Transes, crises e diagnósticos

Summary

The research examines debates among psychiatrists and psychologists regarding the classification of religious and spiritual experiences in the DSM, specifically focusing on the categories 'religious or spiritual problem' and 'dissociative trance disorder' created in 1994. It analyzes how these diagnoses frame such experiences as either normal or pathological, and explores their connections to transpersonal psychology and psychological dissociation. The study aims to clarify evolving psychological interpretations of phenomena like religious trance and spiritual possession.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The object of this research is the recent debates carried out by psychiatrists and psychologists around the theme of religion and spirituality. The empirical focus is the creation, of two diagnostic categories in the main guide to psychiatric diagnoses in the United States, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in 1994: "religious or spiritual problem" and "dissociative trance disorder". The analysis focuses on how the proponents of these two diagnoses articulate a series of psychological and anthropological concepts, conceptualizing religious and spiritual experiences as normal phenomena or as psychopathologies. It is also of interest the relation of their productions in the field of transpersonal psychology and in studies on psychological dissociation. From the reading of scientific articles, academic works, and interviews, we seek to understand how new and distinct psychological understandings about phenomena such as religious trance, spiritual possession, and transcendental experience are produced.

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