New Books in Psychology Madness & Acute Religious Experiences, with Richard Saville-Smith
Sep 4, 2025
Richard Saville-Smith, an independent scholar specializing in madness, religion, and psychiatry, discusses his book, 'Acute Religious Experiences'. He challenges the stigmatization of spiritual phenomena by modern psychiatry, arguing for the importance of mad studies. The conversation delves into how societal perceptions affect our understanding of spirituality and the intersections of queer studies, spirituality, and unique identities. Saville-Smith also offers a provocative reinterpretation of Jesus as a madman, pushing us to rethink the complexity of religious experiences.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Mad Studies As Academic Movement
- Mad studies inherits tactics from feminism, critical race, and queer studies to center marginalized voices in academia.
- It reframes madness as an identity and lens for interpreting religion and psychiatry interactions.
Psychiatry's Power Over Religious Experience
- Psychiatry gains institutional power by pathologizing religious experiences and erasing alternative interpretations.
- Mad studies offers a way to acknowledge religious phenomenology without accepting psychiatric pathologizing labels.
Mad But Not Pathological
- Acute religious experiences are necessarily mad but not automatically pathological according to Saville-Smith.
- This reframing preserves the phenomenology of extreme experiences while rejecting diagnostic reductionism.
