Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T10:28:59.595Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Medieval visions and contemporary hallucinations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

Jerome Kroll  and
Bernard Bachrach
Jerome Kroll*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, Department of History, University of Minnesota, USA
Bernard Bachrach
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota Medical School, Department of History, University of Minnesota, USA
*
1 Address for correspondence: Dr J. Kroll, Box 393 Mayo, University of Minnesota Hospitals, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

The hallucinations of 23 patients with predominantly religious themes were compared with descriptions of visions from the Middle Ages. Although there were many points of similarity between the two classes of phenomena, none of the medieval visionaries was identified as mentally ill. The role of cultural norms in determining the attribution of mental illness, and the limitations of Euro-American criteria of psychoses, are discussed in the light of these findings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , November 1982 , pp. 709 - 721
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achté, K. A. (1961). The course of schizophrenic and schizophreniform psychoses. Acta psychiatrica et neurologica scandinavica. Supplement 155.Google Scholar
Aggernaes, A. (1972 a). The experienced reality of hallucinations and other psychological phenomena. Acta psychiatrica scandinavica 48, 220–238.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Aggernaes, A. (1972 b). The difference between the experienced reality of hallucinations in young drug abusers and schizophrenic patients. Acta psychiatrica scandinavica 48, 287–299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Alcuin, (1954). Life of St Willibrord. In The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (ed. Talbot, C. H.), p. 4. Sheed and Ward: London.Google Scholar
Al-Issa, I. (1977). Social and cultural aspects of hallucinations. Psychological Bulletin 84, 570–587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benton, J. F. (1970). Self and Society in Medieval France: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent. Harper and Row: New York.Google Scholar
Bourguignon, E. (1970). Hallucinations and trance. In Origin and Mechanisms of Hallucinations (ed. Keup, W.), p. 187. Plenum Press: New York.Google Scholar
Breakey, W. R., Goodell, H., Lorenz, P. C. & McHugh, P. R. (1974). Hallucinogenic drugs as precipitants of schizophrenia. Psychological Medicine 4, 255–261.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Buckley, P. (1981). Mystical experience and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin 7, 516–521.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clarke, B. (1975). Mental Disorder in Earlier Britain. University of Wales Press: Cardiff.Google Scholar
Cohn, N. (1970). The Pursuit of the Millennium. Oxford University Press: New York.Google Scholar
Cutting, J. (1980). Book review: World Issues in the Problems of Schizophrenic Psychoses (ed. Fukuda, T. and Mitsuda, H.). Psychological Medicine 10, 383–384.Google Scholar
Devereux, G. (1980 a). Normal and abnormal. In Basic Problems in Ethnopsychiatry (ed. Devereux, G.), pp. 3–71. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.Google Scholar
Devereux, G. (1980 b). Schizophrenia: an ethnic psychosis. Basic Problems in Ethnopsychiatry (ed. Devereux, G.), pp. 214–236. University of Chicago Press: Chicago.Google Scholar
Douglas-Smith, B. (1971). An empirical study of religious mysticism. British Journal of Psychiatry 118, 549–554.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dunham, W. (1965). Community and Schizophrenia: An Epidemiological Analysis. Wayne State University Press: Detroit.Google Scholar
Feighner, J., Robins, E., Guze, S., Woodruff, R., Winokur, G. & Munoz, R. (1972). Diagnostic criteria for use in psychiatric research. Archives of General Psychiatry 26, 57–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Freedman, A., Kaplan, H. & Sadock, B. (1975). Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. vol. 2, p. 857. Williams & Wilkins: Baltimore.Google Scholar
Goldenberg, E. & Sata, L. S. (1978). Religious delusions and self-mutilation. Current Concepts in Psychiatry 4, 2–5.Google Scholar
Goldhamer, H. & Marshall, A. W. (1949). Psychosis and Civilization. Free Press: Glencoe, Ill.Google Scholar
Goodwin, D. W., Alderson, P. & Rosenthal, R. (1971). Clinical significance of hallucinations in psychiatric disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 24, 76–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greeley, A. M. (1975). The Sociology of the Paranormal: A Reconnaissance. Sage Research Papers in the Social Sciences, Studies in Religion & Ethnicity Series, No. 90–023. Sage Publications: Beverly Hills.Google Scholar
Gregorii episcopi Turanensis Libra Historiarium (1951) (ed. Krush, B. and Levison, W.). Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, Volume 1.1. Hanover.Google Scholar
Gregory of Tours (1974). The History of the Franks. Penguin Books: Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Hare, E. H. (1973). A short note on pseudo-hallucinations. British Journal of Psychiatry 122, 469–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, C. & Shepherd, M. (1976). The case of Arise Evans: a historico-psychiatric study. Psychological Medicine 6, 351–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howells, J. G. (ed.) (1975). World History of Psychiatry. Brunner/Mazel: New York.Google Scholar
Jablensky, A. & Sartorius, N. (1975). Culture and schizophrenia. Psychological Medicine 5, 113–124.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jablensky, A., Sartorius, N., Gulbinat, W. & Ernberg, G. (1981). Characteristics of depressive patients contacting psychiatric services in four cultures. Acta psychiatrica scandinavica 63, 367–383.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jackson, S. W. (1972). Unusual mental states in medieval Europe. I. Medical syndromes of mental disorder: 400–1100 A.D. Journal of the History of Medicine 27, 262–297.Google ScholarPubMed
Jansson, B. (1968). The prognostic significance of various types of hallucinations in young people. Acta psychiatrica scandinavica 44, 401–409.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. L. & Bachrach, B. (1982). Visions and psychopathology in the Middle Ages. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 170, 41–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. L., Sines, L., Martin, K., Lari, S., Pyle, R. & Zander, J. (1981). Borderline personality disorder: construct validity of the concept. Archives of General Psychiatry 38, 1021–1026.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Larkin, A. R. (1979). The form and content of schizophrenic hallucinations. American Journal of Psychiatry 136, 940–943.Google ScholarPubMed
Leff, J. P. (1973). Culture and the differentiation of emotional states. British Journal of Psychiatry 123, 299–306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leff, J. P. (1974). Transcultural influences on psychiatrists' rating of verbally expressed emotion. British Journal of Psychiatry 125, 336–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Littlewood, R. & Lipsedge, M. (1981). Acute psychotic reactions in Caribbean-born patients. Psychological Medicine 11, 303–318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lowe, G. R. (1973). The phenomenology of hallucinations as an aid to differential diagnosis. British Journal of Psychiatry 123, 621–633.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mackinney, L. C. (1934). Tenth-century medicine as seen in the Historia of Richer of Rheims. Bulletin of the Institute of History of Medicine 2, 347–375.Google Scholar
MacKinney, L. C. (1937). Early Medieval Medicine. Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore.Google Scholar
Marsella, A. J. (1979). Cross-cultural studies of mental disorders. In Perspectives in Cross-Cultural Psychology (ed. Marsella, A. J., Tharp, R. G. and Ciborowski, T. J.), p. 246. Academic Press: New York.Google Scholar
Mayer-Gross, W., Slater, E. & Roth, M. (1977). Clinical Psychiatry. Balliere Tindall: London.Google Scholar
Murphy, H. B. M. (1968). Sociocultural factors in schizophrenia: a compromise theory. In Social Psychiatry (ed. Zubin, J. and Freyhan, F. A.), pp. 74–99. Grune & Stratton: New York.Google Scholar
Murphy, H. B. M. & Raman, A. C. (1971). The chronicity of schizophrenia in indigenous tropical peoples: results of a twelve-year follow-up survey of Mauritius. British Journal of Psychiatry 118, 489–497.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, H. B. M., Wittkower, E. D., Fried, J. & Ellenberger, H. (1963). A cross-cultural survey of schizophrenic symptomatology. International Journal of Social Psychiatry 9, 237–249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, J. M. (1976). Psychiatric labeling in cross-cultural perspective. Science 191, 1019–1028.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Neugebauer, R. (1979). Medieval and early modern theories of mental illness. Archives of General Psychiatry 36, 477–483.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Orley, J. & Wing, J. K. (1979). Psychiatric disorders in two African villages. Archives of General Psychiatry 36, 513–520.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosen, G. (1970). Mental disorder, social deviance, and culture pattern: some methodological issues in the historical study of mental illness. In Psychiatry and Its History (ed. Mora, G. and Brand, J. L.), pp. 172–194. Charles Thomas: Springfield, Ill.Google Scholar
Sacks, M. H., Gunn, J. H. & Frosch, W. A. (1981). Withholding of information by psychiatric inpatients. Hospital and Community Psychiatry 32, 424–425.Google ScholarPubMed
Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A. & Shapiro, R. (1977). Two-year follow-up of the patients included in the WHO International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. Psychological Medicine 7, 529–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartorius, N., Jablensky, A. & Shapiro, R. (1978). Cross-cultural differences in the short-term prognosis of schizophrenic psychoses. Schizophrenia Bulletin 4, 102–113.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sedman, G. (1966). A comparative study of pseudohallucinations, imagery, and true hallucinations. British Journal of Psychiatry 112, 9–17.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strauss, J. (1969). Hallucinations and delusions as points on continua function. Archives of General Psychiatry 21, 581–586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tapper, C. M., Bland, R. C. & Danyluk, O. T. (1979). Self-inflicted eye injuries and self-inflicted blindness. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 167, 311–314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, F.Kräupl, (1981). On pseudo-hallucinations. Psychological Medicine 11, 265–271.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Torrey, E. F. (1980). Schizophrenia and Civilization. Jason Aronson: New York.Google Scholar
Torrey, E. F., Torrey, B. B. & Burton-Bradley, B. G. (1974). The epidemiology of schizophrenia in Papua New Guinea. American Journal of Psychiatry 131, 567–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Twemlow, S. W., Gabbard, G. O. & Jones, F. C. (1982). The out-of-body experience: a phenomenological typology based on questionnaire responses. American Journal of Psychiatry 139, 450–455.Google ScholarPubMed
Varga, E. (1966). Changes in the Symptomatology of Psychotic Patterns. Akademiai Kiado: Budapest.Google Scholar
Waxler, N. E. (1979). Is outcome for schizophrenia better in nonindustrial societies? Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 167, 144–158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westermeyer, J. (1978). Mortality and psychosis in a peasant society. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 166, 769–774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westermeyer, J. (1979). Folk concepts of mental disorder among the Lao: continuities with similar concepts in other cultures and in psychiatry. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 3, 301–317.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westermeyer, J. (1980). Psychosis in a peasant society: social outcomes. American Journal of Psychiatry 137, 1390–1394.Google Scholar
Westermeyer, J. & Kroll, J. (1978). Violence and mental illness in a peasant society: characteristics of violent behaviours and ‘folk’ use of restraints. British Journal of Psychiatry 133, 529–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westermeyer, J. & Sines, L. (1979). Reliability of cross-cultural psychiatric diagnosis with an assessment of two rating contexts. Journal of Psychiatric Research 15, 199–213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westermeyer, J. & Wintrob, R. (1979 a). ‘Folk’ criteria for the diagnoses of mental illness in rural Laos: on being insane in sane places. American Journal of Psychiatry 136, 755–761.Google ScholarPubMed
Westermeyer, J. & Wintrob, R. (1979 b). ‘Folk’ explanations of mental illness in rural Laos. American Journat of Psychiatry 136. 901–905.Google ScholarPubMed
World Health Organization (1975). Schizophrenia: a Multinational Study. Public Health Papers No. 63. WHO: Geneva.Google Scholar
Zubin, J. & Kietzman, M. L. (1966). A cross-cultural approach to classification in schizophrenia and other mental disorders. In Psychopathology of Schizophrenia (ed. Hoch, P. H. and Zubin, J.), p. 485. Grune & Stratton: New York.Google Scholar