Leading neuroscientist: Religious fundamentalism may be a ‘mental illness’ that can be ‘cured’

[damnedifIknow]

"A leading neurologist at the University of Oxford said this week that recent developments meant that science may one day be able to identify religious fundamentalism as a “mental illness” and a cure it.

During a talk at the Hay Literary Festival in Wales on Wednesday, Kathleen Taylor was asked what positive developments she anticipated in neuroscience in the next 60 years.

“One of the surprises may be to see people with certain beliefs as people who can be treated,” she explained, according to The Times of London. “Somebody who has for example become radicalised 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."

"I am not just talking about the obvious candidates like radical Islam or some of the more extreme cults,” she explained. “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.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/30/leading-neuroscientist-religious-fundamentalism-may-be-a-mental-illness-that-can-be-cured/

[AnnieBW]

1. Those TV Preachers Really Know How To Sell It, Too

We were visiting my 77-year-old mother last weekend. She's starting to get Alzheimers, but she doesn't want to admit it. Anyway, she's channel surfing and comes across some patriotic music. Then they start going into the "Praise Jesus" stuff. One of the pictures on the teevee has little kids saluting both the U.S. flag and the "Christian Flag", with the stars replaced by a Cross. They start into this "the younger generation is Godless, we need your money to reach out to them." In other words, begging older people for money. Fortunately, Mom is a lifelong Catholic and very skeptical of anyone begging for money. But I asked her if she was giving money to those clowns. If she ever does, I'm using my power of attorney to take away her checkbook.

[BainsBane]

2. Mental illness can be defined as anything that derives from

"the norm," as Michel Foucault demonstrated. People have a right to hold views we disagree with without being labeled mentally ill. This is bullshit, bullshit we had in another thread earlier this week.

[LostOne4Ever]

11. Totally agree! (nt)

[hrmjustin]

3. I don't think this is a good idea.

Curing people of beliefs sounds like brainwashing to me.

[Major Nikon]

8. The only thing that really separates brainwashing from psychotherapy is ethics

Both employ techniques of behavior modification. It's also important to note that some use religious belief to brainwash people in the first place due to how easily it can be used to manipulate people.

At some point belief can be pathological. If your neighbor believed that alien life forms are transmitting thought control signals from space in order to destroy the fabric of society and the only effective protection was a tin foil hat, you would probably think they are mentally ill and in need of treatment. Yet there are people who believe that homosexuality is destroying the fabric of society and the only effective protection is devotion to ideas that have little more credibility than your neighbor's ideas about alien life forms (arguably less so). That's not to say that everyone who believes in a higher power has a pathological condition or has been brainwashed, but certainly some people who actually do fit that mold may demonstrate their defect through that belief system.

[cherokeeprogressive]

4. "Do you believe there is a God?" Bzzzzzzzzzt. "Do you STILL believe there is a God?" BZZZZZZZT...

"Nurse... give me more voltage please..."

"Do you STILL believe there is a God?"

BZZZZZZZT

"Do you STILL believe there is a God?"

"BZZZZZZT"

"Nurse, can you check the patient's pulse?"

"There is no pulse Doctor"

"Thank You. Mark this one as CURED."

[YeahSureRight]

10. Well that is one way to cure the mentally ill

may not be the best way but it would be effective.

[CJCRANE]

5. I'm not sure it's a mental illness but there is an element of hypnosis

with a lot of these radical cults IMO.

The main technique of hypnosis and self-hypnosis is just repeating the same thing over and over. Obviously that is already part of religion, what with prayers, chants, mantras etc.

But with these radicals they take it a stage further. I also think there might be something in the indoctrination techniques that could trigger off latent mental illness.

[struggle4progress]

6. I don't like the fundies but I don't like other thought-police either

When religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now that science is strong and religion weak, we mistake medicine for magic

― Thomas Szasz

[scarletwoman]

7. This "leading neurologist" is a dangerous quack. Who gets to decide who needs to be "treated"?

What if someone doesn't want to be "cured"? Are they supposed to be forced into treatment?

Who is going to decide which beliefs require curing? This line of thinking could lead straight into the kind of abuses we saw in the Soviet Union where dissidents were committed to insane asylums for "the good of society".

I fervently hope that this neurologist is relegated to obscurity - the sooner the better.

[Major Nikon]

9. I can only imagine it would be decided the same way it is with anything else

Who decides who gets a lithium drip or shock treatment?

[bettyellen]

14. some people do need "treatment" as you call it, and it's a heart breaking thing.

just a reminded that this isn't some hypothetical situation to many people, and it's not automatically a bad thing to hope to cure the intense suffering that occurs with some forms of mental illness.

[scarletwoman]

16. Read the OP - the neurologist is talking about pathologizing personal beliefs.

Sure, the idea of "treating" religious fundamentalism may seem attractive, but think about it. Where does the line get drawn? Anyone who believes that the earth is 6,000 years old is forced onto medication? Anyone who believes that humans and dinosaurs co-existed gets sent to the mental ward? How about anyone who believes that the Bible should be taken literally? How about people who believe in Creationism? Give 'em all pills so they stop thinking like that?

And once it's been decided that certain types of religious belief should be pathologized, what's to stop someone from deciding that other kinds of belief are pathologies, too? Who gets to decide which beliefs are normal and safely orthodox?

What if your family could force you into psychiatric treatment because you're anti-capitalism?

[bettyellen]

17. to clarify- dismissing treatment with scare quotes was my issue. kind of easy to do when you

don't have loved ones who desperately need it, but can't or won't get it.
That was all I meant to say.

[scarletwoman]

19. Oh good grief. Next time please read the whole post instead of fixating on 1 word in the header.

Context, you know?

I'm sorry for your troubles.

[bettyellen]

21. Thank you- but context is also "Who gets to decide who needs "treatment' " is already a very

difficult issue and part of a heartbreaking situation for lots of people. It was probably the scare quotes that bothered me.
I understand your context is some completely hypothetical future world where we actually go beyond providing treatment for people who actually need it. I guess it's hard for me to imagine seeing how far away we are from meeting people's basic needs.

[scarletwoman]

22. I agree that mental health care in this country is a disgrace.

Well wishes for you and your family.

[bettyellen]

23. Thanks again, and agreed- disgrace is the perfect word.

[cali]

12. SOMA SOMA SOMA for thee and......

fuck the "leading neuroscientist".

[cyberswede]

13. Locking, religion thread. nt

[libodem]

15. Interesting

Line of thinking. I'm not sure if the use of these techniques will be for good or evil? /

[Dignitarian]

18. Provocative, but Pointless

Creating an ideology is not a "science" but an art. The CIA spent millions attempting to develop mind control techniques against Communism, while Ho Chi Minh had nothing but a strong heart and quiet voice.

After two generations, the Vietcong would RUN into machine gun nests while our boys realized that the Vietnamese were too far gone for Freedom.

Controlling ideology is an art that is forgotten and relearned throughout history. And we are all clearly aware that the Prosperity Gospel has fallen quite far.

[hrmjustin]

25. Welcome to DU my friend!

[LostOne4Ever]

20. I thought this thread was locked? (n/t)

[Cerridwen]

24. No she didn't.

Beyond the headline sensationalism is a book she wrote discussing neuroscience, its advances and what scientists have learned. She also discusses how we need to keep a discussion going about the ethics of such research.

An excerpt from her book, The Brain Supremacy: Notes from the frontiers of neuroscience is up on amazon. I'm not sure how well this will link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/0199603375/ref=sib_dp_bod_ex/278-9694593-1465324?ie=UTF8&p=S00E#reader-link

Is this not evidence of a discipline settling into maturity, its core problems mostly deat with, the rest to be mopped up in steady middle age? Anything but. One of the these of this book is that the excitement of brain research is only just beginning. Neuroscience is passing out of its childhood, starting to reach for the power or adolescence, but it's got a long way to go before it settles into adulthood, and the next few decades will be transformative. As I hope you will see in later chapters, the amount we have learned is far outweighed by what we still don't know. Studying the brain has proved far more complicated than anyone expected, back in the days when computer scientists confidently talked of modelling its functions on machines so feeble that today's low-end word-processing software would overwhelm them. We have better computers now, but we still can't simulate anything approaching the brain's capacities.

Science's revisionist tendencies also need to be taken into account. Much of the neuroscience I learned as an undergraduate has been proved wrong. No doubt some of what I read in the research literature in the year 2010, when most of this book was drafter, will also be found to be incorrect. What we have learned about brains has revealed immense new complications. We have many hypotheses to explain...(from page 10 of the excerpt at link)

note: I typed this from an excerpt that I couldn't copy and paste: all typos are mine.

The idiocy, however, belongs to the "reporters" and their headline "writers'" fevered imaginations.
----
the mail online headline:

Islamic radicals and parents who hit their children could soon be 'cured' by science, leading neurologist claims

Author claims people 'radicalised by cult behaviours' could being treated as mental health sufferers
Say techniques could also be used to stop parents hitting children
---

the times; UK news headline:

Science ‘may one day cure Islamic radicals’
---

the rawstory headline:

Leading neuroscientist: Religious fundamentalism may be a ‘mental illness’ that can be ‘cured’

---
I wonder how long until the bullshit catapulted in those headlines becomes "common knowledge"?

[arely staircase]

26. "Religious faith was determined to be a form of mental illness that needed to be cured."

In the twentieth century, systematic political abuse of psychiatry took place in the Soviet Union.[1] Psychiatry was used as a tool during the reign of Leonid Brezhnev to eliminate political opponents ("dissidents&quot who openly expressed views that contradicted official dogma.[2] The term "philosophical intoxication" was widely used to diagnose mental disorders in cases where people disagreed with leaders and criticized them using the writings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.[3]

The process of psychiatric incarceration was instigated by attempts to emigrate; distribution or possession of prohibited documents or books; participation in civil rights actions and demonstrations, and involvement in forbidden religious activity.[4] Religious faith was determined to be a form of mental illness that needed to be cured.[5] Formerly highly classified government documents published after the dissolution of the Soviet Union demonstrate that the authorities used psychiatry as a tool to suppress dissent.[6]
According to the Commentary on the Russian Federation Law on Psychiatric Care, persons who were subjected to repressions in the form of commitment for compulsory treatment to psychiatric medical institutions and were rehabilitated in accordance with the established procedure receive indemnity payment. The Russian Federation acknowledged that psychiatry was used for political purposes and took responsibility for the victims of "political psychiatry."[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

[KittyWampus]

27. Perhaps the same can be done with Scientific Materialists-the other side of the fundie coin.

Both sides of the fundie coin are lamentable.

In the case of Scientific Materialists, I'd say there's overactive regions in the front of the brain (intellect) and Religious fundies it's in the emotional regions.

Perhaps therapies stimulating the polar opposite regions could help both camps open their minds.