In this article we propose that schizophrenia and religious cognition engage cognate mental modules in the over-attribution of agency and the overextension of theory of mind. We argue similarities and differences between assumptions of ultrahuman agents with omniscient minds and certain ''pathological'' forms of thinking in schizophrenia: thought insertion, withdrawal and broadcasting, and...
Anthropological ethnographies sometimes postulate that new religious ideas may originate in individual dreams, visions, or madness. An illustration is given of the foundation of the Earth People of Trinidad, for whom dreams may still contain prophetic insight or knowledge. Their oneiric understandings have to be placed against their cultural baseline of village dream theory and the dreamlike...
Concern among black and ethnic minorities with current research in ‘transcultural psychiatry’ entails future work taking into account their collaboration to minimise the possibility that it is prejudicial to their interests. An instance is given of a project initiated by black community groups which looks at psychiatric conceptualisations of a diagnosis commonly used locally in inner-city...