are stupid about God.
psychological disorder?
how about just saying they have faith!
does anything which science can never probally understand have to have an scientific answer ?
Dillusion
wow.