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RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN MENTAL DISEASE
cracking. His mind is preoccupied with the idea that he is
being followed and he relates what he observes to this idea. The
tile has been thrown. One of his enemies, lurking behind that
chimney-stack, has hurled it with intent to injure him. He
becomes frightened—more frightened than he was before—
because the fallen tile provides objective evidence of the
persecution he thinks he is suffering.
This is the method by which an insane person interprets his
experiences. It may be religiously neutral; it may not. We
cannot explain why, in a particular case, the patient believes
he is being persecuted by God or the devil instead of by a human
being. The important thing to observe is that the insane person
is not the victim of earlier misinterpretations of his experiences.
The misinterpretation is made when an experience occurs.
The critical factor is a method of association lacking rationality.
Mere simultaneity of occurrence is sufficient ‘reason’ for
ascribing to one experience a meaning derived from another.
This is the typical characteristic of insane misconceptions and
delusions. Behind the faulty interpretation the psychosis lurks;
or rather, in the faulty interpretation it appears as a personal
reality. A particular emotional experience may cause the disease
to become manifest, but it does not explain or cause the disease.
What, then, are the causes of insanity? Something must be
said about the views of psychiatrists on this question.
The Causes of Mental Disease
It is seldom that mental disease can be ascribed to a single
cause. It is usually due to a combination of endogenous factors,
constitutional and probably inherited physical conditions,
and exogenous or environmental factors, which may be
individual, social, economic or a combination of all these.
The symptomatic psychoses seem to be mainly psychogenous
in origin; due, that is to say, to emotional stresses or shocks too
great for the individual to withstand. Again it is a question of
individual sensitivity, for many people do not succumb to
situations of exactly the same kind as occasion breakdown in
others. People seem to vary in their personal or mental resilience
just as they vary in their strength or resistance to physical
illness.
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