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Absolutely first class! It came into the can't put it down category so I have read it cover to cover. --Ian Mowll, Co-ordinator of GreenSpirit
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this. It is groundbreaking territory, fascinating, good, topical and relevant. --Janice Hartley, Secretary of The Spiritual Crisis Network Development Group
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this. It is groundbreaking territory, fascinating, good, topical and relevant. --Janice Hartley, Secretary of The Spiritual Crisis Network Development Group
Product Description
This new perspective on faith and psychosis offers insight into the unshakable conviction of both delusion and religious fanaticism. The survival of faith and superstition in a secular age is explained in this work. God is located within the scientific world view in a way that respects mystery and so enlarges rather than diminishes our vision.
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Illuminating view on a dark topic, 18 July 2011
By Ron Unger - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Madness, Mystery and the Survival of God (Paperback)
While our culture tends to value both creativity and spirituality, at least the forms of them which have been recognized as acceptable, it tends to deny that either creativity or spirituality are risky. And it especially tends to deny the possibility that less valued experiences, such as psychosis, might be very closely related to the more valued states. But Clarke makes a good argument that the relationship is very close indeed: spirituality and creativity result from what might be seen as successful forays into, or opening up to, the "transliminal," while "madness" results from getting lost in it or overwhelmed by it.
As for what the "transliminal" is, she sees it as just the way the world looks when we view it in a way dominated by one of our two primary "cognitive subsystems." Normally, we draw from both the propositional subsystem - that dominated by either/or logic - and from the implicational subsystem, which uses a "both/and" logic, and is more involved in affect, association, and the "unconscious." Normally, we synchronize the operation of both these two subsystems in a way that leaves us not even aware there are two different systems. But when they become desynchronized, the implicational system dominates without a sense of containment or interpretation from the propositional.
Some know how to visit the transliminal, then come back enriched by the experience, while others get lost in the experience and are seen as "mad." Of course, some have both experiences - sometimes being successfully creative or spiritual, at other times being lost.
I would add that when people appear "lost" it is partly the deficit of those around the person and of the culture, that doesn't know how to relate to them, to contain and define their experience.
Clarke works as a therapist in an inpatient setting, and she finds it helpful to teach her model to the people there, even though the time is just brief. She finds that it really helps reduce stigma, it avoids battles about whether or not someone is really "mentally ill," it acknowledges that there is something potentially valid in people's experience while also challenging them to find better ways to contain and communicate about it.
This book is written in an informal, conversational way, but the quality of thinking is very good. I especially appreciate the way Clarke addresses the notion, common in some quarters, that spiritual experiences and "mental illness" experiences are actually categorically distinct but just look similar at times. Using examples, she clearly illustrates that experiences can be quite mixed, and any attempt to draw a definite line in the sand has to be arbitrary.
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