Schizotypal personality and Religious nuttiness.

[Odin2005]

I have been musing for a while that a lot of people who are into "Charismatic" Christian denominations or New Age craziness have some degree of Schizotypy. They do not have the full-blown psychotism and break from reality of Schizophrenia, but still have bizarre perceptions of "paranormal" things and visions of a Jungian Archetypal nature. Among the Christian nuts one can also see this in their obsession with the Book of Revelation.

[frogmarch]

1. One of my sisters-in-law

exhibits some of those symptoms. She "got religion" about 20 years ago after her husband raped a woman. Instead of divorcing him, my sister-in-law went to counseling (Baptist church) and came out of it convinced that the rape was the victim's fault, and that the victim had tried to break up my sister-in-law's marriage by tempting her husband. She stood by him the whole time he was in prison, saying that when God was ready for the marriage to end, he'd take her husband out. God took him out by giving him cancer a few years later, which killed him.

My husband got a letter from her, his sister, today, full of godisms, and she included a book called What Most Relgions Don't Tell you About the Bible. He read a few lines of the letter and threw it in the trash, along with the book.

She says she hears god's voice, and that he tells her to witness to nonbelievers so they can be saved.
She sees everyday occurrences as signs from god.

When she was in her teens, she was funny and spontaneous and a joy to be with, but religion destroyed all that. It's sad.