The fact is that the mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever of its own. It is capable of forming matrimonial alliances with material furnished by the most diverse philosophies and theologies, provided only they can find a place in their framework for its peculiar emotional mood … So much for religious mysticism proper. But more remains to be told, for religious mysticism is only one half of mysticism. The other half has no accumulated traditions except those which the textbooks on insanity supply. Open any one of these, and you will find abundant cases in which “mystical ideas” are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded states of mind. (James 1902/1936, p. 417)

The opening quote from William James’ classic work The Varieties of Religious Experience demonstrates the conflation of mystical religious experience (MRE) with psychotic experience that began early in the twentieth century. In a pre-Freudian world, indeed in a pre-scientific age world, mystical experience did not pose such a problem. Mystical experience has been around since ancient times, and the MRE associated with the three Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, predates recorded history. According to von Rad (1972), the oldest source document for the Hebrew books of Genesis through Joshua, which contain many accounts of MRE, is the Yahwist source dating from 950 b.c.e. Plato (427–347 b.c.e.), contributed ideas that were major components in Christian mysticism (McGinn 1991; Tillich 1968). As Bernard McGinn noted, “Plato’s thought is characterized by a sharp distinction (although never an absolute separation) between the world of appearances and the world of Forms or Ideas, between doxa (opinion) and epistēmē (real knowledge), between temporality and unchanging immortality” (1991, p. 25). McGinn went on to remind that in Plato’s writings, “Love connects the heavenly and the earthly realms” (1991, p. 26). Platonic thought placed high value on mystical experience, believing that it gave evidence of a high level of personal development. Paul Tillich noted that Aristotle added to the Platonic tradition that “The divine is a form without matter, perfect to itself …. The highest form, called ‘God’, is moving the world, not causally by pushing it from the outside, but by driving everything finite toward him by means of love” (1968, p. 7). In the Christian monastic movement of the Middle Ages, MRE, such as that reported by Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Gregory of Nyssa, and Bernard of Clairvaux, was not only valued but considered indicative of advanced spirituality and overall well-being. But as the intellectualism of the turn of the twentieth century ushered in scientific interest in and approach to all areas of life, including the exploration of the mind and personality, MRE took on a much less favorable valance. Science had to do with the rational world and experiences of it that could be investigated using standard scientific means. Philosophical and religious thought gave way in importance to empirical knowledge. Sigmund Freud’s generally negative feeling toward religion became entangled with his new psychoanalytic theory, an entanglement he did not necessarily intend, and religious beliefs and experience became associated with psychological illness.

Seeing and hearing what is not materially present and interpretations of those experiences that ascribe reality to the non-material became hallmark symptoms of psychosis. Such experiences were also hallmark characteristics of MRE, but the science of the day overlooked qualitative difference between these symptoms and characteristics. Some members of the scientific community at that time questioned the association of MRE with pathology and moved to address the issue by revising psychoanalytic theory. But there were also those who maintained that the association of religion with pathology was correct. And so the debate continued and continues in the twenty-first century.

There are likely many reasons for this debate, and this book will explore only some of them. Perhaps most basic is the matter of exactly what it is that we are investigating. In the twentieth century the question of the existence of God was often raised, and the idea that the non-existence of God was either proven by the fact that religious experience is pathological or vice versa may have led people to think the existence of God was the issue really being investigated. But that, I believe, is inaccurate. The intellectualism of the Vienna of Freud’s time, and the scientific age that grew out of it, asked questions about humankind, not about God. Human beings were and continue to be the subject of study, and I would suggest that is the case in both religion and psychology. There are many questions about human ontology , the limits and freedoms of our existence, and the optimum we can expect to attain and achieve, both individually and as the human race. Human experience is wrapped up in all those dimensions of our existence. Taking the view that Something or Someone that we can experience does or does not transcend us has much to do with how we view ourselves. The study of psychosis and MRE, at its core, has to do with our ideas about our own ontological being. Although this book focuses on theological beliefs, psychological theories, religious and psychotic experience, and scientific methods employed in their study, the underlying assumption is that the rudimentary matter at stake is human nature itself.

Relative to ontological being is the often implied, rarely explicit, assumption of whether human nature can be described as two-dimensional or three-dimensional. Some psychologists, psychiatrists, and religionists think of human nature as two-dimensional: mind and body or soul and body (with soul including mind) being constitutive of human nature. Others conceptualize human nature as three-dimensional: body, mind, and spirit. This basic conceptualization plays out in how various beliefs and theories understand MRE, particularly whether it is a psychological or spiritual event. As a psychological event, MRE can originate within the human being. As a spiritual event it can originate external to the human being as an event that is received by rather than created by the person. It is doubtful that agreement will ever be reached on this matter, and such is not the aim of this book. An increased awareness of how these two views of human nature are reflected in the different beliefs and theories to be presented is one aim of this book.

In the twenty-first century, awareness that religious experience has a beneficial effect on mental health is increasing, and reports of MRE among both adherents and non-adherents of traditional belief systems continue to grab our attention. There is no consensus, however, on how to assess the health or pathology of these experiences whether they are reported in either the scientific or religious communities. What one clinician views to be psychotic experience another may view as healthy religious experience. Were clinicians viewing organisms in a test tube, diagnostic inconsistency would not be problematic; but when it is a person asking for help who is being evaluated, the need to avoid misdiagnosis is critical.

The nature of the problem clearly indicates the need for conversation among both psychologically trained and theologically trained professionals. Tantamount to having an interdisciplinary conversation around this topic is establishing interdisciplinary source norms on which criteria are based for making the distinction. This task is complicated by the fact that members of the two disciplines may have very different views of human nature and use different vocabulary to talk about human experience. To illustrate the challenge of distinguishing MRE from psychosis, consider the following case example.

Learning that he had just failed an exam, a man walked into the dark night toward home, taking a short-cut that went near, yet he thought bypassed, a deserted limestone quarry. As he walked he heard a voice call his name. Turning he saw no one, so he continued walking. Again he heard the voice calling his name more urgently. And then he caught his foot on a tree root, stumbled, fell to his knees, and putting out his hand to stabilize himself discovered he was at the very edge of that quarry. He interpreted the voice as God’s voice and the life-sparing experience as evidence that God had an important purpose for his life.

He did not seek psychiatric help, but we can imagine that different clinicians would have evaluated his experience in very different ways. The way the local Protestant pastor, trained in Reformed Theology, would have interpreted this experience is briefly presented below. The way clinicians from each of five psychological theories might view this experience will also briefly be presented below. Religious beliefs in the Reformed tradition will be discussed in more detail in Chap. 2, and the psychological theories will be discussed in more detail in Chaps. 3 and 4. The outcome of and citation for the above example is presented later in this chapter.

What is often challenging for mental health providers is the fact that interpreting an experience such as the one above as religious, as opposed to psychotic, requires a codified set of parameters that often does not exist for specific belief systems, particularly Western Protestant traditions. Using an oversimplified approach that ascribes the term religious to experiences as long as the person reporting the experience includes terminology relevant to a particular religious belief system is an inadequate approach, because it begs the question of how to distinguish authentic religious experience from psychotic experience; reports of both can be stated using vocabulary associated with religion, or “God-talk.” For example, people who do not affiliate with any particular tradition are ofte...