God-representations, mystical addictions and spiritual bypasses
Gideon Lev
Routledge eBooks January 31, 2023 DOI: 10.4324/9781003090939-7 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Addiction |
| Key points | Proposes an "adaptive" psychoanalytic approach in which spiritual experience is treated as a human experience that psychoanalysis can improve and intensify, without psychoanalysis itself aiming at spiritual growth. The chapter discusses altering the patient's god-representation and recognizing and treating spiritual pathologies as spiritually adaptive avenues. |
Abstract
Psychoanalysis used to hold a critical, reductive approach towards religion. Lately, however, one can find two other approaches: adaptive and transformative. An “adaptive” psychoanalytic approach to spirituality, described in this chapter, refers to the spiritual experience as any kind of human experience, which psychoanalysis can improve and intensify. Psychoanalysis, in this sense, is not perceived as aspiring to directly contribute to spiritual growth, but as a possible means to enable analysands to experience more fully the wide horizon of human existence, which also includes the transcendent. Spiritually adaptive avenues that are discussed here are altering the patient&s;s god-representation and the recognition and treatment of spiritual pathologies.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on addiction, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychedelics as Medicines: An Emerging New Paradigm General population | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Restructuring reward processing with Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement: novel therapeutic mechanisms to remediate hedonic dysregulation in addiction, stress, and pain. | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Ayahuasca’s entwined efficacy: An ethnographic study of ritual healing from ‘addiction’ | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Hypotheses Regarding the Mechanisms of Ayahuasca in the Treatment of Addictions | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Biosynthesis of an Anti-Addiction Agent from the Iboga Plant. | 2019 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |