Debates on the distinction between religious experience and mental disorder tend to assume, rather than argue for, the existence of unique types of experience: the religious and the psychopathological. This paper interrogates this approach to the problem. It deconstructs the distinction by examining what the distinction is about beyond the terms in which it is presented and whether it matters...
Spirit possession is a common phenomenon around the world in which a non-corporeal agent is involved with a human host. This manifests in a range of maladies or in displacement of the host's agency and identity. Prompted by engagement with the phenomenon in Egypt, this paper draws connections between spirit possession and the concepts of personhood and intentionality. It employs these concepts...