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01-02-2020 | Original Paper

Self-Transformation at the Boundary of Religious Conversion and Psychosis

Author: Szabolcs Kéri

Published in: Journal of Religion and Health | Issue 1/2020

Abstract

The relationship between religious conversion, as a form of spiritual emergency, and psychosis is one of the fundamental issues at the meeting point of theology and clinical psychology. In the present study, we assessed 53 individuals referred to a psychiatry center with the initial diagnosis of a psychotic episode by focusing on the clinical diagnosis (psychosis vs. spiritual emergency), subjective experiences (basic symptoms), and neuropsychological functions. Twenty-nine individuals meet the diagnosis of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, but 24 persons experienced only religious and spiritual problems (religious conversion). Both groups reported similar levels of perplexity (e.g., ambivalence, inability to discriminate between own feelings, and hyperreflectivity) and self-disorder (e.g., depersonalization, impression of a change in one’s mirror image, and experience of discontinuity in own action). Diminished affectivity, disturbed contact, and perceptual/cognitive disorders were pronounced in psychosis, whereas anxiety and depressive symptoms were more severe in people with spiritual and religious problems. These results indicate that perplexity, self-disorder, and emotional turmoil are common features of turbulent religious conversion and psychosis, but a broader emergence of anomalous subjective experiences and cognitive deficits are detectable only in psychosis.

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Title: Self-Transformation at the Boundary of Religious Conversion and Psychosis
Author: Szabolcs Kéri
Publication date: 01-02-2020
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Journal of Religion and Health / Issue 1/2020
Print ISSN: 0022-4197
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6571
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-017-0496-8

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Self-Transformation at the Boundary of Religious Conversion and Psychosis

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