One possible answer is that patients with schizophrenia (sz) at some level understand that there is something very flawed with the way their brain is functioning. Creating a relationship with a divine entity could, as the sz patient's thinking might suppose, provide some level of help, protection, or power for someone in a very powerless and vulnerable situation. Is this explanation consistent with clinical experience or known case studies?

There is evidence that right temporal lobe activity is associated with religious experiences and that temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with hyper-religiosity - Geschwind Syndrome. There's temporal lobe dysfunction in schizophrenia too, particularly temporal lobe hyperactivity during auditory hallucinations (Frackowiak's PET studies)

Why temporal lobes and religion? good question - maybe because temporal lobe stimulation is associated with out-of body experiences, dissociative feelings etc. the jury's still out on that one.

hope that helps.

The right temporal lobe also sees the "bigger picture" and what is religion but a wholistic approach to harmonizing the self with society, the cosmos, and ultimately God. That's Big picture with a capital "B". Also, we ought to look at this sociologically. Religion is a way to deal with the "unknown" mysteries of life. It's a way to connect the dots. When trying to go through a causal order of things, what is the prime mover-- for all things-- to the religious person? This would be God. He is the one that set the dominoes up and the first to tip the first one, so the argument goes. More secular people might just believe that the cause is the FBI. Do we see a pattern of thought? These people work in a coercive manner, right? Both deal with the problem of evil, however, on their own terms. Also, both deal with the large picture, thus the word "federal" being used.

I believe the mind then uses this heuristic (god/fbi) as a shortcut to answer questions. Inseat od using everyday causes and effects it sees things with a foresight that is more akin to "fearsight", and connects a blankets of events that gets more intricate and deluded with delusions as time goes on.

Stephen, I really like your insight connecting the functions of policing organizations with the idea of God that some people have. I have personally seen cases in which psychotic patients reported being followed by and/or persecuted by police, military, and, of course, US government agencies like the FBI. So the concept of entities working in a coercive manner is certainly consistent for some patients. However, I have also seen cases in which God is not persecuting, but rather an ally or a powerful force at a patient's disposal. I have not seen this protective function with policing, "federal" organizations, though. Have others seen the FBI and other such entities in a protective, power-giving role? If not, why the difference between God and the FBI?

Good point Neil. I was watching the movie A Beautiful Mind last night with my girlfriend. At first, Nash helps the FBI to help stop the Cold War. I've heard of others who have tried to help catch Osama Bin Laden, too. Just observing how a schizophrenic patient lives can take a toll on one's own heart. It can be like a form of involuntary self-torture. Plus, the unknown seems to attract fear so naturally so often. I think these reasons I made the connection between fear and the omniscient gov/god.

This might be as simple as one's outlook and if the person has anything to be fearful of (hiding anything?). Is it as simple as the half glass full paradigm, due to one's biology, how one was raised, how one lived, how one feels and thinks? I almost want to say that whether one thinks the government is bad is whether they are a Democrat or Republican. Things are never so cut and dry, and that may seem like a joke, but culture (think 1984 and brave new world) plays a large role in how we view political entities. Furthermore, perhaps if one isn't hiding anything, and has a pure heart, then one is less likely to be paranoid of persecutory thoughts. There are so many ways to slice the bread here.

Stephen, interesting idea that there might be a strong correlation between the formative experiences in the life of the sz patient and the tone of their delusions, This might account for some of the variation we see in individual patients, though in my opinion, not most of it. I have seen sz patients in two state hospitals and a VA clinic and the one characteristic I saw in common among the vast majority of them was their experience of fear. These patients are not happy or satisfied with their hallucinations and delusions; they wish it could be otherwise. So they deal with their fear by either distancing themselves from the "god/gov" or by allying themselves with god.

I'd also like to mention the prominence of beliefs regarding interactions with aliens with these sz patients. It's not true of every individual, but the prevalence of patients with stories regarding the presence and interaction with extraterrestrials is striking. Any thoughts on the functional and/or organic basis of alien encounters?

I kept thinking of this. Our minds try everything to make sense of the world. It reaches and grasps to make sense of all the facts we have at our disposal. A schizophrenic is so exhausted with all the cluttered facts and premonitions that everyday normal causes will not sufficiently put everything together the way they "feel" it has too. They have an intuition that tells them where this fact will go, and the mind attaches to that a "feeling" that is, in general, an exhausted paranoia. Therefore, where their intuition tells them to put the fact is not rational because it's being led by intution and feeling. Furthermore, they search and scavenge where the pieces may fit, if at all. They ride on a wave of fear and an ocean of possibility as they involuntarily condemn themselves to this search for explanation.

As time goes on their facts spread further and further apart, and only grandiose explanations (God, god) will provide the answer they intuitively "feel" is correct. What a nightmare it must be to live in such a constant state of fear and dread as all this is happening. Even after finding out you have this mental illness, and being able to tell it is all a delusion, however, only to still intuit and feel in such a scary manner without control. The mind wants order, and in this case, this is where the mind can become your own worst enemy.

When I was about ten years old, I was walking near my home and as usual I was thinking/imagining some voices and then I kind of play a mind game of letting the voices acting by themselves and they did!!!! The voices gradually became louder, more real, like a croud of angry people voices shouting and taking control. I immediately panic and stop the game and started running and it stopped. A few days later, the same soft voices appeared in my consciousness and kind of increased in intensity and I again stopped the thoughts by running. I never had any similar experiences. I suspect that this momentary disordered that I had was a kind of momentary schizophrenic episode.

I see schzoprenia as a disordered of the imagination. When we go about our normal activities we often split our awareness between regular awareness of what is there and what we are doing, and we also have a self-enacted stream of thought which is self-enactement of our sense-acting system (like in dreams). Our stream of thoughts awareness is vague and under control of our attention. Schezophrenia is a problem of attention control of the enactment. Their thoughts are as vivid as during dreams and so indistinguishable with external awareness. Both aweness comes from the sense-acting systems.

The schizoid constellation comprises a number of typical symptoms, present in greater or lesser amounts, further mitigated through numerous indiosyncratic aspects of each case, the time of onset, the number of years, and of course the individual triggers. The easiest way to answer that question - employing Occams razor for the least-words-being-the-best - would go to the essense of the communication with God business. Think of what would happen igf the pipeline from experience to memory suddenly developed leaks - the continuity of your memory of the world around you and you as a part of it would become dislodged, and you would move forward but more and more influenced by inner, rather than outer, stimuli. The broad highway of your world would narrow, and your own thoughts would be magnified in relation to others. The schizoid personality can't do situational ethics .. they have complex rule structures they can get very OCD about and depending on the severity, become paranoid, thinking themselves to be more important as against their surroundings. This cany allowing them to contextualize the feeling by associating their inner "certainty" with messages fro God or, in extreme circumstances, actually being God. That having been said, three major world religions, Judaism, Christianty, and Islam have the origins in a Moses, a leader who spoke to a burning bush, Paul, who fell off his donkey transfixed by a vision under the burning sun, and a Mohammad, a seeker dealing with sensory deprivation in a cave where he talks to an angel. Who's to say - how about the insomniac dyslexic metaphysician up all night pondering the existence of "Dog" "

Nobody disagrees that parayer or meditation are effecacious, but what that has to do with one's persona beliefs isn't a connection that can be justified. Eg: I know the power of prayer and healing and I both participated and experienced but it was something I was, in effect, doing to myelf ... likewise, some of higher meditation techniquesI learned from the Dalai Lama had extraordinary results, but it was also not hard to see how they cold selectively improve mental focus and efficiency - one does not have to believe. As HH says "exercise doesn't intend to help you, but of course it does" - likewise both prayer and meditation don't "intend" to help us, but of course they do . ... if we do them with sinceirty and consisency - and one can believe or not ... they still work. It's been proven time and again.

Nice discussion though ... any mention of Norm Geschwind tickles me.

This discussion concerns hallucinations and delusions found in individuals with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. It does not address (neither advocating nor denigrating) the practice of prayer or meditation in a non-clinical population.

I've got one here ... actually, schizoaffective .. serious schizophrenia, you've got "true hallucinations" , then "bizarre delusions" and finally "non-bizarre delusions". My pal never got to theseriously bizarre delusions but it's been 7 years of 24/7 observation starting to prior to diagnosis and treatment ... perphenazine, followed by respidone (prolactin problems) followed by Abilify, got minor leg tremors, off to Geodone. It's schizophrenia "light" - and medicated you'd never know most of the time ...when asked, and she's functioning fine at a bright 21-22 level, about her ethics "when I do good, I feel good, when I do bad, I feel bad" ... simple enough and nobody's talking to God. But note .. the source of "right" or "wrong" is self generated . This is a very articulate individual, holds down an office job, but no sense of an external rule structure. Her earlier work record was spotty because she'd think her employer didn't like her and quit. Now .. just rachet that up ... you have a person who thinks the FBI or the government doesn''t like them, but they have a better idea of what's right and what's wrong. Rachet it up again .. they're coming for me, but God tells me to - whatever. It's a matter of degrees, and the schzoid constellation is huge. But it's still that distortion of one's importance in the scheme of things, even to be "impoprtant enough" to be chased about or being a vehicle for divine proclamation. Sadly, it's organic.- and even schizoaffectives can raise hell when their rule structures slip and God tells them it's OK to paste the pizza to the kitchen walls.

We say that schizophrenic have delusions without questioning our own delusions. It is not because we share the same delusions with a communities, what is called intersubjective delusions, that we are not delusional. Maybe delusion is in the essence of what imagination is and schizophrenic persons lack some intersubjective coupling. Just a thought.

Louis,

What would be an example of an intersubjective delusion? By this term, are you referring to something other than shared values or beliefs within a given community? Depending on your answer, I would say that these type of shared communal beliefs do not have the same quality or intensity of those held by psychiatric patients. In fact, the psychiatric definition of a delusion specifically rules out those beliefs that accepted by the patient's culture.

The DSM-IV defines a delusion as "A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture."

I do concur that a patient with sz, at least one who has not been stabilized on medication, would lack the "intersubjective coupling" to which you refere, and this deficiency would in fact be one (but not the sole) feature of a person diagnosed with a psychiatric delusion.

Dear Neil,

First we should leave the DSM-IV outside of the discussion because this instrument has been instrumentally manipulated by the pharmatical industry. The definition of what is normal and what is not has been enlarged so much over the years that very soon we will all be deviant in need of a pill. This is another topic...

Each of us have as personal sense of reality, this is a subjective experience. But because we have language and live together in society, this subjective personal sense of reality is also an intersubjective experience. We develop a "common-sense," shared meanings. Our experience is personal but it is also directed from the outside by an intersubjective coupling: this is our common illusion that we call our culture. This is an intrinsic illusionary component to our conscious experience. By illusionary I do not mean something that is false, or irreal but something that is of the order of a common living myth. We participate into a theatrical play and as long as we beleive that reality together everything seems normal. But come along an individual who seems to have some problem in accepting the common illusion, someone whose imaination is out of control and not well manage by the intersubjective coupling.

If we take the novelist Philip K. Dick for examples. He had visions, delusions, mystic experiences, drug experiences of all kind at the same time as being a creative writer in science fiction. Dick's stories typically focus on the fragile nature of what is "real" and the construction of personal identity.

Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick

"Dick recounted that as the sun glinted off the gold pendant, the reflection caused the generation of a "pink beam" that mesmerized him. Dick came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and clairvoyance; he also believed it to be intelligent. On one occasion, Dick was startled by the pink beam. It imparted the information to him that his infant son was ill. The Dicks rushed the child to the hospital where Dick's suspicion and his diagnosis were confirmed."

Reality is not as boring as it seems.

Oh Boy ... we have scholars struggling to see who can outdo each other in abstract polysyllabic interaction using mystic languages - the DSM is the code book for those who prefer the verbal attempts to tamp down behavior into bite size chunks but like code geeks, they had to invent a vocabulary - unfortunately I know all the words and they can be expressed in conversant English unless one wishes to project a facade of intellectual accomplishment, which is fine, dudes. You tell me why "Blank Affect" means "no expression" ... and now we're veering into phenomenology, let a thousand flowers bloom. I'll never forget at HBS circulating a cartoon I'd drawn of an abbot flattened by a cart .. "A Flat Prior" ...I love the puns. Don't get me going on the posterior of a prior ...it;s just toooo tempting.

Hi again Neil,

>

Cultural context defines whether a belief is delusional, or "a revealed, eternal truth." If I believe that I can talk directly to God, and that he listens to me, and that I can effect change in the world by asking him, AND I can convince 30 to 50 other people that this is the case, I am not delusional. In fact I am probably a minister, with my own church. (In fact, here in Australia I could claim tax-free status for any business I chose to set up). However if I believe all those things BUT no-one else in the world agrees with me, (and particularly if i am walking barefoot through town and loudly trying to convince other people that these things are true), then i will probably get an ambulance ride to a psychiatric hospital and be heavily medicated.

Even in cultures that actively encourage altered states of consciousness and belief in spirits and/or magic, there are still words to describe what we would call "psychosis".

For example in Yoruba the word "were" describes a "disease" that encompasses; "hearing voices, trying to get others to hear or see something that isn't there, smelling seeing tasting hearing or feeling things that other say aren't there, laughing for no reason, talking too much or not at all, piling sticks for no reason, fear of JuJu (ie witchcraft) when no-one else believes there is any JuJu".

Amongst Inuit people the term "nuthkavihak" means "talking to oneself, answering oneself, talking to people who are not there, believing a child or partner was killed by magic when no-one else believes this, believing oneself to be an animal, not talking at all, running away for no reason, getting lost, hiding in strange places, drinking urine, becoming strong and violent for no reason, killing dogs or threatening people for no reason."

Note that most of these symptoms are only considered "madness" if nobody else believes in them.

The boundary between being a visionary spiritual or political leader, a shaman or a healer and being "crazy," (indeed the boundary between what is “normal” and what is an “illness”), is culturally determined. This is true of all cultures, (as the 1974 excision of homosexuality from the DSM clearly illustrates).

Imagine plotting all of human behaviour and belief on a graph.

You would end up with a bell curve. The closer you are towards the bulge in the centre, the closer you are to the main body of "consensus reality". The further you get out into the thinner outliers, the more unusual and less widely accepted your beliefs and practices.

An instrument like the DSM is drawing a dotted line towards each end of this curve, and labeling everything inside the lines as "normal", and everything outside the lines as "illness".

Where the lines are drawn is indeed culturally, (and to some extent arbitrarily) determined.

The closer you are to the centre of this curve, (and the better insulated you are socially or economically) the harder it is for life stressors to push you down the slope towards those dotted lines.

If you are particularly well insulated by your status, economic position and life circumstances, you will never be diagnosed as mentally ill, no matter how crazy your behaviour. (Tom Cruise springs to mind).

People can migrate back and forth across these lines.

Someone who is unwell can get well, through good treatment or simply through improved life circumstances. Conversely, people who are usually very healthy and resilient can slide across the line into illness if placed under enough stress.

(Liability to psychosis, for example, is highly heritable, but psychosis can occur to anyone who is placed under serious physical and/or psychological stress. Psychotic disorders run in families, but psychosis is a phenotype distributed throughout the population, not a genotype limited to certain families).

And of course sometimes we just decide to move the lines...

This is why I mentioned that homosexuality used to be listed as a mental disorder in the DSM. Until 1974 it was a psychiatrist's job to "cure" homosexual people. Then the APA met (just before Christmas) and decided that perhaps homosexuality wasn't an illness after all, but rather part of the normal range of human sexuality.

Think about what that means. On Christmas eve, 1974, if you were gay you had a mental illness. By Boxing Day you were normal and healthy. You hadn't changed at all. The goal posts had just been moved.

All cultures seem to recognise some beliefs and behaviours as being delusional or psychotic, (and there is even a fair amount of consistency between different cultures as to some broad categories that represent "craziness").

However all cultures hold beliefs and engage in practices that people from other cultural backgrounds view as irrational, and all accept some of these beliefs and behaviours as "normal" in appropriate socially-sanctioned circumstances.

Accordingly, I do not believe there is any clear, objectively measurable, qualitative difference between psychiatric delusions and strongly held beliefs.

In any social group, (whether a small circle of friends, members of a sect or cult, supporters of a sporting team or political party, citizens of a major nation or followers of an international religion) some beliefs are more widely held than others. Whether any individual's beliefs or opinions are socially enabling or socially isolating, whether they offer the person structure and meaning or prove dysfunctional and problematic, depends to a very large extent upon the cultural context of the believer, not upon the content of the belief.

All human experience is an internal representation of the outside world. None of us can perceive reality except through the filters of our senses, and through our preconceptions and culturally conditioned prejudices. It is how closely our individual world view approaches, or how widely it diverges from, the consensus within our own cultural context that defines what is delusion and what is real.

It is very important that mental health workers have a clear understanding of this, especially if they are working with people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

In people who chronically suffer symptoms of mental illness, delusional architectures may develop as a way of providing a sense of meaning and importance to the individual.

Being chronically lonely and under-stimulated, and living on the street or in hostels, may be very depressing and may leave the person with a deep sense of hopelessness, insignificance and worthlessness.

But once you realise that your current circumstances are not your fault, and that they are actually the fault of the British Royal Family, (or of your neighbors who are trying to poison you, or of the Police, or of the Jews, or of the CIA's mind control lasers, or of the aliens who abducted you etc etc), suddenly life has meaning and purpose. From the point of view of the person, suddenly being an outsider is not depressing, it is proof of their unique, and perhaps even elite, status. The delusional person feels they are privy to secret knowledge, and that they are a special person who understands things about the world that others are blind to.

Even terrifying delusions of persecution impart this sense of specialness. (After all, if the Police really are bugging your house and following you everywhere you must be quite important). Paranoid ideation makes everything in the world significant, and makes it all revolve around the person who is experiencing the delusions.

Delusions (from the most harmless weird beliefs to the most psychotic and paranoid) are serving some sort of function for the person.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9762590

Religious delusions are very common in Schizophrenia. For someone with a religious world view, what better way to make sense of the world, and to establish a meaningful place in it, than to communicate directly with, know the mind of, or even to be, God?

How could you be more important and special, and what better explanation for your position in the world, than to be the chosen one? Any trials in life can be attributed to your special status and God-given mission. All prophets suffer for their truth.

People from more secular backgrounds who suffer schizophrenia tend to develop different delusional content. Common persecutory themes are that someone is following, spying on or surveilling them, that someone is poisoning or drugging their food or water, or that someone is secretly tampering with their possessions or remotely influencing their thoughts, feelings or actions. Other delusions may revolve around the individual being linked in some way to a famous person or celebrity, having privileged access to secret information or being in communication with aliens or spirits.

I'd suggest that religious delusions are very common in schizophrenia simply because many people have had religious beliefs and folk tales inculcated in them from a very early age. When the person begins trying to make sense of their aberrant experiences, these beliefs form a foundation to build an internally coherent story that provides structure and meaning.

If someone who has grown up with more science-fiction influences than religious ones begins to develop serious delusions, it's quite likely they will begin talking with the friendly aliens or being persecuted by the evil Grey aliens, rather than talking with God or being punished by Him..

I work with quite a few clients who use methamphetamine in a heavily dependent way. Many of them develop delusional beliefs, especially delusions of persecution. Some of them develop religious delusions. But Australia is quite a secular country, and many more of them, (and especially those who are "user-dealers") develop delusions that the Police are constantly following them and bugging their homes.

Just as the cultural context decides whether a belief is delusional or not, the cultural background or subcultural affiliation of the person tends to strongly influence the content of delusions.

While medication can reduce the incidence and severity of some symptoms, working to place people in stable, suitable accommodation, ensuring that the physiological needs on the bottom rung of Maslow's Basic Hierarchy are being met, and then trying to engage the person with psycho-social supports in the community, can also be highly effective- in effect nudging the person back up the slope of that bell curve and closer to the consensual reality we call "normal".

Paul.

Laurence writes;

>

Unfortunately, he eventually rejected Dog and sold his soul to Santa...

Paul.

I like Maslow's description of 'peaking'... where the ordinary person has an extraordinary experience, either through peaceful connection or trauma. Maslow then suggests religion comes from this experience rather than the person who has fallen out of the illusion of social conditioning fixating on religion. I know my own spiritual emergence experience turned me from an atheist into a spiritual believer. Self actualzation has many facets including knowing your world as energy and unknown forces rather than just material things.

Maslow was very daring for his time when he pointed out that non peakers like to protect the teaching of a peaker (one given prophet statues) and go about destroying anyone else who dares to utter similar words or describe similar personal experiences. If this is indeed a hidden social driver then psychiatrists are still fulfilling the duties of witch hunters of old only this time through the tangled and profitable webs of medicine.

Check out my book Neurotheology: Virtual Religion in the 21st Century ... it's on Amazon - adrenergic overload can really play bartender with brain chemistry and it's really not hard to do a peak ... you may need a lot of repetition but with enough concentration one can do nearly anything - I collapsed a mandala in the middle of a tantric visualization and found myself sort of looking down on myself from overhead, which some would call "out of body" but I call it a "visual transform in the waking state" as against in a dream. Wow. one I even experienced shaktipat - when the place is suddely filled with palpable love - and once, only once, I had a conversation with what might have been a dream at the foot of my bed. Remember. it takes a tenth of a second for ANYTHING to get into your brain from anywhere ... and it took considerably less time than they for the universe to expand .. that's how far removed we are from any sort of "quote reality unquote" - it;' lucky that our DNA is similar enough that we have this illusion of being the the same world, Ho Ho Ho .. we're all swimming in a sea of neurotranmitters and our brain is the great Mandelbrot Set that makes a world out of infinity varied images of ourselves - but what else can it do?

Cool, basically no one has the right to claim to know what reality is....... Lived experience is simply lived experience and for me holds more weight than conditioned reality. For anyone to deem it delusional is playing god themselves.

I was once 3 seconds ahead of events for an hour or so. I knew what was about to happen just before it did and many people would have freaked out. But I just told myself it was interesting and sat in wonder. My thoughts asked if I was witnessing god pulling the strings, if I was god and making it happen, or if I was 'reading' quantum information in electro magnetic fields. The latter sat best with my particular upbringing so I chose that explanation. I later found the Heart maths institute research which confirmed my choice, for me.

I believe all is 'mind'....

You've set me to wondering about Nietzsche's reasons for signing letters as "the Crucified One" and then also as "Dionysos". No resolution mind you, just speculations...

To me it's common sense.  

Imagine you suddenly started hearing voices or began to see messages directed at you and you alone in newspaper articles or on T.V.  Now, most people aren't going to want to think right off the bat that they have schizophrenia, especially since, hey, these messages are totally legit! You are 100% sure these voices/messages are meant for you and they are not created in your mind, they are being sent to you from somewhere outside, but other people don't get the same messages.  

So, how do you explain this?  Again, most people don't want to think they have mental illness, cause, that's a bummer.  So you investigate your other options to explain this strange phenomena that has overtaken your life.  What's a common explanation for this type of situation that has been used in the past?  That's right... being chosen by God to receive his/her messages from the spiritual beyond.  That would explain why no one else hears or sees the messages and why the force is invisible!    

In my estimation, it is simply the product of a mind in crisis trying to make a bit of sense out of its bewildering situation.  

Yes Candace, we are meaning making machines.... AND there really are wacky things that happen to people when they are in that state. Jung wrote a lot about serendipity and synchronicity. These are accepted 'realities', perhaps its the 'law of attraction' or perhaps its a sense we are not accustomed to experiencing. There is still so much that is unknown to humans in the subtle world of energies. Think of ultra violet light, we knew of its existence by subtle effects such as butterfly behaviour but until we had instruments that made it visible to our own eyes all talk about it was conjecture.

I call psychotic 'suddenly psychic' as the experience is like having another sense that is exciting and frighting all at the same time. Then as 'meaning making machines' we look around to blame someone for our discomfort, to project onto. God and the CIA get a lot of blame as the experiences are so unusual that only a powerful force or hidden trickery could be generating them, or at least that is what it feels like. I am sure in the past it would have been blamed on spirits or evil spells. Either way, be open to peoples experiences be it religious, magical or simply unusual as there will be an element of truth, insight or a past drama presenting for healing. 

@Heather

In response to your statement:

"Maslow was very daring for his time when he pointed out that non peakers like to protect the teaching of a peaker (one given prophet statues) and go about destroying anyone else who dares to utter similar words or describe similar personal experiences."

See this very funny and topic relevant routine from Patton Oswalt.  

Disclaimer:  it was a few potty words in it, so perhaps NSFW, depending on where you work :)

http://youtu.be/55h1FO8V_3w

I know this is about five years too late, but do you think a schizophrenic patient with no religious background or experience can experience delusions with religious content? Or do you think it has to originate from a previous religious/spiritual background?

Beautiful responses Lavanya Vijayaraghavan & Laurence Mckinney well done! Religiosity of the faith mode reduces higher cognitive thought. Basically, people that are faith induced are on a a natural body drug high. That feeling you get when you pray and you think that GOD hears you is remarkably similar to what one feels listening to AMSR. Whilst doing LSD.