Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part 5. Symptomatic Religiosity in Neurosis and Insanity - 1. Who Is Normal? - Talent and Genius - Religious Concepts of Normality
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
PASTORAL PSYCHOLOGY
between geniuses and exceptionally gifted persons, and to avoid
confusion between a fine mental endowment and the qualities
that make a full, rich personality. There are many people,
exceptionally gifted, whose very brilliance is too much
for their small personal or characterological strength to
sustain.
An unusually intelligent and talented person has, so to speak,
quantitative superiority. A genius is qualitatively different
from other people. The normality of genius is paradoxical.
Geniuses are seldom well adjusted socially. They are people
‘born out of due season’, before their time. The development of
the race would be arrested without the new insights their
unexplainable creativity provides.
Paradoxical normality is found in saints as well as geniuses.
They, too, reveal traits or part-functions that are inferior or
psychopathic. The essential enigma of their nature is not solved,
however, by methods of psychological analysis that reveal
‘normality defects’ in their personalities.
Religious Concepts of Normality
When we are dealing with people who are aware of themselves
as having relations with a higher or supernatural order of reality
we shall certainly find in action strange inner forces and
motivations through which the spiritual insights and potentialities of
the personality are being developed. Any disturbance of the
normal human functions in such a person will necessarily react
on his religious experience and behaviour. There is a law of
spiritual metabolism. Spiritual hungers must be satisfied for the
maintenance of growth, and spiritual loneliness must be
answered by communion, or development is arrested..
Stern’s remarks about the difference between the presence of a
psychopathic element and the activity of such an element in
personality structure are also important in relation to the
religious life. Religious forces can check morbid tendencies
and act as necessary and effective correctives to subversive
desires. The fact that a person has certain psychopathic traits
does not mean that his religious experience is unreal or inferior
to that of other people; but if the psychopathic element is
allowed to become active, religious insight and experience will
160
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
