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Religious delusion - definition, causes and diagnosis
We call it delusion when people pathologically distort reality. Those affected fanatically cling to convictions that can be refuted without fault - even against their own life experiences and their own logic. Religious delusion occurs when those concerned view these systematically false imaginations as the influence of supernatural powers.
contents
- What is delusion?
- Healthy madness
- Religious delusional disorders
- Delusion and faith
- wish and reality
- win and loss
- Delusional explanations are better than none?
- Apparent certainty
- Religion and Delusion - Identical twins
- Paranoid delusions
- When does religious delusion become dangerous??
- How do you recognize religious delusion?
- Delusions and religions
- Religious mania, demonic depression
- Delusions and obsessions
- brain damage
- diagnosis
- hazards
- How does the doctor recognize the disease??
- When to the doctor?
- treatment
What is delusion?
A general definition of delusion does not exist until today. Typical features that are considered to be symptoms of delusional ideas are, first, an extraordinary subjective conviction that verifiable misconceptions are true, secondly that they are neither revised by experience nor by compelling conclusions, and third, that the content is impossible.
Established faith (for example in prayer) is combined with religious fiction with one's own fiction, whereby a delusional "over-interpretation" of the (own) divine role takes place. (Image: FS-Stock / fotolia.com) Healthy madness
Delusional ideas are not a detached phenomenon of "insane people", but mentally healthy people are also affected again and again. These are typically the ideas of people who otherwise get along well in everyday life, but who believe, for example, that secret powers are after them.
Delusionality is deeply human. Humans organize their environment into constructions of consciousness that they craft together from a plethora of unconscious perceptions. So, because we are human beings, we always create a fictive world that never shows an "objective reality".
As with other mental disorders, this is considered pathological in modern psychology only when those affected suffer because the delusions limit their way of life. A delusional disorder indicates that a single delusion or various related delusions persist for a long time. The contents can be very different.
Religious delusional disorders
Here the delusions have religious content. Those affected often believe that they are chosen and / or receive a healing mandate from supernatural powers. Or they think they are being persecuted by demonic forces. Then it is often difficult to distinguish religious delusion from paranoid schizophrenia. One third of all people with extreme psychosis (nothing else is schizophrenia) develop religious fantasies. Religious mania flows into other delusions such as megalomania.
A delusion criterion is the objective impossibility of the content, combined with the fact that it is not provable or can be easily refuted. But both are also hallmarks of religions. Psychiatry therefore only speaks of a religious delusion, if the contents are firstly outside the culture-immanent horizon of experience and secondly not accepted in a larger group.
In other words, in a society where the belief in witchcraft is established, as in Papua New Guinea, we can not call anyone delusional that magically harms a magician. It is rather a culture-immanent explanation. Although the content of the idea is impossible from the outside, it is considered logical within culture.
Wizards and other supernatural beings are firmly anchored in some belief cultures. To fear it does not make the faithful delusional. (Image: Andrey Kiselev / fotolia.com) Delusion and faith
Religiosity and the delusion associated with it can also be distinguished by the uncorrectability of the delusions, although the transitions are difficult to determine. Religious dogmas represent believers with the same fervor as delusional fantasies, and in both cases, beliefs are incompatible with everyday experience and science. Whether it's Muhammad riding the sky with a winged horse, Mary's Immaculate Conception, or otherworldly journeys.
The unconditional belief in the supernatural and delusional also agree that both refute scientifically valid explanations for their imaginations: Neurobiology can explain exactly which biochemical processes take place in a supposed experience of the beyond, and it can already be proven that it is the "bloody tears" of a saint figure around oxidized iron - the believer will nevertheless be convinced of the supernatural character.
wish and reality
For a psychiatric diagnosis, the limitation of the person affected in his personal life is decisive. A Mormon, a Christian Orthodox, or a devout Hindu will usually cope with their ideas in their professional and private lives. Pathologically, when the sufferers are completely fixated on the delusions, they refuse any reflection on alternative explanations and repeat their delusions as a monologue in continuous loops: they do not engage in dialogue, and when someone listens to them, they only wind what they are tell yourself permanently.
Typically, delusionality occurs in life crises. So, like all mental disorders, it makes perfect sense. He thrives in the contradiction between reality and desire. The delusional now filters reality through its own imaginations. Behind this there is often helplessness, the reality is unbearable for them. Here, delusional patients overlap with mentally healthier people whose brains also use this trick: After a breakup, the death of our partner and even life-threatening injuries, we regularly go through the period of denial first. The brain does not yet allow it to become conscious that the deceased is gone.
In life crises, such as the death of close relatives, similar patterns of repression and denial work in the mentally healthy as in delusional patients. (Image: fizkes / fotolia.com) This is precisely where the difference between a temporary fading out of reality and a delusional disorder is revealed. For example, a religious delusion could build up if those affected did not come out of the first phase of mourning, denial - like a mother who is fanatically fixated on living on a life-lost child as an angel on earth.
Religiously relented Wahnerkrankte therefore fail to overcome crises. The patients first resist their reality with their imaginations, but in the second step they do not correct these imaginings, but they continue to increase into them, all the more, the more their ideas oppose the experienceable reality. The delusional become more and more self-centered: those who straighten their misconceptions have no idea in their eyes. They are like the joke of the man who hears on the radio: "On the highway comes to meet a ghost driver" and says: "One? Thousands! "
The motor for the delusion is to displace the unloved reality by their own fantasies. Once this pattern has been fixed, the delusional is cementing his missing content all the more. So he refuses to admit that he is wrong.
win and loss
At the beginning there is the supposed certainty. The delusion creates false security. In place of the knowledge of not knowing something, the illusion of knowing it occurs. Religious delusions go along with conspiracy delusions and overlap with paranoia - because no one is as convinced of knowing reality as a paranoid. Delusional illusion seduces when linked to the supernatural. The religion now provides "explanations" for the wrong content and gives it an additional "size".
For example, two women who both suffered from borderline syndrome and were both severely traumatized (through the experience of sexual violence at a young age) believed that they were in fact angels suffering on earth and that suffering was a divine test for them. Delusion and religion together take on the task of providing false security and explanation.
Delusional explanations are better than none?
In the psychiatric sense, delusional and "not disturbed" lie as close to each other in the motor of the dawning delusion as "disturbed" and "healthy" flock around madness and religiosity. Our brain is constantly producing patterns in which we move in our environment. Whether they are objectively correct does not matter. And for crises applies to all people in the world of our unconscious: An explanation is better than none. Whether this explanation is correct is unimportant. What is important is that it provides us with an orientation, a goal in mind, provides us with certainty and thus gives us the opportunity to decide. Associating unconscious content, the so-called quick thinking, often even leads to the goal. Slow thinking and critical reflections cost more energy and time.
Apparent certainty
If religiosity and delusions now fire each other, the patients get lost in a labyrinth from which they can barely come out even with professional help. Those affected have already invested a lot of power in their mistake. The longer they maintain their delusion, the more difficult it becomes to realize that it is a mistake. Instead, they fix themselves more and more on the error, a negative cycle begins. The sufferers are getting lost in their delusions just to gain alleged security. At the beginning, they often suspect that they might be wrong. However, they suppress this notion by believing (wanting) all the more fanatically of their error and by allowing less and less arguments from outside. Certainty is apparent, but the fear of losing it is too great. For the uncertainty appears the greater, the greater the error. At some point, the delusions solidify into a self-contained delusion of the world.
The longer sufferers remain in their delusions, the more difficult they come out of this labyrinth again. At some point, delusional ideas solidify into a closed world view. (Image: ra2 studio / fotolia.com) Religion and Delusion - Identical twins
Every idea can become a delusion. We all know people who hold on to ideas, even though they are showered with contradictory evidence (this also applies to ourselves). Studies also showed that people absorb what fits in their world view and hide what does not fit. We talk about fixed ideas, and these go seamlessly into delusions.
While in principle every idea can develop into a delusion, delusions usually revolve around existential topics such as the position of man in the world. And since religions provide irrational explanations for precisely these questions, religiosity and delusion are identical twins.
Typical topics for delusions are self-determination versus destiny, reward and punishment, meaning or being nothing, belonging and exclusion, life and death, this world and the beyond, the visible and invisible world.
Paranoid delusions
The paranoid delusion is the most common of all delusional symptoms, blended with religious fantasies - religious figures such as demons, devils or witches appear as if they had sprung from delusional paranoia. Those who suffer believe that dark powers persecute them. While the persecution fantasy is rooted in fears, the delusion provides apparent certainty - those affected gain "self-determination" by seeing through the "evil forces".
Religiosity also mingles with megalomania, especially as a messianic illusion. The patients acquire a supposedly higher intrinsic value by viewing themselves as the "reincarnation of St. Francis," prophets, or "messengers of God." In fact, there are some indications that many gurus, "holy men" and religious founders are suffering and suffering from delusions, especially paranoia and megalomania, but also delusions of vocation and descent.
When does religious delusion become dangerous??
Like all delusions, religious delusionality may be fleeting; whether it is that people only have fixed ideas in a particular area, whether they see a mistake. What matters is whether psychic processes allow the insight that they have gone astray.
In religious as well as non-religious people, six factors are involved in creating a delusion of long-term disorder. Thus, first, the delusion is linked to a basic psychological conflict: a person with an inferiority complex compensates this with the delusional idea of being an unrecognized "warrior of God." Once the delusion has been fixed, delusion and basic conflict together create a wall that can hardly be broken by psychotherapy.
Secondly, a delusion can become fixed if it connects with thoughts that the affected person had before and thus seems all the more logical - for those affected.
Third, who does not accept himself, is particularly at risk for religious delusions.
Fourthly, insane ideas consolidate when those affected have a psychological interest in it, that is, when delusion originally served to reach a certain goal.
Fifth, religious delusion is often linked to problems of those affected to perceive themselves and to experiences in social relationships. Here, for example, someone develops the delusion of "being different because he has an order from higher powers" when he encounters defensiveness on account of his inadequate social behavior.
Sixth are endangered by people who, in any case, are self-centered about their environment and refer to events that have nothing to do with them. In the delusion, this then glides over to see yourself as the "chosen one.".
Religious delusion becomes dangerous to patients (and others) when the delusion merges with the poles of the basic conflict. Now a pathological coordinate system is formed in which the patients no longer distinguish the ego and the outside world, reality and fantasy.
Social behavior and social acceptance are closely linked to religious delusion. Exclusion confirms the role of being "someone special". (Image: fizkes / fotolia.com) How do you recognize religious delusion?
You recognize a delusion in the fact that those involved explain opinions to the absolute truth and reject any other possible view - so delusional create a hermetically sealed-off thought space. Early signs are temporary hallucinations in which, on the way to delusion, for example, people believe they hear hidden messages about the approaching end of the world.
Are you in close relationship with the sick person? Then you will notice a change of essence: she or he feels friends and relatives who "no longer understand the truth" no longer belong, suffers and loses in their own imagination, in which everything is related to itself. The patients no longer see themselves as the center of their own experience, but of the events of the world.
While these people alienate themselves from them, whether spouse, friend or colleague, they feel a fictitious affiliation with the imagined powers that "guide" or "persecute" them. For outsiders it looks like someone is talking to himself, "on alert", sensing "invisible" dangers or suddenly intervening in conversations, whereby what is said has nothing to do with the topic - those involved associate their delusions into relationships. These insertions in everyday conversations of others have to do with "supernatural".
Delusionality is especially noticeable if you want to help those affected. For example, if the person has left their door key in the café and is convinced that mystical villains stole it, it will not be relieved to bring her the key and show her that she was wrong. In this the delusion differs from mere error. If a bad suspicion turns out to be unfounded, people usually enjoy themselves when they enlighten themselves. This is quite different with religious delusion: the systematically delusional shows an overwhelming unconscious interest in maintaining its distorted coordinate system. This becomes all too clear when it comes to religious vocation: anyone who thinks of himself as a saint, Messiah or tool of God defends this from banal explanations.
Even if the person sees himself persecuted by demons, it depresses their condition less than the confrontation with reality. Patients with religious delusions often alternate between apparent dialogues (using others as stooges for their fantasy system) and monologues with the same content.
Delusions and religions
The above remarks already point out: Whether a person with the same symptoms is considered a madman or a saint has much to do with whether a culture interprets such states as supernatural inspirations. Many creators of culture, founders of religions, and prophets displayed behaviors that we psychologically consider delusional: they heard voices like psychosis, and they felt persecuted by beings no one else could see except them.
Dogmatic cults systematically promote delusions. Religious fundamentalism is nothing but induced delusion. Anyone who promises salvation for unconditional faith like the monotheistic religions demands nothing more than a delusional perception of reality. Religious dogmas are just as absolute as an individual delusion. Such dogmas indicate that firstly they can not be proven, and secondly, that every doubt is considered heresy. Religious leaders claim to be infallible - that, too, is a key element of delusional symptoms. Religious fundamentalism, like individual delusion, is a pathological solution to a psychic conflict.
In the therapeutic sense, a religious delusion is present in an individual when he believes that he himself has a personal mandate from a deity to intervene in world affairs. Meanwhile, the self-understanding of revelatory religions that certain people had and have exactly these orders, whether Jesus, Paul or Mohammed.
To feel persecuted by beings that do not exist can also be interpreted in a culture as a supernatural inspiration, as in some prophets in the past. (Image: Andy Nowack / fotolia.com) Religious mania, demonic depression
(Religious) delusional symptoms are usually not a disease of their own, but a symptom of mental disorders such as bipolarity (bipolar disorder), borderline, depression or severe psychosis. For example, a person suffering from severe depression may develop a delusion of delusion and believe that he must go through hell on earth because he can never repay his sins.
Or else a bipolar is walking through the city in a manic phase, believing he is Saint Francis and needs to heal the world. Or a schizophrenic (extreme psychosis) sufferer finds himself surrounded by black magicians, vampires, and evil priests. Or a person with a general anxiety disorder is afraid of demons lurking in subway shafts. Or a woman suffering from borderline syndrome thinks that her states of dissociation, that she has no control over her actions and can not remember afterwards, are journeys into the world of the hereafter.
In patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, 30 percent of their wishing experiences are religious, and religious delusion is one of the most common delusions.
Delusions and obsessions
Religious delusions and compulsive thoughts make people aware of the problems: people who suffer from obsessive thoughts usually know that their thoughts are in conflict with the experience of reality. Quite different the delusional. Their faith is unshakable and every incident in the environment is filtered only in this pattern.
brain damage
It is not enough to derive individual delusion of religious content from belonging to an organized religion. Brain damage is often the cause, especially Alzheimer's and forms of dementia. These are not purely mental illnesses, but brain organic changes.
diagnosis
When doctors diagnose religious delusions, they separate them from religious beliefs in that the delusional ones do not give creeds, but regard impossible perceptions as absolute knowledge. Although the borderline between the healthy, the devout and the insane is fluent, for the therapeutic practice decides the possibility of those affected to assess themselves and judge whether they need treatment or not.
The therapist is not concerned with religion itself being a "god-delusion," as evolutionary biology Richard Dawkins called his standard work. Rather, the focus here is on whether the patients adapt their own role within their frame of reference to a generally recognizable reality.
In short, a believer might well believe in the fight between God and the devil, but usually he will not assume that he is responsible for missing the bus to work in the morning. On the other hand, delusional sufferers are self-effacing and can not even distance themselves in detail from their fixed ideas.
In the medical sense, religious delusion has nothing to do with deep religiosity (even atheists can suffer such delusional symptoms). It is, however, the result of a disease-related experience, independent of cultural influences: the number of people with religious delusions within severe psychoses is proportional in all societies.
For the therapeutic practice, it is important to what extent the affected can judge for themselves whether they need a treatment. (Image: Kzenon / fotolia.com) hazards
Religious delusion brings countless problems. Obviously, the loss of social relationships: friends turn away because they can no longer connect to the delusional world of those affected, bosses no longer consider diseased employees to be viable in almost all professions in which the sick have to deal with people they no longer work in their delusion. This is true of an educator who tells children that she is an angel who saves the world, as well as a caretaker who believes that in the basement of the building entrusted to him lives the devil, a shop assistant who accuses clients of hexing them or a secretary who fumigates the office for her boss to "drive away the demons".
Sufferers may injure themselves and others, either by whipping themselves for alleged sins or even believing "God requires them" to squash their testicles.
The sick are so fixated on their delusions that they neglect their other areas of life: The apartment neglected, they do not pay the rent, forget to buy food, do not wash, do not give their tax return. Without early help, homelessness, job loss and social isolation can result. All episodes are all the more difficult, because the ills because of their madness, the patients are not able to take steps themselves to get out of these abysses again.
How does the doctor recognize the disease??
People who suffer from religious delusion are hardly going to the doctor for their delusion. For example, they go to a doctor because they can not sleep anymore. Or relatives take the patients to the hospital for refusing food.
When to the doctor?
People with religious delusions rarely have an insight into their disease. It is up to relatives, partners or friends to seek medical help. For these are warning signs when those concerned bother outsiders, holding monologues, unasked influence their environment, offend, behave aggressively and or injure themselves and bring themselves into dangerous situations.
treatment
For religious delusion, it's all about the sick show insight and realize that they are sick. Once this hurdle has been overcome, therapies can take effect.
Religious delusion is a symptom, the underlying disease is treated. In extreme psychoses, drugs prove to be successful, with mood disorders also sociotherapies, ergotherapies and behavioral therapies are announced. Working therapies are considered to be helpful in the case of Wahner illnesses, because the affected person can thus get back into a structured everyday life that lacks them and liberates them from the coordinate system of their imagination.
Psychotherapies are supposed to strengthen self-acceptance and self-organization, since in many delusions, unresolved conflicts with one's own self-image play a role. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)