Psychiatry and mysticism

Abstract

Psychiatry and mysticism are both concerned with human experience. Psychiatry is concerned with disorders of experience. Mysticism is concerned with that dimension of human experience which brings the individual into contact with transcendent reality in a particularly direct, unmediated and intimate way. Mystical experience may easily be misdiagnosed as psychiatric disorder. Even where a psychiatric disorder is appropriately diagnosed, there may still be a mystical dimension to the experience of the patient which may be understood and integrated in a positive way if treated sensitively by clinicians, therapists and the wider community. Where the benefits of a mystical experience to an individual are denied, and where psychiatry colludes in pathologizing such experiences, the individual and the community are the poorer as a result. These benefits of mystical experience may, or may not, include a degree of resilience towards psychiatric disorder, as has been suggested by some research. However, they definitely do reflect a transcendent dimension to the life of the human community which is appreciated by many as being life enhancing in its own right.

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to Peter Moore for his encouragement in the preparation of this paper and for all I have learnt from him about mysticism.