Spiritualizing psychiatry: Transpersonal psychology, DSM, and Brazilian research about spirituality

Abstract

This article analyzes the trajectory of the diagnostic category ‘Religious or Spiritual Problem’, included in 1994 in the 4th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the main diagnostic manual of North American psychiatry. Three moments of this trajectory are highlighted here: the beginning with transpersonal psychology, the debate around its inclusion in the DSM-IV, and the mobilization of the category in psychiatric research about spirituality in Brazil. Drawing on an array of material gathered through archival, bibliographical, and ethnographic research, I point out that the trajectory of ‘Religious or Spiritual Problem’ mirrors the shifts in spirituality scholarly debates in social sciences, from New Age practices to their institutionalized forms. Although psychiatry is known to historically pathologize religious or spiritual experience, I argue that the mobilization of such category acts toward legitimizing contemporary psychiatric research about spirituality.