| Autor: |
Phillips J; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut., El-Gabalawi F; Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, Belmont Behavioral Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania., Fallon BA; Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, New York., Majeed S; Penn State Hershey Medical Center, Hershey, Pennsylvania., Merlino JP; Downstate College of Medicine, Brooklyn, New York., Nields JA; Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut., Saunders D; Yale Child Study Center., Norko MA; Yale School of Medicine, CT Department of Mental Health and Addictions Services, Law and Psychiatric Division, New Haven, Connecticut. |
| Abstrakt: |
In recent decades, an evolving conversation among religion, psychiatry, and neuroscience has been taking place, transforming how we conceptualize religion and how that conceptualization affects its relation to psychiatry. In this article, we review several dimensions of the dialogue, beginning with its history and the phenomenology of religious experience. We then turn to neuroscientific studies to see how they explain religious experience, and we follow that with two related areas: the benefits of religious beliefs and practices, and the evolutionary foundation of those benefits. A final section addresses neuroscientific and evolutionary accounts of the transcendent, that is, what these fields make of the claim that religious experience connects to a transcendent reality. We conclude with a brief summary, along with the unresolved questions we have encountered. |
