Royal College of Psychiatrists – Hallucinations & Spiritual Experience

Programme Outline

Unusual perceptual phenomena, including visual and auditory hallucinations, have been associated with spiritual and religious experiences since ancient times. Since hallucinations associated with major psychiatric disorders not infrequently include spiritual and/or religious content, this has led psychiatrists to take a reductionist approach that treats all such anomalous experiences as pathology and likely to be indicative of mental illness. However, research shows that many people who experience anomalous perception should not be diagnosed as mentally ill and are not in need of mental health services. For some, such experiences serve to enrich and enhance their sense of life purpose.

 

This day conference will bring together recent scientific research on hallucinations with spiritual and religious perspectives. Mental health professionals need to be aware of alternative frameworks for making sense of anomalous perceptual experiences, with important implications for both clinical practice and the spiritual life.

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/traininpsychiatry/conferencestraining/conferences/hallucinationsconference.aspx

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Soul Rescue Circle at Work

This soul rescue circle was formed spontaneously during a presentation by me, Dr Terence Palmer, to an audience at The Coptic Centre in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Sunday 15th May 2016. A woman in the audience expressed signs of chronic distress and asked for help. This video recording is the result of that request.

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