The Journal of medical humanities
September 1, 2020
Mohammed Abouelleil Rashed
17 citations
Spirit possession, a global phenomenon where a non-corporeal agent interacts with a human host, can cause maladies or displace a person's agency and identity. Drawing on fieldwork in Egypt, this paper links spirit possession to concepts of personhood and intentionality, extending Daniel Dennett's intentional stance. It proposes the 'spirit stance': an intentional strategy that explains behavior by attributing beliefs and desires to a spirit agent, but only invoked when a person's mental states fail normative distinctions. Applied to behaviors often labeled as mental disorder, this stance preserves intentionality where otherwise a malfunctioning physical mechanism would be blamed. Long before modern psychoanalysis restored meaning to madness, spirit possession socially preserved the intentionality of deviant behavior.
The Journal of medical humanities
December 1, 2016
Bradley Lewis
Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly used in healthcare for stress reduction and improved health, but their religious and spiritual roots are often downplayed. This article uses medical humanities and narrative medicine to rebalance this trend, exploring mindfulness as a bridge between medical and spiritual approaches to suffering. The author examines historical, linguistic, and philosophic dimensions of mindfulness and mysticism related to illness, suffering, death, and dying. Two case examples illustrate mindfulness used as an intentionally spiritual practice for health concerns.
The Journal of medical humanities
September 1, 2014
Niall McCrae, Rob Whitley
Religiosity is a prominent feature of Geschwind syndrome, a behavioral pattern in some temporal lobe epilepsy cases. Since Wilder Penfield induced spiritual feelings by manipulating the temporal lobes in the 1950s, brain imaging has revealed neural correlates of intense emotional states, spurring neurotheology. Psychiatry, neurology, and psychology tend to pathologize deviant religious expression, reinforcing dualism between objective and phenomenal worlds. Considering theological perspectives and cosmic consciousness, the authors urge a holistic approach to spiritual events of epileptic aura, potentially deepening understanding of the mind and its transcendent potential.