Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
June 12, 2025
Etzel Cardeña, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Katja Valli et al.
11 citations
This article presents a taxonomy of altered states of consciousness, primarily based on their central phenomenological features. Following taxonomic principles and a modified Delphi methodology, a multidisciplinary, international group identified eight distinct phenomenological/behavioral states (some with subcategories): proto and transitional, delirium, minimal to no awareness, experiential...
Cognitive Science
December 1, 2024
Eleanor Schille-Hudson, Kara Weisman, Tanya M Luhrmann
11 citations
Prayer, a repeated practice of paying attention to one's inner mental world, is a core behavior across many faiths and traditions, understudied by cognitive scientists. Previous research suggests that humans pray because prayer changes the way they feel or how they think. This paper makes a novel argument: that prayer changes what they feel that they perceive. Those who pray, we find, are more...
Culture Medicine and Psychiatry
November 30, 2023
Tanya M Luhrmann, John Dulin, Vivian Dzokoto
8 citations
This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may have a schizophrenia-like psychotic process which is managed or mitigated by their religious practice, in that they are able to function effectively and are not identified by their community as ill. We conducted careful phenomenological interviews, in conjunction with a novel probe, with okomfo,...
Schizophr Bull
February 1, 2023
Tanya M Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Ann Chen et al.
AbstractThere are communities in which hearing voices frequently is common and expected, and in which participants are not expected to have a need for care. This paper compares the ideas and practices of these communities. We observe that these communities utilize cultural models to identify and to explain voice-like events—and that there are some common features to these models across...
Schizophrenia Bulletin Open
2023
Tanya M Luhrmann, Xialing Ann Chen, David Baumeister et al.
5 citations
We present a mixed-methods study, from an anthropological perspective, of 22 healthy voice-hearers ie, people who report hearing voices but have no need for clinical care. They were interviewed using the Varieties Of Individual Voice-Experiences Scale (VOICES), a new scale assessing phenomenology, beliefs and relationships with voices, and their emotional and behavioral impact. Despite in many...
Psychosis
January 6, 2022
Julia G. Lebovitz, Chris Ahnallen, Tanya M Luhrmann
1 citation
Background The content of auditory hallucinations (AHs) and delusions is malleable and reflects the social environment and the local culture. COVID-19 is a significant new feature of the social environment, yet research has not yet determined how the phenomenology of psychosis has changed since the COVID-19 outbreak.Methods Adult patients (N = 17) receiving care within an acute inpatient...
Terrain
2022
Tanya M Luhrmann
1 citation
The phenomenology of psychosis is notoriously difficult to grasp. I offer here a case study of psychotic voices in which neither words nor voice proper figures prominently. I reflect on the strangeness of these experiences, and then point to the features of voice-hearing which I take to be of central importance: not-me-ness, a different realness, and presence. When it begins, madness can feel...
The International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis
2020
Michael Lifshitz, Joshua Brahinsky, Tanya M Luhrmann
The science of contemplation has focused on mindfulness in a manner quite disproportionate to its use in contemplative traditions. Mindfulness, as understood within the scientific community, is a practice that invites practitioners to disattend to words and images. The practitioner is meant to experience things as they "really are," unfolding here and now in the flux of embodied sensations. Yet...
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2019
Michael Lifshitz, Michiel van Elk, Tanya M Luhrmann
162 citations
Some people seem to have a 'talent' for spiritual experience: they readily sense the presence of supernatural beings, receive special messages from God, and report intense feelings of self-transcendence, awe and wonder. Here we review converging strands of evidence to argue that the trait of 'absorption' captures a general proclivity for having spiritual experiences. Participants scoring highly...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
August 8, 2018
Tanya M Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Vaughan Bell et al.
74 citations
That trauma can play a significant role in the onset and maintenance of voice-hearing is one of the most striking and important developments in the recent study of psychosis. Yet the finding that trauma increases the risk for hallucination and for psychosis is quite different from the claim that trauma is necessary for either to occur. Trauma is often but not always associated with...