Phenomenology of religion and spirituality and its impact upon the human spirit.
Journal of Religion and Health June 1, 2010
Phenomenology of religion and spirituality and its impact upon the human spirit.
Journal of Religion and Health
ISSN 1573-6571, 0022-4197
99 papers in the library · 658 citations · publishing 1982-2026
Papers
The Huichol offering: a shamanic healing journey.
Journal of Religion and Health June 1, 2009 Carl Allen Hammerschlag 7 citations
An American transcultural psychiatrist, and a Mexican engineer deeply involved with the Huichol Indians, build a team that heals a decade-long epidemic caused by sorcery. Huichol children in boarding schools became possessed by demonic witchcraft that transformed them into aggressive animals. Many local shaman had been called in to treat the illness but had been unsuccessful. The team found a...
William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience revisited.
Journal of Religion and Health December 1, 2008 Curtis W Hart 6 citations
This essay addresses the familial, religious, and cultural context for the writing and presentation of William James' classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience. The essay emphasizes the importance of the impact of Henry James, Senior, upon his son. This relationship along with a severe cardiac condition contributed to James' taking on and carrying through with his exploration of...
South African Muslim Faith Healers perceptions of mental illness: understanding, aetiology and treatment.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 2008 Yaseen Ally, Sumaya Laher 77 citations
The important role that religious beliefs may have on perceptions of mental illness cannot be ignored. Many religions including Islam advocate witchcraft and spirit possession--all of which are thought to influence the behaviour of a person so as to resemble that of a mentally ill individual. Thus this research explored Muslim Faith Healers perceptions of mental and spiritual illness in terms...
Taxonomy of Spiritual Experiences
Journal of Religion and Health June 1, 2006 Diane Wind Wardell, Joan C. Engebretson
Spiritual experiences are often associated with health crises, with little information about the structure of the experience. A taxonomic analysis was conducted on data from a group of healers, unveiling a structural model of spiritual experience comprised of three domains: circumstances, manifestation and interpretation. Circumstances included the aspects of setting, situation, and timing....
DOI: 10.1007/s10943-006-9021-1 (opens in new tab)
Full text (opens in new tab)
Spiritual experience
Taxonomy
Qualitative analysis
Noetic
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The unification of consciousness: Approaches to the healing of dissociation.
Journal of Religion and Health September 1, 1995 C H Rosik
This study examines the process of unifying consciousness as described in the Christian mystical tradition and in the psychological treatment of dissociative identity disorder (DID). A comparison of the experience of the self in the contemplative and the DID patient is also undertaken to emphasize points of continuity. The present analysis proposes that differentiating first-order dissociation...
Spiritual issues in anxiety states.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1993 I M Rosen
This overview points to large areas of human concern that cannot be bounded by the biomedical, behavioral, and narrowly cognitive approaches that characterize current understanding and treatment of anxiety disorders. I look at some aspects of existential, wholistic, and transpersonal psychology that I have found especially useful in enhancing therapy of the anxiety spectrum.
Transitional phenomena as evidenced in prayer.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1993 M S Saur, W G Saur
In this paper, we demonstrate that the study of prayer facilitates understanding of the deeply personal object related nature of religious experience. Within prayer, individuals enter the transitional sphere and meet their God representation. Both conscious and unconscious aspects of prayer can be made available through the use of a projective test developed by the authors, known as STARR:...
Near-death experiences and the physio-kundalini syndrome
Journal of Religion and Health 1993 Bruce Greyson 33 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs), transcendental experiences on the threshold of death with profound implications for both patient care and religious belief, have been hypothesized to be related to the awakening of a biological process known in Eastern traditions as kundalini. In a test of this proposed association between kundalini and NDEs, a sample of near-death experiencers acknowledged...
Mysticism and psychedelics: The case of the dark night
Journal of Religion and Health 1991 Christopher M. Bache 6 citations
This study uses a model of consciousness derived from LSD-assisted psychotherapy to illumine an enigmatic set of painful experiences that occur on the mystic's path known in Western circles as the "dark night." It argues that the dark night experiences described in John of the Cross's classic workDark Night of the Soul can be conceptualized in terms of Stanislav Grofs category of "perinatal...
Religious experience and public cult: The case of Mary Ann Van Hoof.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1989 S L Zimdars-Swartz
This study focuses on the first year (1950) of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary reported by Mary Ann Van Hoof of Necedah, Wisconsin. It argues that Van Hoof's experiences met not simply the needs of the community-at-large, but also helped the seer draw meaning from an emotionally-deprived and abusive childhood. The study concludes by suggesting that public serial apparitions are complex...
Religious and therapeutic elements in Sufi teaching stories.
Journal of Religion and Health September 1, 1988 J R King
Like the teaching stories of many other religions-the parables of Jesus, Zen koans, Hasidic tales-the stories of the Sufis, or Islamic mystics, offer important insights into the nature of religious experience and emotional well-being. This paper discusses the comments of selected Sufi tales on the basic structure of situations, non-rational or lateral problem-solving techniques, the process of...
The initiation ritual as a model for oncology counseling.
Journal of Religion and Health December 1, 1987 L A Lorenz, F J Sullivan
This article examines the use of the initiation ritual of primitive people, described in the works of Mircea Eliade, as a model for counseling cancer patients, giving both meaning and structure to the interactions between patient and counselor. Within this model the patient's encounter with death, whether feared or actualized, can be used as impetus toward personal growth, whatever the stage of...
The Buddha and the computer: Meditation in an age of information.
Journal of Religion and Health September 1, 1986 P Novak
Information overload is one of the factors behind current alarming statistics on stress. Meditation helps the body-mind resist the deleterious effects of the information onslaught. Though meditation is well known as a relaxation technique, its noetic value is often overlooked. Its benefits extend well beyond superficial soothing: it trains attention; it increases pattern recognition; and it...
Near-death experience as mystical experience.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1986 J Pennachio 31 citations
Near-death experience exhibits many attributes of mystical awareness. Assessing the mystical quality of psychedelic experience, Walter Pahnke identified a nine-category typology of mystical experience. It is used here to illustrate the mystical nature of near-death experience. The typology also describes the self-transformation which follows the mystical state of consciousness....
A reappraisal of Teresa of Avila's supposed hysteria.
Journal of Religion and Health December 1, 1985 C M Bache 18 citations
This essay offers a reassessment of Teresa's severe seizures which were such a characteristic feature of her mysticism. The diagnosis of hysteria is no longer viable, at the very least given its abandonment by clinicians. An alternative analysis is developed by phenomenologically comparing Teresa's seizures to parallel experiences of subjects in LSD-assisted psychotherapy. Using Stanislav...
Toward a model for spirituality and alcoholism.
Journal of Religion and Health September 1, 1984 G F Kohn
Spirituality is a significant factor in recovery from alcoholism, whatever definition of this condition one may use. One aspect of alcohol abuse is its apparent relationship to the balance between brain hemispheres. Excessive use of alcohol "anesthetizes" the object-based, language-oriented functions of the left hemisphere, associated with an "action mode" of consciousness. This allows greater...
"Soul-making" in a schizophrenic saint.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1984 J R Haule
"Soul-making" (cf. Jung and Hillman) is the process of integrating spiritual and bodily imagery into an intimated wholeness transcending conscious comprehension. Pierre Janet's case of the psychotic mystic, Madeleine, reveals that the patient had been "making" her own-soul even though his theory had no provision for soul. Janet's soul-stripping theory is contrasted with a soul-making approach,...
Psychotherapists and the clergy: Fifty years later.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1984 J M Spiegelman
Jung's two powerful articles on psychotherapy and the clergy, written in 1928 and 1932. are looked at from the vantage point of fifty years later and the author's experience in conducting analysis with many people from both vocations. He notes that relatively few people achieve the kind of integration of the ego that Jung writes about-an essentially religious experience-wherein the center of...
Neurology, psychology, and extraordinary religious experiences.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1984 D A Helminiak
Temporal lobe epilepsy and certain personality disorders often result in experiences described as "religious." TLE research suggests a possible neurological basis for such experiences. Immediately the question arises about the authenticity of these experiences as religious. An experience is authentic if it furthers the authentic growth of the subject, regardless of what triggered it. So...
Near-death experiences and religion: A further investigation
Journal of Religion and Health 1984 Steven A. McLaughlin, H. Newton Malony 31 citations
The relationship between religion and near-death experiencers (NDEs) was examined by interviewing 40 near-death experiences who were given a series of instruments to measure religious orientation and religious change. No relationship was found between religious orientation prior to the NDE and the depth of the NDE. However, a significant correlation was found between the depth of the NDE and a...
Recent studies of near-death experiences.
Journal of Religion and Health June 1, 1983 J J Heaney
This article consists of a summary of the central points in the work of recent investigators of near-death experiences (NDEs). It considers the work of Moody, Osis, Rawlings, Ring, Sabom, and Grof as well as the criticisms of Noyes and Siegel. The appearance of a common core in the experiences suggests the presence of more than ordinary hallucinations. However, NDEs seem to be not literal...
Madness as religious experience: The case of Allen Ginsberg.
Journal of Religion and Health June 1, 1982 M Wasserman
Various writers have considered madness to be a religious experience. On the basis of the literature in the area and conversations with psychiatric patients, it is argued that madness as a religious experience can be viewed as a four-stage developmental process. The four stages are: 1) The hurt-and-be-hurt state of being, 2) The self-induced psychedelic experience, 3) The confusion-and-dread...
A transpersonal critique of behaviorism.
Journal of Religion and Health March 1, 1982 E E Thornton
Behavioral psychology has been neglected by pastoral psychologists to the hurt of both. An examination of the principles of behaviorism and some of the data on the behavioral treatment of the neuroses is followed by an analysis of B.F. Skinner's philosophy of science. A critique is developed from the perspective of transpersonal psychology, concluding with a possible reconciliation of the...