This work is the beginning of my analysis of my British Academy Postdoctoral Research on religious experiences and psychiatric disorders. This paper explores first-person experiences of Christians who have had religious experiences during mania and psychosis, examining whether and how these moments can be both symptoms of a clinical diagnosis, and meaningful religious events. To begin with, the understanding of illness in our society (both physical and mental) is often rooted in a third-person, medicalised perspectives that privileges evidence, empiricism and clinical categorisation over lived experiences. While essential, this perspective is incomplete. Philosopher, Havi Carel,[i] argues that this exclusive focus on third-person narratives risks not only overlooking but completely erasing the voices of people who live with illness.
Kidd, Spencer and Carel [ii] illustrate the unique forms of epistemic injustice individuals with psychiatric disorders experience in society and healthcare settings. In these settings an individual’s personal experiences and narratives are readily reframed through pathology. I argue that this can result in strips the individuals’ experiences of their personal form of meaning making and any religious, spiritual or revelatory significance. My research focuses on this dichotomous thinking and explores through semi-structured interviews how Christians who have reported religious experiences during mania and psychosis individuals navigate these conflicting narratives. The paper will explore if individuals understand these experiences hold collective or singular meanings,[iii] if the person thinks of them through a dichotomous lens (i.e. it is either symptom or religious experience) or a both-and lens (it is both symptoms and a spiritual encounter) and investigate the preliminary theological implications that come through the research.
At the very heart of this issue is the question of the presidential theme for 2025 – freedom. When religious experiences during mania and/or psychosis are reduced to pathology, individuals are denied the freedom to interpret their own reality, to hold onto their own mode of meaning making and to have their voices taken seriously. As Christopher Cook, a psychiatrist and theologian, highlights, is that “either someone is psychotic, or they are having a genuine spiritual experience, but not both”.[iv] This binary thinking reinforces biomedical epistemic injustice, where psychiatric models override all forms of personal meaning. It assumes that empirical, medical and scientific explanations are the only valid way to interpret experience, reducing these complex spiritual human encounters merely to neurological dysfunction or illness.
But the freedom to make sense of one’s own experiences, requires a broader framework than that purely of medicine. This paper challenges the assumption that religious experiences and psychiatric diagnosis are mutually exclusive by drawing on interview data Christians who have had religious experiences during mania and psychosis. The paper asks:
- How do individuals make sense of their own experiences, and how does their faith shape their understanding?
- Cab religious experiences be recognised as a) genuine religious experiences, and b) meaningful, even in the context of mania and psychosis?
- What are the preliminary theological implications of acknowledging both illness and religious meanings in their experiences?
The literature on epistemic injustice in psychiatry provides a foundation for exploring these questions, highlighting that individuals with psychiatric illnesses often experience testimonial and hermeneutic injustice. The paper explores how such injustices impact a persons freedom of understanding, meaning making, and potential theological interpretations of these experiences.
It is an important caveat to say that this paper is not seeking to dismiss the reality of psychiatric illnesses, medical interventions and clinical care. Instead, the paper begins to provide an insight into what a both-and approach of religious experiences and psychiatric illnesses that does not place medical interpretation against religious interpretation. The goal is not to dismiss medical insight but to begin to explore a framework where religious meaning can coexist alongside diagnosis, medication and treatments.
By utilising first-person narratives, this research is participant led in understanding and seek to provide a more holistic approach, one in which individuals are free to tell their own stories without them being rewritten by others. In doing so, this work seeks to restore a specific form of freedom to individuals, the freedom to make sense of one’s own experiences, to have their voice heard, be recognised as legitimate and their thoughts to be a part in pursuing a meaningful understanding of religious experiences during mania and/or psychosis.
Endnotes
[i] Carel, H. (2016). Phenomenology of Illness. Oxford University Press.
[ii] Kidd, I. J., Spencer, L., & Carel, H. (2025). Epistemic injustice in psychiatric research and practice. Philosophical Psychology, 38(2), 503-531.
[iii]Communal - all experiences hold the same meaning. Singular - there are specific experiences that are singularly different, and each hold a different meaning
[iv] Cook, C.C. (2019) Hearing Voices, Demonic and Divine: Scientific and Theological Perspectives. Taylor & Francis.
Cook (2019), a psychiatrist and theologian, observes that religious experiences during mania and psychosis are often framed within a binary perception — that “either someone is psychotic, or they are having a genuine spiritual experience, but not both.” This framework dismisses and silences those who report profound religious experiences during mania or psychosis, reducing their accounts to purely illness narratives. Individuals experience epistemic injustice as diagnosis and psychiatry are prioritised over an individual’s interpretation of their experience as meaningful and spiritual. These experiences are consistently pathologized through the lens of mental illness, psychiatry, and medicine. Drawing on phenomenology of illness and epistemic injustice literature, this paper utilises first-person accounts of Christians who have reported religious experiences during mania and psychosis. The research highlights the significance of first-person narratives, amplifying an often-overlooked community, and advocating for freedom to interpret their experiences as both illness and meaningful religious encounters.