Wednesday 7 May 2008

Am I Normal?: Spirituality

In this TV programme, shown on the 28th of April, 2008, on BBC 2 at 9 p.m., as part of the documentary series Am I Normal?, Dr Tanya Byron explored what some consider the fine-line, between religious devotion and so-called psychiatric disorder. She began the programme, by asking what place does religious belief - which depends not on rational thinking and scientific proof, but simple faith - have in the modern world? She asked, are people who devote their lives to something that can never be proved, wasting their time?, and is the very idea of religious belief, evidence of flawed, or even demented, thinking?

Tanya Byron spoke to a street preaching born-again Christian, who when asked if he ever wondered that people might think he’s crazy, said that people who say this are crazy themselves, and trying to push their craziness and negativity onto others. She then spoke to a nun, who said that monastic isolation helped her to face her inner demons. The nun said that she knew her beliefs in God were true, but it was not something she knew with her head, but more similar to something a person knows with their heart.

Tanya Byron then said, that a lot of mental health professionals, say that a high percentage of people with diagnosed schizophrenia have religious beliefs, but that this helps them with their problems and life in general. A psychiatrist said that religion has had a bad press in psychiatry. Because of religious delusion, the psychiatrists tend to see spirituality as something that needs treating. The shrink continued by saying, that this prejudice about the religious beliefs, of people with mental health problems, stems from the fact that religion and science have been separated, in the history of psychiatry, and that we need to bring science and religion back together.

Former MP, and newspaper columnist, Matthew Paris said that he had no problem with many Christians, but that he got irritated with laziness of mind, using bad arguments, and finding comfort in something, that they know in some part of their brain just isn’t true.

Tanya Byron then mentioned that it has been said, that if you talk to God, then you are religious, but if God talks back to you, then you are a schizophrenic. Richard Benthal, the author of Madness Explained, said that we all have an inner voice, and that it’s well known in child development, that at age 2 we all start talking to ourselves. He said that diagnosed mad people are treated as another species, and considered that they are deluded, out-of-touch with reality, and that others have a privileged access to reality, and diagnosed mad people are seen as not responsible for their actions and need controlling.

Tanya Byron then said that, what if people who hear voices are not mad, but are just unhappy people who have had bad experiences in their lives, and that they need to be listened to, and not labelled as mad and feared. She attended the Manchester Hearing Voices group, who are working with the University of Manchester’s new research, to look at hearing voices in a new way.

Peter, from the Manchester Hearing Voices Group, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and been in a out of psychiatric hospitals, said that his negative voices, were taken over by more positive voices, of his mother and grandmother. He said that psychiatrists trying to suppress the experience of hearing voices, were not helpful, because we need to not fragment the voices, but integrate them - have a relationship with them - get to know the voices and understand them. Tanya Byron concluded the programme, by saying that we need to accept the spirituality of diagnosed mad people, and not label this as part of their diagnosed mental illness.

I thought it was a good programme, but I have one major criticism of it. It’s not a simple matter of religious belief on the one hand, and rational thinking on the other, or religion and science, and simply bringing the two together. It’s a slightly more complex matter, of the dialectical relationship between the two, and that they can be connected or related, and yet still remain very separate. As a writer, and experienced person on mental health matters and creativity, I am basically a rationalist and a scientist, but I also believe in creativity, and realise the importance of things like spirituality too, in order to further the rationalist and scientific quest.

As a voice hearer, I hear positive, educative, friendly, caring, and supportive voices, which are female. I need to have these hearing voices experiences for my own well-being, and to create and think fully and effectively, and I would be depressed and devastated without them. I often initially have to create the voices with my mind, by setting up a basic dialogue with another in my thoughts, and then the voices have some autonomy from my conscious thoughts, and engage in discussion and debate with me.

When I am not hearing the voices, I know that they are not real, and are just an extra function of my mind or brain, but whilst experiencing them as autonomous, and relating and engaging with them, I have to suspend rational thinking and belief, and believe that they are real people, otherwise I would not hear or experience them, and otherwise I would not be able to come up with new knowledge and findings, and write about them.

This means, that the rational belief aspect of the mind has to be suspended, for a different modality of thinking and feeling to take place, and in order for new rational and scientific thinking to occur. Even though this involves temporarily believing in things which do not exist, it is not laziness of mind, or bad argument, as Matthew Paris simply put it. It is often a much more complex, and more deeper way of thinking, which is a more dialectical thinking, and a different mode of consciousness.

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