Posted on 09/19/2012 7:38:58 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Erica Loberg doesn’t come right out and say it, but the author of “Inside the Insane” believes that those of us who are very religious – or “hyper religious,” as she describes us – are mentally ill.
“Are there are lot of hyper religio(us) people walking around with schizophrenia or hypo mania and not even know it?,” she asks. “Can religion be a springboard to help discover a mental illness?”
Loberg doesn’t answer her own questions, but it’s pretty obvious what she thinks: Religiosity is a marker for mental illness, if not insanity.
When I checked Loberg’s biography, I discovred that the author has no training whatsoever in psychiatry. In fact, she received a degree in English from Columbia University.
She deems herself qualified to write about mental illness, to suggest that there is some sort of correlation between religious devotion and mental illness, because she spent some time in hospital psych wards in Los Angeles County working with the mentally ill
And, oh yes, she was, herself, a psych patient at one time.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t give Loberg’s not-so-subtle disparagement of the religiously devout a second thought.
But her disparagement appeared in an essay she wrote that appears on Psych Central, the largest and oldest online mental health social network. And her essay has been republished on Google News, giving it an exponentially wider audience.
Many will read Loberg’s essay and unwittingly think she has scientific or clinical evidence to support her hypothesis that a lot of very religious people are walking around with a screw loose.
But they will be wrong. Because Loberg’s hypothesis is based solely on her personal anecdotes.
“When I worked in psych wards,” she wrote, “patients that were considered ‘hyper’ religious would carry a Bible under their arm all day long or point out passages that spoke to them directly.”
So the amateur shrink asked herself “what the correlation was between the Bible and individuals suffering from a mental illness.”
Loberg is guilty of what trained psychiatrists call “projection.” Because she once had a faith life herself, because she also suffered a mental illness, she believes that there must have been some correlation.
But neither God, nor the Bible were responsible for Loberg’s bout of mental illness. The authoress should blame instead the inner demons with which she was afflicted.
That's one of the first places that they hide fellow travelers when the PoliSci Dept is full up.
We should care what this NUTJOB thinks?!
******
Erica Loberg@ericaloberg
ALLOWING - I think I’ve been screwed over by so many Men Cause I am open Honest Acceptabling. When you are... http://tumblr.com/xz94p8g7vk
Erica Loberg@ericaloberg
who the f**k eats caulflower? the fact i can’t spell it makes me feel good. what does it taste like? air made into a healthy “vegetable”
http://twitter.com/ericaloberg
Erica Loberg
@ericaloberg
Writing is easy. Living is not.
Los Angeles · http://ericaloberg.com
1 Cor 1:21
Yeah, we look like nuts. I think C.S. Lewis said Jesus was either nuts or the savior of the world. So it's not surprising that his followers would be viewed as nuts.
We should send her to the Mid East to further her study. She could publish her next tome in Al Zera.(sp)
If my Christian beliefs reveal me to be insane, then I will be covered by the ADA, and immune from discrimination. Bring it on liberals.
The only thing crazy about today’s Christians, is that they have 1000 cheeks, two cloaks in the garage, and no sword.
When Paul was bitten by a snake, he didn’t seek bipartisan accords with it, he threw it into the fire.
And he didn’t look to get bit again to prove anything to the anybody who missed it. And that’s the name of THAT tune.
“the author has no training whatsoever in psychiatry”
She doesn’t Need any to dovetail perfectly with the psychiatric/humanist gestalt.
Psychiatry’s Views on Religion
“Religion (is) a universal obsessional neurosis.”
Sigmund Freud, defining spiritual belief
“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”
Sigmund Freud
“The religions of mankind must be classed among the mass-delusions of this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such...”
Sigmund Freud
“Civilization runs a greater risk if we maintain our present attitude to religion than if we give it up.”
Sigmund Freud
“In short, the nature of the hallucinations of Jesus, as they are described in the orthodox Gospels, permits us to conclude that the founder of the Christian religion was afflicted with religious paranoia.”
Psychiatrist Dr. Charles Binet-Sangle: La Folie de Jesus (The Madness of Jesus), 1910
“…Jesus Christ might simply have returned to his carpentry following the use of modern psychiatric treatments.”
William Sargant, British psychiatrist, 1974
“No one knows just how the idea of a soul or the supernatural started… It probably had its origin in the general laziness of mankind.”
John B. Watson, behavioral psychologist
“This dogma (the soul) has been present in human psychology from earliest antiquity. No one has ever touched the soul, or has seen one in a test tube, or has in any way come into a relationship with it as he has with the other objects of his daily experience.”
John B. Watson, behavioral psychologist
“I regard myself as one of the most dangerous enemies of religion”
Sigmund Freud
“The soul or consciousness, which played the leading part in the past, now is of very little importance; in any case both are deprived of their main functions and glory to such an extent that only the names remain. Behaviorism sang their funeral dirge while materialism – the smiling heir – arranges a suitable funeral for them.”
Statement delivered at the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy at Harvard University
“…humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith.” “Traditional moral codes… fail to meet the pressing needs of today and tomorrow…” “Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful… The total personality is a function of the biological organism transacting in a social and cultural context. There is no credible evidence that life survives the death of the body.”
The Humanist Manifesto 2, 1973
“All neurotics seek the religious”
Psychologist Carl Jung
“It should be recognized that an acceptance of the mental health viewpoint… carries an obligation to examine critically some of the teaching of the churches in the light of present-day insight into what seems to be essential to wholesome personality development and into what is now known to be detrimental to the growing personality of the child.”
Psychiatrist at World Federation of Mental Health (WFMH) Conference
“Pastoral psychology understands itself as a help for the communities in view of ‘group dynamic’ proceedings –e.g., the processes of rivalization, or the search for scapegoats, harmonization or shifting guilt, which… can determine life in a community so strongly that the succession of Jesus Christ is no longer paid heed”
The German Association for Pastoral Psychology Magazine – Ways To Man
“What is the relationship between wholeness and holiness?… What does personal responsibility mean in the light of the findings or psychoanalysis? Do the words right and wrong, have any further usefulness in the light of our new knowledge of compulsive behavior patterns? I believe it’s one of the tragedies of Christianity that it has got itself all mixed up with morality…”
Canon Sydney Evans, National Association for Mental Health, 1967
“The word soul has lost its meaning and even its plausibility…. Faith, hope and love can no longer be seen simply as virtues or graces; they are processes in flesh and blood… (the clergyman) will find that whether he wants it or not, he is also a front-line mental health worker or he will be so regarded by the specialists in mental health. It is on the pastoral role and the tasks of shepherding that the psychological disciples have the greatest impact in theological work.”
Paul Pruyser, psychologist, author: “The Seamy Side of Current Religious Beliefs”
“In recent years pastoral counselors have separated from their parishes and emerged as a psychotherapy profession…. This professionalization process includes a shift away from parish-based counseling to counseling centers or medical settings, declining interest in religious practices and convictions, increased interest in psychological practices and theories, the charging of fees, and increased institutional and professional barriers to those individuals perceived as poor counseling clients or unable to pay…. There is also… growing deviation from a religious orientation to a pseudopsychiatric orientation.”
American Journal of Psychiatry, March 1986
“We can therefore justifiably stress our particular point of view with regard to the proper development of the human psyche, even though our knowledge be incomplete. We must aim to make it permeate every educational activity in our national life…. We have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine.”
Dr. John Rawlings Rees, “Strategic Planning for Mental Health”, June 18, 1940
“To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas...”
G. Brock Chisholm, psychiatrist and co-founder of the World Federation of Mental Health
“The danger is that these psychologies may, to one degree or another, replace Christianity without most people even noticing that any substitution has taken place.”
Christianity Today, 1994
She suffers from GDS - God Derangement Syndrome
She suffers from GDS - God Derangement Syndrome
BTW, hypomania is the kind of disorder that Churchill had...slight symptoms of mania but fully-functioning.
this is very USSR of her.
Authoress? Don’t think I’ve ever heard that word before.
Well, let me think a minute -————————
Yeah, pretty much.
Loberg doesn’t “know” she’s religious in her own right. Her “god” is self. Therefore, she’s right there with those she tries to paint with the insanity brush.
Where’s the link?
I take it this woman is talking mostly about devout Christians and Jews? Funny how liberals’ anti-religious mania does not extend to Muslims. Maybe it’s because Jews and Christians don’t behead people who insult their religions? If they did there would be no libtards left in America.
I’m not surprised. Psychiatrists and priests both fulfill the human need to talk about personal problems. The difference is the priests do it because they believe it is their God-given duty whereas psychiatrists do it for the money. Why pay a shrink hundreds of dollars when you can go to confession for free? So of course the psychiatrists have to bash religion, say the religious are mentally ill, do whatever it takes to stop people from realizing that they are being grossly overcharged for services that used to be free (and still are for those unafraid of going to church).
What she’s called is the least of her problems.
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