Detachment: Gateway to the World of Spirituality

This qualitative study investigated attitudes and cultural responses to suicide among the Baganda in Uganda using both focus group discussions and key-informant interviews. Interviews indicate that suicide is perceived as dangerous to the whole family and the entire community. Communities and family members adopt various ritual practices to distance themselves both symbolically and socially from the suicide. These rituals are characterized by broad themes: the regulation of affect and the attempt to secure future generations.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distancing: A traditional mechanism of dealing with suicide among the Baganda, Uganda

Mugisha

Hjelmeland

Kinyanda

et al. 2011

“…Beyond recent interest in their putative biological correlatives (Bartocci & Dein, 2005), there has been little empirical attempt to look at the mechanisms involved in such religious experience. Luhrmann (2005) appeals to a psychological phenomenon of ''absorption'' to account for both spiritual experience and dissociative disorders: related both to dissociation and hypnotic states, this is the capacity to become absorbed in inner sensory stimuli and to lose a degree of external awareness.…”

Section: Alienation Of Personal Agency In Religion and Schizophreniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion and psychosis: A common evolutionary trajectory?

Dein

Littlewood

2011

Self Cite

In this article we propose that schizophrenia and religious cognition engage cognate mental modules in the over-attribution of agency and the overextension of theory of mind. We argue similarities and differences between assumptions of ultrahuman agents with omniscient minds and certain ''pathological'' forms of thinking in schizophrenia: thought insertion, withdrawal and broadcasting, and delusions of reference. In everyday religious cognition agency detection and theory of mind modules function ''normally,'' whereas in schizophrenia both modules are impaired. It is suggested that religion and schizophrenia have perhaps had a related evolutionary trajectory.

“…My focus has been on monotheistic religions in the West and has encompassed Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I have published widely on religious experience and psychopathology in both theoretical and research papers examining a number of religious themes: apocalyptic suicide (Dein & Littlewood, 2005), prayer and mental health (Dein, 2006b;Dein & Littlewood, 2008), The Dark Night of the Soul (Dura`Vila`, Dein, Littlewood, & Leavey, 2010), the evolution of religious cognition and schizophrenia (Dein & Littlewood [accepted for publication]), spirituality and psychiatry (Bartocci & Dein, 2005;Dein, 2005Dein, , 2006aDein, , 2006bDein, , 2007King & Dein, 1998) and ethnicity and religious coping (Bhui, King, & Dein, 2008). Below I present a selection of my research studies.…”

Section: Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drawing together psyche, soma and spirit: My career in cultural psychiatry

Dein

2011

Self Cite

In this article I discuss my career in cultural psychiatry. I begin by examining the influence of my personal background on my interests in cultural psychiatry and religion and health. I then discuss my research, which has focused upon two areas: the cognitive and phenomenological parallels between religious experiences and psychopathological states, and relationships between biomedicine and religious healing in diverse cultural contexts. Finally, I discuss plans for future research and teaching.