Truth and Sanity: Positive Illusions, Spiritual Delusions, and Metaphysical Hallucinations
Truth and Sanity: Positive Illusions, Spiritual Delusions, and Metaphysical Hallucinations
We criticize a worrisome trend in contemporary psychiatry that pathologizes normalcy on dubious epistemic grounds, on the naïve premise that mental health has some sort of clear, precise, and firm link to true belief and conversely that mental disease or disorder has some clear, precise and firm link to false or misbegotten belief. We deny this premise and show how it should make us worry that we understand what makes illusions, delusions, and hallucinations unhealthy or abnormal. In fact, we deny that illusions, delusions, and hallucinations are categorically or even typically unhealthy or abnormal.
Keywords: Delusion, Hallucination, well-being, pathologizing normalcy, self, DSM, good life, positive illusion
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.