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CHAPTER 11
SYMPTOMATIC RELIGIOSITY
As we have said earlier, there are schools of thought in medical
psychology—and indeed outside it—that do not hesitate to
condemn all religious attitudes as symptoms of nervous
disorder. The argument is that ill-adjusted personalities need the
consolations of religion because they provide a compromise
solution of inward conflicts and tensions that the individual
could not otherwise deal with, but that religion does not itself
produce a fuller and richer experience of life.
We need not accept this generalisation before we can admit
that there is an element of truth in it. There is a symptomatic
religiosity that the spiritual adviser must be able to recognise
and deal with. Many people become ‘religious’ under the
influence of psychic disturbances. Morbid forms of religious
interest and behaviour appear in connection with some forms of
insanity. Occasionally during mental illness a wholesome form
of religious development occurs and continues after recovery.
More often the religiosity is purely symptomatic and disappears
when health returns.
Abnormal Psychic States
Unhealthy religiosity raises many practical problems for
ministers and Church members, whether it arises from
insanity, neurotic conditions or from personality defects that
remain when mental illness has been incompletely healed or has
entered a quiescent phase. The greatest difficulties are
occasioned, as a rule, by persons actually suffering from psychic
disorder but considered healthy by other people who judge
their behaviour by normal standards.
Sufferers from sexual persecution mania can be very
dangerous in a Church community. They make unfounded accusations
and go about spreading unpleasant rumours and insinuations,
sometimes with such skill and subtlety that they are taken
seriously and cause great misery to their innocent victims.
People troubled with compulsive ideas of reference often
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