From Pathological Symptoms to Meaningful Life Experiences
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In my presentation, I analyze the role of alternative spiritualities in the reinterpretation of unusual psychosomatic experiences as meaningful life experiences. By unusual experiences I mean experiences on the border between psychiatric disorders and spiritual vision like hearing voices or changes in sensory perception. In the context of everyday life such experiences often result in a variety of existential problems and crises disrupting normal structures of everyday life of my interviewees by bringing disorientation into a normal course of life and, hence, the search for assistance and help, including psychiatric intervention. There is always uncertainty about the nature of these experiences, but in the end, all of my interviewees began to look for other than psychiatric explanations for them due to a stigma related with their pathologization. Alternative, non-pathologic, interpretations open new possibilities of handling these critical moments of life. My goal is to show how alternative spiritualities help practically to gain control of these disrupting situations. |
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