God in the brain: Experiencing psychosis in the postsecular United States.

People with psychosis actively struggle to decide whether their experiences come from the real world or a disordered mind. In interviews with 19 individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders, most described ongoing efforts to weigh secular and supernatural explanations, often blending different frameworks. This syncretic process shaped not only the content of delusions or hallucinations but also the reasoning used to justify interpretations. The findings challenge oversimplified ideas about insight and suggest that the polarization between biomedical and psychosocial explanations may not reflect patients' real-world experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

There is a growing literature on what contemporary cultural theorists have broadly termed the "postsecular": the abandonment of clear-cut boundaries between the secular and nonsecular in the industrialized West and an embrace of a complex understanding of what is real that neither accepts nor rejects the supernatural. These new cultural currents may affect not only philosophers and theologians, but also the ways in which individuals with psychosis make sense of their experiences. This paper reports on the key findings of an in-depth qualitative analysis of 19 interviews of individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders. The majority of participants described ongoing and self-conscious struggles to demarcate their experiences as the products of the real world or a "crazy" mind. With equal frequency, participants weighed and debated competing secular and supernatural explanations, often juxtaposing and blending different explanatory frameworks. We found that this syncretic process affected not only the content of psychotic experiences-what delusions or hallucinations are about-but also the type of arguments or logics used to justify particular interpretations. We discuss the implications of these observations with respect to clinical practice and the broader phenomenology of psychosis, challenging often oversimplified discourse on "insight" and suggesting that polarization(s) between "biomedical" and "psychosocial" explanations may be of less relevance to patients' real-world experiences than is often assumed.