Religious fundamentalism as mental illness

[WitchSabrina]

Religious fundamentalism could soon be treated as mental illness

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/351347

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.
She made the assertion during a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday. She said that radicalizing ideologies may soon be viewed not as being of personal choice or free will but as a category of mental disorder. She said new developments in neuroscience could make it possible to consider extremists as people with mental illness rather than criminals.
She told The Times of London: "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance."
Taylor admits that the scope of what could end up being labelled "fundamentalist" is expansive. She continued: "I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm."
The Huffington Post reports Taylor warns about the moral-ethical complications that could arise.
In her book "The Brain Supremacy," she writes of the need "to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain. They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads. Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are."
[In related news: Atheism a 'suicide risk,' US Marine Corps warns]
The moral-ethical dimension arises from the predictable tendency when acting on the problem, armed with a new technology, to apply to the label "fundamentalist" only to our ideological opponents, while failing to perceive the "fundamentalism" in ourselves.
From the perspective of the Western mind, for instance, the tendency to equate "fundamentalism" exclusively with radical Islamism is too tempting. But how much less "fundamentalist" than an Osama bin Laden is a nation of capitalist ideologues carpet bombing civilian urban areas in Laos, Cambodia and North Korea?
The jihadist's obsession with defending his Islamic ideological world view which leads him to perpetrate and justify such barbaric acts as the Woolwich murder are of the same nature as the evangelical obsession with spreading the pseudo-religious ideology of capitalism which led to such horrendous crimes as the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in four years of carpet bombing operations by the Nixon administration caught in a vice grip of anti-communist paranoia.
The power to control the mind will tend too readily to be used as weapon against our jihadist enemies while justifying the equally irrational and murderously harmful actions we term innocously "foreign policy."
Some analysts are thus convinced that neuroscientists will be adopting a parochial and therefore ultimately counterproductive approach if they insist on identifying particular belief systems characteristic of ideological opponents as the primary subject for therapeutic manipulation.
On a much larger and potentially more fruitful scale is the recognition that the entire domain of religious beliefs, political convictions, patriotic nationalist fervor are in themselves powerful platforms for nurturing "Us vs Them" paranoid delusional fantasies which work out destructively in a 9/11 attack or a Hiroshima/Nagasaki orgy of mass destruction.
What we perceive from our perspective as our legitimate self-defensive reaction to the psychosis of the enemy, is from the perspective of the same enemy our equally malignant psychotic self-obsession.
The Huffington Post reports that this is not the first time Taylor has written a book about extremism and fundamentalism. In 2006, she wrote a book about mind control titled "Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control," in which she examined the techniques that cultic groups use to influence victims.
She said: "We all change our beliefs of course. We all persuade each other to do things; we all watch advertising; we all get educated and experience [religions.] Brainwashing, if you like, is the extreme end of that; it's the coercive, forceful, psychological torture type."
She notes correctly that "brainwashing" which embraces all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways "we make people think things that might not be good for them, that they might not otherwise have chosen to think," is a much more pervasive social phenomenon than we are willing to recognize. As social animals we are all victims of culturally induced brainwashing whose effectiveness correlates with our inability to think outside the box of our given acculturation.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/3 ... z2bZ5IR6wA

[SGOS]

I'm doubtful about this.  Trying to cure fundamentalism would be like trying to cure stupidity.  But I would agree completely that it's a delusion by every definition of the term I've seen.  What would be cool is if they could come up with a drug for it.

LogicCal
SkeptiCal
ReasonaCal

[Solitary]

[In related news: Atheism a 'suicide risk,' US Marine Corps warns]

WTF! Right, a person believes dead is dead is a suicide risk, and a person that believes he doesn't die is not. Makes sense to me.  :roll:

[Mister Agenda]

Already sounds like the author is prepared to 'treat' any view of which she disapproves. She's right about the moral implications, maybe she's trying to demonstrate that the 'wrong hands' include even hers.

I can see it as an a form of rehabilitation for convicted felons who volunteer for it; or for inmates that pose a clear danger to prisoner and staff due to repeated acts of violence.

[mykcob4]

Religious fundamentalism could soon be treated as mental illness

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/351347

Kathleen Taylor, a neurologist at Oxford University, said that recent developments suggest that we will soon be able to treat religious fundamentalism and other forms of ideological beliefs potentially harmful to society as a form of mental illness.
She made the assertion during a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday. She said that radicalizing ideologies may soon be viewed not as being of personal choice or free will but as a category of mental disorder. She said new developments in neuroscience could make it possible to consider extremists as people with mental illness rather than criminals.
She told The Times of London: "One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated. Someone who has for example become radicalized to a cult ideology -- we might stop seeing that as a personal choice that they have chosen as a result of pure free will and may start treating it as some kind of mental disturbance."
Taylor admits that the scope of what could end up being labelled "fundamentalist" is expansive. She continued: "I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults. I am talking about things like the belief that it is OK to beat your children. These beliefs are very harmful but are not normally categorized as mental illness. In many ways that could be a very positive thing because there are no doubt beliefs in our society that do a heck of a lot of damage, that really do a lot of harm."
The Huffington Post reports Taylor warns about the moral-ethical complications that could arise.
In her book "The Brain Supremacy," she writes of the need "to be careful when it comes to developing technologies which can slip through the skull to directly manipulate the brain. They cannot be morally neutral, these world-shaping tools; when the aspect of the world in question is a human being, morality inevitably rears its hydra heads. Technologies which profoundly change our relationship with the world around us cannot simply be tools, to be used for good or evil, if they alter our basic perception of what good and evil are."
[In related news: Atheism a 'suicide risk,' US Marine Corps warns]
The moral-ethical dimension arises from the predictable tendency when acting on the problem, armed with a new technology, to apply to the label "fundamentalist" only to our ideological opponents, while failing to perceive the "fundamentalism" in ourselves.
From the perspective of the Western mind, for instance, the tendency to equate "fundamentalism" exclusively with radical Islamism is too tempting. But how much less "fundamentalist" than an Osama bin Laden is a nation of capitalist ideologues carpet bombing civilian urban areas in Laos, Cambodia and North Korea?
The jihadist's obsession with defending his Islamic ideological world view which leads him to perpetrate and justify such barbaric acts as the Woolwich murder are of the same nature as the evangelical obsession with spreading the pseudo-religious ideology of capitalism which led to such horrendous crimes as the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians in four years of carpet bombing operations by the Nixon administration caught in a vice grip of anti-communist paranoia.
The power to control the mind will tend too readily to be used as weapon against our jihadist enemies while justifying the equally irrational and murderously harmful actions we term innocously "foreign policy."
Some analysts are thus convinced that neuroscientists will be adopting a parochial and therefore ultimately counterproductive approach if they insist on identifying particular belief systems characteristic of ideological opponents as the primary subject for therapeutic manipulation.
On a much larger and potentially more fruitful scale is the recognition that the entire domain of religious beliefs, political convictions, patriotic nationalist fervor are in themselves powerful platforms for nurturing "Us vs Them" paranoid delusional fantasies which work out destructively in a 9/11 attack or a Hiroshima/Nagasaki orgy of mass destruction.
What we perceive from our perspective as our legitimate self-defensive reaction to the psychosis of the enemy, is from the perspective of the same enemy our equally malignant psychotic self-obsession.
The Huffington Post reports that this is not the first time Taylor has written a book about extremism and fundamentalism. In 2006, she wrote a book about mind control titled "Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control," in which she examined the techniques that cultic groups use to influence victims.
She said: "We all change our beliefs of course. We all persuade each other to do things; we all watch advertising; we all get educated and experience [religions.] Brainwashing, if you like, is the extreme end of that; it's the coercive, forceful, psychological torture type."
She notes correctly that "brainwashing" which embraces all the subtle and not-so-subtle ways "we make people think things that might not be good for them, that they might not otherwise have chosen to think," is a much more pervasive social phenomenon than we are willing to recognize. As social animals we are all victims of culturally induced brainwashing whose effectiveness correlates with our inability to think outside the box of our given acculturation.


Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/3 ... z2bZ5IR6wA

Completely independent of this study and knowledge of this book, I started a thread that asked the question about radical conservative fundementalist that act against their own interest. It was met by the forum as if it was some kind of witchhunt. Finally my thoughts on this matter have been confirmed by scientific study.
I posted at the time that people that are suceptible to radical rhetoric can and do act against their own interest when they don't understand things like global warming being real, or that more guns are not a solution to gun violence. The gun crowd went nuts.
I was told in not so flattering of terms that I was just condeming anyone that didn't share my personal views. The fact is that people that become radicalized are mentally unstable. When the number reaches a critical mass like in 1933 in Germany we have wars.
Since the conservative radical surge in the 1980s many societal problems have festered due to the fundementalist radicals in our own society. Racism, the war on women, homophobia, the gun explosion, the redistribution of wealth to the top 1%, the war on the worker and the middle class, global warming, run away polution, the war on nature, and a multitude of serious problems.
I fully understand the moral imparative that exist. You have to address all fundementalism and radicalization. You just can't define one particular group as mentally ill and ignore the radicals that happen to agree with YOUR own political ideology. The thing is that even if radicalization is wide spread and persist more with one group than another it must be accessed and addressed on a case by case basis. For example, Facism is a mental condition and an ideology. Most likely every Facist is a mental case, but you can't assume that to be true. You must assess every single case with absolutely no bias whatsoever.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Boy, I can't see any way in which this could be misused...

[Youssuf Ramadan]

Religion seems like Stockholm Syndrome to me....

[Solitary]

Mental illness is a slippery slope. Aren't all so-called mental problems actually biochemical or brain problems? And who decides what is mental illness? The new mental health guidelines are nothing but opinions. What happens to us when the experts in mental health decide atheism is a mental disease since the majority of people are theist which is the norm? There are still some that think being homosexual is not normal, or drinking too much coffee, and even worse, that a person that doesn't want anything to do with killing in war, or can't handle the insanity of it has a mental illness. Solitary

[stromboli]

As a person who once held fairly fundamentalist views, I see problems first of all in defining what fundamentalism is and also in application. Like every socio-political position, there are way more people who think of themselves as fundies than are identified as such, and many levels of how they apply their beliefs. To term something as a psychological disorder, especially religion, you are dealing with levels of belief, "gray" areas of every type and size.

In Utah's rural communities there are a high percentage of Mormons that are pro-polygamy, yet still not actively engaging in it. Given the opportunity, they might do so with little provocation. I knew any number of people who were closet John Birchers, gun toting conspiracy theorists who were never identified as such, outside of a circle of  a few friends.

And I believe we used to label homosexuals in much the same manner. I agree with Solitary; mental illness is a slippery slope.

[SGOS]

Mental illness is a slippery slope.

Agreed

Aren't all so-called mental problems actually biochemical or brain problems?

I think the really severe ones usually are, maybe all, but there are a host of other smaller problems that are not.  These can arise from simpler ego defense mechanisms like repression.  They might even be considered debilitating to a degree. They can be eliminated with better self understanding.  I doubt that drug therapies would do much more than mask those sorts of problems.

You might argue that these do not qualify as "mental problems" but that's a matter of definitions and semantics.

[LikelyToBreak]

I have a wild ass idea.  Instead of trying to get radicals into some sort of psychological program, why not just teach a little psychology in high school.  Being sure to cover propaganda and brainwashing.  Preventive medicine as it were.  I realize, it would be an uphill battle to get such classes into the curriculum, but if they could get these classes through the benefit to society would be great.  

Imagine a world where those needing psychological help knew they needed it and then had access to it.  They could begin treatment before they ended up in the justice system or in a hospital.  It could lower the suicide rate.  People would live better lives by having an a small understanding of why people are doing what they are doing.

Oh well, just a pipe dream.  The radicals and others with private agendas would never allow such a thing.   :(

[stromboli]

I have a wild ass idea.  Instead of trying to get radicals into some sort of psychological program, why not just teach a little psychology in high school.  Being sure to cover propaganda and brainwashing.  Preventive medicine as it were.  I realize, it would be an uphill battle to get such classes into the curriculum, but if they could get these classes through the benefit to society would be great.  

Imagine a world where those needing psychological help knew they needed it and then had access to it.  They could begin treatment before they ended up in the justice system or in a hospital.  It could lower the suicide rate.  People would live better lives by having an a small understanding of why people are doing what they are doing.

Oh well, just a pipe dream.  The radicals and others with private agendas would never allow such a thing.   :(

What, rational thinking in high school? Are you serious? What next, teaching them how to do their taxes or run a balanced budget?  :shock:

[SGOS]

I actually remember teachers as early as the middle grades diverging from the usual lesson plans and devoting a small amount of time to critical thinking.  They even called it "critical thinking".  It was the first time it really hit me that a lot of things that are written were pure bullshit.  I remember being given things to read with the objective of identifying unsupportable claims, lack of documentation, and writer's credentials.  I actually think I had some rather good teachers in the lower grades.

From the realization that some written material is uncritically thought through by the writers, it was just a short step to wondering about the Bible and another step to wondering about some of the stuff my parents taught me.  My mother was a fairly good critical thinker, and I wish I would have paid more attention to her.  Well, I guess I did pay attention to her a lot of the time.  My father wasn't as good at it as my mother.  And my grandparent's thought processes were a total mess. :-D

[PopeyesPappy]

What next, teaching them how to do their taxes or run a balanced budget?  :shock:

One step at a time, Strom. Let's teach them to make change from the register at McDonald's before we worry about taxes.

[LikelyToBreak]

stromboli wrote:

What, rational thinking in high school? Are you serious? What next, teaching them how to do their taxes or run a balanced budget? :shock:

Yeah, I guess your right.  Teaching useful things is just too much to ask.  :(

SGOS wrote in part:

I actually remember teachers as early as the middle grades diverging from the usual lesson plans and devoting a small amount of time to critical thinking.

Its' been a long time since I went to school, but I don't remember any of my teachers deviating much from their lesson plans.  I do remember teachers kind of getting upset that they couldn't answer some questions though.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the only real logic taught in high schools, is in geometry class.  Which isn't a required subject.