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Talking back to the spirits: The voices and visions of Emanuel Swedenborg

February 2008
History of the Human Sciences 21(1):1-31

DOI:10.1177/0952695107086138

Authors:

Simon McCarthy-Jones

Trinity College Dublin

Charles Fernyhough

Durham University

The voices and visions experienced by Emanuel Swedenborg remain a topic of much debate. The present article offers a reconsideration of these experiences in relation to changes in psychiatric practice. First, the phenomenology of Swedenborg's experiences is reviewed through an examination of his writings. The varying conceptualizations of these experiences by Swedenborg and his contemporaries, and by psychiatrists of later generations, are examined. We show how attempts by 19th- and 20th-century psychiatrists to explain Swedenborg's condition as the result of either schizophrenia or epilepsy are unable to account for his experiences. We then demonstrate that the re-emergence of the 19th-century concept of `hallucinations in the sane' offers an alternative way to understand Swedenborg's experiences outside typical discourses of mental illness. Finally we argue that Swedenborg's experiences should be understood as exemplifying phenomena which we term `hallucinations without mental disorder', and investigate how conceiving of Swedenborg in this way can inform future research into the experience and clinical significance of hallucinations.

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History of the Human Sciences

DOI: 10.1177/0952695107086138

2008; 21; 1 History of the Human Sciences

Simon R. Jones and Charles Fernyhough

Swedenborg

Talking back to the spirits: the voices and visions of Emanuel

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Talking back to the spirits: the

voices and visions of Emanuel

Swedenborg

SIMON R. JONES and CHARLES FERNYHOUGH

ABSTRACT

The voices and visions experienced by Emanuel Swedenborg remain a

topic of much debate. The present article offers a reconsideration of

these experiences in relation to changes in psychiatric practice. First,

the phenomenology of Swedenborg’s experiences is reviewed through

an examination of his writings. The varying conceptualizations of these

experiences by Swedenborg and his contemporaries, and by psychiatrists

of later generations, are examined. We show how attempts by 19th- and

20th-century psychiatrists to explain Swedenborg’s condition as the

result of either schizophrenia or epilepsy are unable to account for his

experiences. We then demonstrate that the re-emergence of the 19th-

century concept of ‘hallucinations in the sane’ offers an alternative way

to understand Swedenborg’s experiences outside typical discourses of

mental illness. Finally we argue that Swedenborg’s experiences should

be understood as exemplifying phenomena which we term ‘halluci-

nations without mental disorder’, and investigate how conceiving of

Swedenborg in this way can inform future research into the experience

and clinical signiﬁcance of hallucinations.

Key words epilepsy, hallucinations, history, schizophrenia,

Emanuel Swedenborg

HISTORY OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES Vol. 21 No. 1

[21:1; 1–31; DOI: 10.1177/0952695107086138]

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INTRODUCTION

Throughout history, individuals as diverse as Pythagoras, Socrates, Galileo,

Joan of Arc, Luther and Pascal have had the experience of hearing voices or

seeing visions imperceptible to others (Leudar and Thomas, 2000). There is

a long history of attempting to account for such experiences reported by such

prominent historical ﬁgures using concepts from contemporary psychiatry

such as hallucinations (T. James, 1995), today deﬁned as percept-like experi-

ences occurring in the absence of appropriate stimuli with the full force of

actual perceptions (Slade and Bentall, 1988).

One danger inherent in such attempts at retrospective analysis is that it

assumes it is possible to detach our concept of a hallucination from the

contemporary conditions under which it has been formulated, and to apply

it to cases that antedate its conceptualization which have not previously been

identiﬁed in these terms (Leudar and Sharrock, 2003). Many would be skep-

tical about such an approach (e.g. Hacking, 2003; Young, 1995). One such

reason for such skepticism ﬂows from the observation that, while diagnosis

usually requires the engagement of, and has performative consequences for,

the individual, this is not the case in the analysis of historical ﬁgures (Leudar

and Sharrock, 2003). Such an approach is also open to the accusation that it

treats the concept of the hallucination as having an objective ontological

existence, being ‘out there, independently of the psychiatric discourses and

practices that attempt to deﬁne and to treat it’ (Borch-Jacobsen, 2001: 20).

Borch-Jacobsen has proposed that instead the ‘history of psychiatry and/or

madness should ideally be the history of those complex interactions that give

rise, through feedback, ampliﬁcation and crystallization, to new psychiatric

concepts’ (ibid.: 28).

The present article aims to demonstrate how the changing conception of

the hallucination has been, and may be, applied to the experiences of Emanuel

Swedenborg. We attempt to show the process through which ‘a spiritual

visionary becomes a madman’ (Leudar and Sharrock, 2002: 249), and con-

versely, how a madman may become a spiritual visionary again. After a

review of the phenomenology of Swedenborg’s experiences, we examine how

these experiences were understood by Swedenborg himself as well as by his

close contemporaries. Next, we show how the advent of medical psychiatry

in the 19th century, and the concepts it generated, led to a reinterpretation

of Swedenborg’s experiences as pathological and symptoms of diseases such

as schizophrenia and epilepsy. We review these accounts and demonstrate

that medico-psychiatric accounts have not yet been able to offer a satisfac-

tory explanation for Swedenborg’s experiences. We then discuss how the re-

emergence of the discourse of ‘hallucinations of the sane’, according to which

such experiences are not necessarily symptoms of an illness, offers a further

shift in the way Swedenborg can be understood. Speciﬁcally, we show that

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Swedenborg’s experiences can be understood as exemplifying phenomena

which we term ‘hallucinations without mental disorder’. Finally, we draw

implications for future research into hallucinations.

WHO WAS EMANUEL SWEDENBORG?

The experiences of the Swedish scientist, inventor, mystic and theologian

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) have been a topic of much debate.

Swedenborg’s copious and lively writings on his anomalous experiences,

coupled with the fact that they emerged relatively abruptly in the middle of

his life, mean that his work presents a particularly attractive example for

historical analysis.

Swedenborg was born into a nation culturally divided. Exploitation of

Sweden’s vast mineral wealth had encouraged the development of a hard-

headed industrial and scientiﬁc quarter. However, in the Swedish country-

side, where the ‘supernatural brooded over the landscape and in the hearts

of men’ (Williams-Hogan, 1988: 4), an older and more spiritual outlook

remained. Swedenborg’s life can be seen to encompass both of these conﬂict-

ing perspectives. Born to the future Lutheran bishop of Skara, his maternal

grandfather was an assessor in the Royal College of Mines. Swedenborg’s

religious inclinations were present from an early age. As a child Swedenborg

claimed his meditations on God ‘revealed things at which my father and

mother wondered; saying that angels must be speaking through me’

(Swedenborg, cited in Swift, 1883: 3). In 1696, at the age of 8, Swedenborg

lost both his mother, Sarah, and his older and ﬁrst-born brother, Albrecht,

to an epidemic. His father remarried a year later, and relations between

Swedenborg and his new stepmother appear to have been positive (Toksvig,

1948). From adolescence, through to his late 50s, Swedenborg’s life was pre-

dominantly that of a man of science. His interests and works involved him

in physics and chemistry, biology and geology, as well as physiology and

mathematics. His work in what is today recognized as neuroscience has been

acclaimed as being far ahead of its time (Gross, 1997). Swedenborg eventu-

ally settled into a role as an assessor for the Royal College of Mines and in

1747 was recommended for the position of Councillor of Mines, the highest

position a non-noble could hold (Toksvig, 1948).

However, by the mid-1740s Swedenborg had already started moving

away from his work in the natural sciences, towards a more spiritual focus,

occasioned by a number of anomalous experiences. In 1743 he started to

become aware of ‘angelic voices’ (Toksvig, 1948: 153) and by the following

year claimed to have produced writings on the commands of angels (ibid.).

Swedenborg’s desire to devote himself entirely to these spiritual investi-

gations led him to decline the offered position of Councillor of Mines and

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resign his current position (Stanley, 1988). Swedenborg’s subsequent spiri-

tual investigations were not based on a purely philosophical approach, but

on the experiences that he interpreted as sent from God. These took the

form of a range of predominantly visual and auditory experiences, involving

conversations with ‘angels’ and ‘spirits’. As Swedenborg put it ‘I have seen,

I have heard’ (1872[1749–56]: Arcana Coelestia (n6191). Following the onset

of these experiences in the mid-1740s Swedenborg remained functioning at a

sufﬁciently high level not only to be able to learn Hebrew, but also to publish

a voluminous theological and philosophical biblical literature over a period

of decades. Furthermore, not only was Swedenborg able to continue to make

presentations to the Swedish Diet (the highest authority in the land below the

monarch) on the problems and dangers posed by issues such as inﬂation, poor

foreign exchange rates, and alcohol, he was also able to do so in a clear and

simple manner (Toksvig, 1948).

WHAT DID SWEDENBORG EXPERIENCE?

Form and content of Swedenborg’s experiences

Swedenborg’s experiences were, in the words of William James (1960[1902]:

460), ‘the palmary one[s] of audita et visa, serving as a basis of religious reve-

lation’. What Swedenborg experienced, how he experienced it, and his expla-

nations of it, may be found in the copious volumes of spiritual writings he

published following the onset of his anomalous experiences in the mid-1740s.

These works include his Spiritual Diary (hereafter cited as SpD; 1746–65),

Arcana Coelestia (hereafter cited as AC; 1749–56), Life on Other Planets

(hereafter cited as LP; 1758), Heaven and Hell (hereafter cited as HH; 1758),

and True Christian Religion (hereafter cited as TCR; 1771). Throughout these

works Swedenborg reiterated how it had been granted him ‘for some years

almost continually to hold discourse with spirits and angels, and to be in their

company as one of themselves’ (AC, n1634). Such experiences continued to

his death in 1772.

As well as spirits and angels, Swedenborg claimed to have been able to

‘speak with those who are in hell’ (HH, n312) as well as almost all of those

‘with whom I was acquainted during their life’ (AC, n1636). Other voices and

visions he experienced were those of historical ﬁgures; one was ‘given me to

believe that he was Aristotle’ (AC, n4658). Yet further voices and visions

Swedenborg experienced were understood by him to be from inhabitants of

other planets in the solar system: ‘Some spirits approached me, and I was told

from heaven that they were from the world nearest to the sun, the planet

named in our world Mercury’ (LP, n11). The beings Swedenborg encountered

were able to go into great depth about the speciﬁcs of life in a spiritual realm.

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What Swedenborg experienced is substantially easier to determine than how

he experienced it. Swedenborg’s writings show him to have had anomalous

experiences in visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile modalities. A chrono-

logical examination of his experiences gives an indication of the changing

nature of his experiences. The seeds of Swedenborg’s anomalous spiritual

experiences began in 1736 when he was 48 years old (Benz, 2002), occasion-

ing him to start recording them in his Dream Diary (henceforth cited as DD),

which was published posthumously in incomplete form. Up until 1744, his

experiences included dreams, ‘visions when my eyes were closed’, ‘ﬁery

lights’ and hearing ‘speech in morning time’ (SpD, n2951). The nature of

these experiences changed radically post-1744. On two separate occasions in

April 1744 and April 1745 Swedenborg experienced seeing Jesus and God

respectively, who spoke to him during night-time visions, when it is not clear

whether he was awake, asleep, or somewhere in between. The vision of God

was to be a turning point in Swedenborg’s life, as it was at this moment that

he experienced what he later described as the opening of his ‘interior sight’

(AC, n1619), allowing him to see and hear ‘things of another life, which

cannot possibly be made visible to the bodily sight’ (ibid.).

Following this experience, Swedenborg started to write his ﬁrst series of

biblical commentaries on the books of the Old Testament, The Word of the

Old Testament Explained (henceforth cited as WE). Much of this, Sweden-

borg claimed, was done in the presence of spirits. For example, he explains

that ‘These words are written in the presence of many Jews who are around

me; nor do I doubt that Abraham is also present’ (WE, n5292). His anom-

alous experiences at this time appear to have been predominantly auditory,

with visual experiences being the exception rather than the rule (e.g. WE,

n1511). Much of what Swedenborg wrote in this work was copied down as

the voices dictated to him ‘viva voce’ (WE, n1150, n1511). Swedenborg vigor-

ously denied that that these voices were not real. ‘[I]t is not in the least degree

phantasy’, he wrote, ‘but a continuous speech, as one of man with another

. . . and this now for ﬁfteen months’ (WE, n5292). As well as being dictated

to, he also noted that ‘I have written entire pages, and the spirits did not

dictate the words but absolutely guided my hand, so that it was they who

were doing the writing’ (WE, n1150). In these passages in which Swedenborg

claims his hand is being guided, his handwriting differs from his normal hand,

having an angular, slashing style (Toksvig, 1948). At this period of life some

of his other movements also appear to have been experienced as controlled

by spirits, ‘They so ruled my actions that I went whithersoever they desired

. . . they ruled my steps’ (WE, n1149).

Swedenborg’s frequency of visual experiences increased gradually over

time. As Toksvig (1948: 217) puts it, ‘He could “see” more and more as well

as “hear”’. Swedenborg’s next set of biblical commentaries, published as

Arcana Coelestia, were not written in the form of automatic writing but were

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reﬂections on what he had seen and heard. By 1758 Swedenborg had discerned

at least four distinct ways in which he experienced his voices and visions,

although he also claims ‘there are a great many other kinds of vision which

can never be described’ (WE, n7387). The ﬁrst clearly identiﬁed state when

visions and voices would occur corresponds to states of consciousness associ-

ated with the transition from wakefulness to sleep, and vice versa, today

referred to as hypnagogic and hypnopompic states respectively (Vaitl et al.,

2005). Swedenborg referred to this state as being ‘withdrawn from the body,

and not knowing whether one is in the body or out of it’ (HH, n440), but

noted that he had been in this state ‘only three or four times’ (ibid.). The

second class of experiences occurred when Swedenborg was walking through

the streets, yet subjectively perceived himself to be walking through groves,

rivers and palaces, conversing with spirits. Again, Swedenborg reports that

he only found himself in this state two or three times. Both these ﬁrst two

states were ‘extraordinary’ (HH, n442) and, Swedenborg believed, were

shown to him ‘only that I might know what they are’ (ibid.). The third

category occurred in ‘full wakefulness, with the eyes closed’ in which ‘things

are seen as though in clear day’ (WE, n7387). The ﬁnal class of experiences,

‘to speak with spirits, and to be with them as one of them’ was experienced

by Swedenborg ‘in full wakefulness of body’ and was experienced over a

period of many years. This appears to have been the most frequent form of

Swedenborg’s experiences, occurring on a day-to-day basis. He referred to

this as being ‘in the spirit’ (e.g. TCR, n76).

When the spirits spoke to Swedenborg he typically heard them ‘as sonor-

ously as the speech of man’ (AC, n4652), although in other circumstances the

voices were less distinct and would ‘mutter’ (AC, n4657). The muttering

voices appeared to be associated with a negative content, typically being ‘of

such a nature, that they observe the faults and failings of others . . . they see

and interpret all things unfavourably, and prefer themselves to others’ (ibid.).

Yet other voices spoke ‘by a gurgling of words as if from the belly’ (AC,

n1763). Although Swedenborg typically appears to have heard only one voice

speaking at a time, he does also report sometimes experiencing ‘a simultane-

ous speech of many spirits together’ (AC, n1763).

Swedenborg did not only experience his voices and visions when he was

alone; he noted that he had

. . . discoursed with them whilst I was also in company with men [and]

I also observed, that as I heard the sound of a man’s voice in discourse,

so I heard also that of spirits, each alike sonorous. (AC, n1635)

Swedenborg also, intriguingly, notes that his voices themselves also thought

other people could hear them:

. . . [a]t times, when spirits have spoken with me in the midst of the

company of men, some of them have supposed, because their speech

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was heard so sonorously, that they would be heard also by those that

were there present. (AC, n4652)

As well as speaking in complete formal language, Swedenborg also notes that

the spirits were able to speak in the language of thought. For example, he

states that ‘speech consisting of ideas of thought is the speech proper to

spirits’ (AC, n1639). Swedenborg claims to have often spoken with spirits ‘in

their proper tongue, that is, by ideas of thought’ (ibid.).

From the 1760s through to his death in 1772, Swedenborg’s visions typi-

cally took one of two forms (Benz, 2002). In the ﬁrst he experienced a vision

‘in a state of complete absorption with closed eyes’ (ibid.: 280). In the second

he was still aware of his surroundings but ‘his spirit was directed towards

persons and phenomena of the spiritual world, which became partially visible

in the context of earthly reality and seemed to intrude into his sensory world

of experience’ (ibid: 279). Benz (2002) identiﬁes the following typical example

of this second type of vision: Swedenborg is meditating on a problem, an

‘angel’ appears in a speciﬁc relation to him (e.g. above and to the left, or to

his right). Swedenborg then heads into the spirit world, has a long and

didactic conversation, then returns home. For example, Swedenborg reported

the experience of being ‘engaged in meditation upon the creation of the

universe’ when an angel ‘above me on the right’ noticed this, ‘descended,

and invited me up to them’ (TCR, n76). Swedenborg claims he was then

conducted to the palace of a prince where there ensued a long discussion with

its occupants, after which ‘the angel, who had introduced me, accompanied

me to the house where he found me, and from thence re-ascended to his own

society’ (TCR, n76). In contrast to his earlier experiences in the 1740s when

he wrote down what the spirits said to him as they spoke, or recorded their

message via automatic writing, in the 1770s Swedenborg generally returned

from his spiritual state into his physical state and only then wrote down the

things he had heard and seen (Benz, 2002).

In these later visions there still remains some phenomenological hetero-

geneity. Some visions involve the spiritual ﬁgure appearing in the real world,

although these are rare (Benz, 2002). For example, Swedenborg reports an

experience where

A single satan was once permitted to ascend out of hell, together with

a woman, and come to the house where I was. As soon as I perceived

them I shut the window, but entered into conversation with them

through it. (TCR, n80)

Finally, it is worth noting a speciﬁc physical state that Swedenborg observed

to be associated with his anomalous experiences. Swedenborg noted that ever

since his childhood he had been able to breathe in a ‘scarcely perceptible’ way

(Benz, 2002: 158). This breathing technique appears to have consisted of

suppression of his breathing in order to focus thought (ibid.). After his

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anomalous experiences had been occurring for some years Swedenborg made

the direct link between his controlled breathing and his spiritual experiences:

claiming that ‘my respiration was so formed by the Lord that I could respire

inwardly for a considerable time, without the aid of external air . . . in order

that I may be with spirits and speak with them’ (SpD, n3317). He states that

‘when heaven was opened to me, and I was enabled to converse with spirits,

I sometimes scarcely breathed’ (SpD, n3464). Benz (2002: 159) concludes

that ‘one cannot dismiss the possibility that Swedenborg’s varied visionary

experiences . . . are related to this phenomenon’.

Veracity of Swedenborg’s reports

Before examining in depth how Swedenborg’s experiences have been under-

stood it must be established that Swedenborg did actually experience what

he claimed (Talbot, 1998). In this respect we are concerned to establish, not

that Swedenborg heard and saw spiritual beings with independent ontologi-

cal statuses, but that he had experiences of hearing and seeing things that others

could not. It is not our intention to address theological issues surrounding

Swedenborg’s experiences. Swedenborg himself was acutely aware of the

skepticism that would meet his claims, writing that he was ‘well aware that

many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels . . . and

many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to

gain credence, and others will make other objections. But by all this I am not

deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt’ (AC, n68).

In support of Swedenborg’s accounts there is ﬁrst the testimony of his peers.

Talbot (1998) cites a Mr Shearsmith who shared a house with Swedenborg.

Shearsmith states that:

. . . what he [Swedenborg] saw was in a wakeful state, as he generally

stood between the bed and front room when conversing in the day with

spirits or those who were invisible to others; which conversations

would often also be held in the night, or towards 2 and 3 o’clock in the

morning, and would last for an hour or more, he often appearing to be

in a kind of conﬂict, and saying, Nay! nay! nay! often, and sometimes

loud; but when it met his approbation, Yea! yea! was pronounced, and

more often.

Swift (1883) also put forward a number of reasons why it is unlikely that

Swedenborg was simply fabricating his experiences. First, Swift noted that it

is implausible that an eminent mathematician and philosopher known for

his truth and integrity should ‘voluntarily submit for nearly thirty years to

a life of self denial and obscurity, merely for the purpose of deluding

mankind’ (ibid.: 69). Second, Swift noted that Swedenborg’s claims were

‘never associated with anything of self-ostentation or self-commendation’

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(ibid.). Indeed, as noted above, Swedenborg had rejected a prestigious

employment offer in order to pursue his spiritual investigations.

Finally, as Benz (2002) notes, only rarely did Swedenborg experience a

traditional Christian vision where he saw events before his spiritual eye, and

then received an explanation of them. In this way Swedenborg distinguishes

himself from all earlier Christian visionaries in the ‘preponderance of didac-

ticism over imagery’ (ibid.: 315) in his visions. If Swedenborg had fabricated

such experiences it would have been more convincing to his peers if they had

conformed to the traditional form of Christian visions. If, as seems probable,

Swedenborg was reporting bona ﬁde experiences, this still leaves the question

of whether he embellished his reports. A review of his writings shows his

voices and visions increasing in complexity, richness and colour over the

course of his life. However, the content and relation of Swedenborg to the

spirits remained broadly consistent. It hence appears likely that the visions

and voices experienced did genuinely evolve over Swedenborg’s lifetime.

Another potential issue is that later in life Swedenborg generally wrote down

his experiences after they had occurred, leaving open the possibility of

memory errors and distortions. Where Swedenborg appears unreliable is not

so much in what he reports seeing or hearing, as in his explanations for his

experiences. For example, Swedenborg variously claims that pains he experi-

ences in his head (AC, n5180) or stomach (AC, n5723) were caused by evil

spirits. Such explanations could be understood as delusional elaborations

(though the pains themselves were probably very real). Ultimately, the veracity

and accuracy of Swedenborg’s reports can never be conclusively determined.

However, we conclude that it is fair to assume that his experiences were not

fabricated or overly embellished.

HOW HAVE SWEDENBORG’S EXPERIENCES BEEN

UNDERSTOOD?

In western Europe, between around

AD 500 and AD 1500, individuals who

reported hearing voices or seeing visions were not typically considered mad,

but regarded by their peers as having actual perceptual experiences (Kroll and

Bachrach, 1982). Such experiences could be understood as communications

from spiritual beings (God, the Devil, etc.), as being merely imaginations, or

as resulting from illness (Watkins, 1998). As late as the 17th century, the

explanation of hallucinations as religious madness was still common (Porter,

2002). However, by the time of Swedenborg’s experiences in the mid- to late

18th century, opinion was shifting towards a conception of hallucinations as

illness. Works such as William Battie’s Treatise on Madness (1758) were

formative in identifying lunacy with false perceptions such as reported

conversations with angels (Schmidt, 2002). As Schmidt (2002: 191) puts it,

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‘Enlightenment epistemologies . . . demanded the disciplining of religious

enthusiasm, a conﬁnement of those “unguarded fancies of a man’s own

brain” within a secure domain from which reason and the state might avoid

contamination’.

Swedenborg’s own understanding

Swedenborg himself made sense of his experiences through the still access-

ible religious framework. He understood the ‘opening of his inner sight’ as

directly equivalent to the experiences of the Old Testament prophets (AC,

n1532). Before his vision of Christ in 1744, Swedenborg’s scientiﬁc back-

ground led him to struggle with the question as to whether ﬁgures in the

Bible like Moses did actually experience God directly communicating with

them. He ironically notes that his doubting ‘is the reason that the angels and

God showed themselves to the shepherds and not to philosophers who let

their understanding enter into these matters’ (Swedenborg cited in Benz,

2002: 166). Swedenborg initially struggled with himself to assess whether his

experiences were mere fantasy (i.e. hallucinatory) or genuine experiences. For

example, he writes: ‘What can this be? Is it Christ, God’s son, that I have

seen?’ (DD, n55). However, he came to believe his experiences were genuine

and to ‘obtain faith without reasoning’ (DD, n149). Swedenborg was then

clear to differentiate his experiences from phantasy, where images created in

the imagination appear to come from the external world (Benz, 2002). In

Swedenborg’s words, his visions were not the ‘vision of phantasy which is of

the interior sight; for then, that meets the eye as though from without which

yet is within the natural mind’ (WE, n7386).

In addition to trying to understand the source of his experiences, Sweden-

borg also attempted to address the reasons behind them. Swedenborg supposed

they occurred ‘in order that the man of the Church may not continue any

longer in his erroneous faith as to a resurrection at the day of judgment, and

the state of the soul in the meantime, and also as to angels and the devil’

(HH, n312). This ‘erroneous faith’, Swedenborg claimed, did not allow indi-

viduals to have satisfactory answers to fundamental questions such as ‘How

can bodies eaten up by worms, consumed by corruption and scattered to all

the winds, be gathered together again to their soul?’ (ibid.). These gaps in

humanity’s understanding, he thought, would lead to doubts and denials

about the existence of the soul, heaven and hell, and faith itself.

However, perhaps reﬂecting his scientiﬁc background, Swedenborg had

another discourse available through which to explain the experience. He

writes:

That the speech of an angel or spirit ﬂows down from within even into

the ear, was proved to me from this, that it also ﬂows into the tongue

causing a slight vibration; but not with any motion, such as takes place

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when the sound of speech is thereby articulated into words by the man

himself. (HH, n248)

In this account Swedenborg was able to attempt to knit together potential

religious and natural science accounts of his experiences. Strikingly, Sweden-

borg concurred with modern researchers in seeing the origin of his voices in

the realm of thought and speech (e.g. Jones and Fernyhough, 2007). Indeed,

his understanding here seems to be as far ahead of its time as his work in

neuroscience has been claimed to be (Gross, 1997). His belief that, what

today are termed auditory verbal hallucinations, may be accompanied by

‘slight vibrations’ in the speech musculature was, two hundred years later,

shown to be the case (e.g. Gould, 1948; Inouye and Shimizu, 1970). Thus,

overall, Swedenborg cannot be adjudged guilty of Francis Bacon’s claim that

we love better to believe than examine.

Although Swedenborg was able to understand his experiences through a

dual religious-natural science framework, he still had to justify this stance

against alternative discourses, particularly that of insanity. Swedenborg

himself deﬁned insanity as involving ‘one who acts contrary to accepted

propriety and the customs of society, or, still more, who obstinately defends

his own opinion against acknowledged truths and the judgement of sound

mind, and . . . who, deranged and empty of mind, exposes himself to public

sport’ (Swedenborg, cited in Toksvig, 1948: 133). Swedenborg did not believe

himself to meet these criteria (ibid.). However, he did appear to have worried

that, on occasions such as when he responded to a spiritual command to wash

his feet, he may have been perceived as insane (ibid.). One source of proof

to himself that he was not insane came from a voice that told him ‘one can

become insane as to the body and yet not as to the mind or thinking’ (SpD,

n2421). The association of madness with irrationality that had developed out

of the work of the 17th-century philosophers such as Locke and Hobbes also

appears to have helped convince Swedenborg that he was not insane. Sweden-

borg’s emphasis that he could ‘enjoy my rational mind, just as if they [the

spirits] were not present’ (SpD, n2659) appears to have been a major factor

in convincing him of his sanity. Others, however, did not concur.

The understanding of Swedenborg’s contemporaries

It appears that Swedenborg himself, as well as a large number of those who

met him, had a more charitable view of his experiences than those of the

contemporary medical and philosophical establishment. However, as noted,

Swedenborg was acutely aware that he may have been thought of as mad,

writing of individuals who ‘persuaded others that I was insane’ (SpD, n2772).

Perceptions of Swedenborg by his contemporaries may be categorized

according to the extent to which the observer was personally familiar with

him. As noted in the introduction, terms such as hallucination and madness

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have a performative aspect. Thus, we should not be surprised that those who

encountered Swedenborg face-to-face should have responded differently to

those who did not.

Swift (1883) reports the testimony of an innkeeper, Mr Bergstrom, who

encountered Swedenborg in the midst of an anomalous experience while

staying at his inn. He found Swedenborg talking to invisible entities with

his hands raised in an agitated state, and could not understand what he was

saying. As Toksvig (1948) notes, this may be explained by the fact that

Swedenborg was speaking in Latin, a language Bergstrom did not know.

Even given these experiences, Bergstrom noted that Swedenborg was ‘very

reasonable’ (Swift, 1883: 174), ‘dressed neatly in velvet, and made a good

appearance’ (ibid.), and that he was a ‘reasonable, sensible, and good man’

(ibid.). Others who met Swedenborg in person, such as the Swedish states-

man, Count Hopken, also appear to have agreed that he was of sound

judgment (Toksvig, 1948).

Many of those who leveled charges of insanity against Swedenborg before

meeting him seemed subsequently to have had second thoughts (ibid.). In

addition to his demonstrated rationality in everyday life, Swedenborg’s high

social standing, combined with his failure overtly to cross the line from

religious into political prophecy (Ingram, 1998), may also have played a role

in his generally sympathetic treatment. Others who did cross into political

prophecy, such as the English preacher Richard Brothers who in 1795

prophesied the fall of the monarchy, were rapidly institutionalized (ibid.).

Those who encountered Swedenborg solely through his writings appear

to have made less charitable judgments. For example, Swedenborg’s contem-

porary, the Swedish poet Johan Henrik Kellgren, wrote in a 1787 poem

entitled ‘You Are Not a Genius even if You Are Mad’ that ‘Swedenborg will

never be anything else than an idiot’ (our translation). Furthermore, in 1770

the early Methodist John Wesley wrote that Swedenborg ‘is one of the most

ingenious, lively, entertaining madmen that ever set pen to paper’ (Wesley,

1986[1770]: 216).

Perhaps the most inﬂuential commentator, in terms of cementing a particu-

lar view of Swedenborg, was his contemporary Immanuel Kant. In his 1766

book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, Kant (2002[1766]) addressed the experiences of

Swedenborg at the insistence of ‘inquisitive and idle friends’ (ibid.: 56). Kant

distinguished between the raw experiences Swedenborg had, which Kant

termed ‘deludedness of the senses’ (ibid.: 50), and the rationalizations, elab-

orations and interpretations Swedenborg made from these, which he termed

‘deludedness of the reason’ (ibid.). Kant did not believe that Swedenborg had

simply invented his experiences, and found the ‘coherent delusion of the

senses’ to be a ‘remarkable phenomenon’ (ibid.). Despite this measured tone,

certain passages of Kant’s work are more critical of Swedenborg. For example,

Kant states he would not blame the reader if he dismissed characters such as

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Swedenborg as ‘candidates for the hospital’ (ibid.: 35), and at one point also

states that Swedenborg’s works are ‘nonsense’ (ibid.: 49). The recent comment

by Ward (2003: 515) that Swedenborg was ‘a character whom everybody

knew had been rubbished in his lifetime by critics as various as Kant and

John Wesley’ appears to bear out this conclusion. The weight which subse-

quent scholars have attached to certain of Kant’s words may have contributed

to succeeding generations being handed down an inﬂuential view of Sweden-

borg as mentally ill.

19th-century understandings of Swedenborg: hallucinations in the sane?

In 1817 a number of the experiences undergone by Swedenborg (hearing

voices, seeing visions, etc.) were subsumed into the ﬁrst medical deﬁnition

of ‘hallucination’ by Esquirol. It was during this period of history that, for

the ﬁrst time, medicine claimed as part of its domain experiences that had

traditionally fallen under the authority of the Church (T. James, 1995). Indeed,

Schmidt (2002) has argued that medical psychiatry was created precisely in

order politically to contain delusions of religious fervour. At this time the

method of ‘médecine rétrospective’ (Littre, 1860: 103) emerged. This involved

attempts to reinterpret, in the light of present-day medical knowledge, the

experiences of inﬂuential religious and philosophical ﬁgures such as Socrates,

Moses, Luther, St Teresa of Avila, and occasionally Swedenborg, whose

experiences had previously been predominantly situated in a religious dis-

course (T. James, 1995).

Two contrasting approaches to Swedenborg in the 19th century are parti-

cularly worthy of examination, those of Brierre de Boismont and Henry

Maudsley. De Boismont’s work on the relations between hallucinations and

sanity occurred as part of the debate among French proto-psychiatrists

(forerunners of contemporary medical psychiatry), as to the relation between

hallucinations and madness. This debate, which stretched over three decades

from approximately the 1830s onwards, culminated in the 1855 debate at the

Société Médico-Psychologique. During these debates a range of views were

proposed. At one extreme existed views such Leuret’s which argued that hallu-

cinations were inherently pathological, and an indisputable sign of madness

(T. James, 1995). De Boismont, a Roman Catholic doctor, was placed in an

awkward position by his colleagues’ arguments that all hallucinations were

signs of madness, and hence that the Christian prophets, and more recent

religious ﬁgures such as Luther and Joan of Arc, who had experienced

hearing voices and seeing visions, were insane. The need for a category of

hallucinations coexisting with sanity was for de Boismont crucial, as other-

wise, he notes, ‘we are compelled to admit that eminent men . . . must be

placed in the Pandemonium of the insane, if the diseased hallucination is the

only form that can be recognised’ (de Boismont, 1860: 369). He hence argued

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that the opinion that turns celebrated men ‘into hallucinated lunatics, must

be rejected, and reason be permitted to claim these great men as their own’

(ibid.: 370).

In order to achieve this aim de Boismont noted that it was true that the

‘majority of the insane are subject to hallucinations; but it is equally certain,

that they may occur by themselves’ (ibid.: 261). From this ﬂowed his argu-

ment that hallucinations were not necessarily a ‘sign of insanity’ (ibid.: xiv),

and that they may coexist with sanity. One inﬂuential case in supporting this

thesis was the oft-cited case of a German bookseller, Nicolai, who in 1799

experienced a number of visual hallucinations both of a known deceased

acquaintance and of other unknown ﬁgures. Nicolai was able to deal effec-

tively with the continuance of these hallucinations, to the point where he

came only to experience mild anxiety when they spoke to him. Upon seeking

medical assistance, he came to receive a diagnosis not of insanity, but ‘halluci-

nations compatible with reason’ (Berrios, 1996: 36).

De Boismont further subdivided his category of ‘hallucinations coexisting

with sanity’ (1860: 34) into hallucinations that were corrected by the judge-

ment, and those that were not. This distinction arose from de Boismont’s

division of hallucinations into ‘two distinct elements, the sensible idea and the

mental conception’ (ibid.: 259). The sensible idea referred to the raw experi-

ence (i.e. the hearing of the voice), whereas the mental conception referred to

how the experience was understood. In hallucinations corrected by the judge-

ment, individuals ‘correctly regarded their hallucinations as the offspring of

the imagination, or as arising from the unhealthy state of the body’ (ibid.: 74).

In hallucinations not corrected by judgment, individuals’ explanations were

‘led by their belief in the supernatural’ yet they ‘gave no evidence of a dis-

ordered intellect’ (ibid.). De Boismont claimed that the prominent religious

ﬁgures of the past fell into this latter category. He also noted the importance

of context, arguing that ﬁgures such as Luther’s interpretations of their experi-

ences belonged to ‘society and not the individual’ (ibid.: 363).

Although de Boismont considered a number of historical ﬁgures, he only

mentioned Swedenborg in passing, as part of a discussion on ‘hallucinations

in ecstasy’ (ibid.: 188). However, as is clear from the above, he does not appear

to have regarded ﬁgures such as Swedenborg as insane. A similar view was

taken by his contemporary Lélut. Lélut noted that there existed the view that

‘the insanity . . . of Swedenborg, is now generally admitted by all who have

added the study of mental disease to that of history and philosophy’ (Lélut

cited in De Boismont, 1860: 340). However Lélut admitted the possibility

that there could be

. . . more or less continual, chronic hallucinations, considered by the

hallucinators as real sensations, which are nevertheless compatible with

an apparently whole set of reason, and which allow the individual who

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suffers them, not only to manage to continue to live with his fellow

men, but even to bring to his conduct and the management of his inter-

ests all the soundness of judgement which is desirable. (Lélut, cited in

T. James, 1995: 91)

Lélut concluded that ﬁgures such as Swedenborg ‘were not mad, but they

were hallucinators, hallucinators such as no longer exist, nor can exist, hallu-

cinators whose visions were the visions of reason’ (ibid.: 92). Lélut recog-

nized that such historical ﬁgures had ‘hallucinations in a religious and

reforming mode which was fostered by the spirit of the age’ (ibid.: 91) and

that this spirit of the age, ‘incapable of understanding such a form of madness,

obliged the hallucinator and his witnesses to believe in the reality of his false

perceptions’ (ibid.).

Shortly after the French proto-psychiatrist debate, the agnostic and mate-

rialist English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley published a less favourable judge-

ment on Swedenborg’s sanity. Maudsley had the explicit aim to promote

science over religion (Leudar and Sharrock, 2003) and it was within this

context that he gave attention to the case of Swedenborg (Maudsley, 1869a,

1869b). Reﬂecting the inﬂuence of writers such as Kant, Maudsley began his

review by noting that ‘there are very few who have thought it worth their

while to study him [Swedenborg] at all seriously; he is commonly accounted

a madman’ (ibid.: 169). Maudsley then moved on to discredit Swedenborg’s

earlier scientiﬁc work, claiming it would be ‘unproﬁtable to attempt to give

here a summary of Swedenborg’s physiological views . . . among them wild

conjectures, fanciful theories, strange conceits and empty phrases’ (ibid.: 183).

Maudsley’s review of Swedenborg’s life relied on biographies and not on

Swedenborg’s original writings. As a consequence he placed weight on a

story of Swedenborg rolling around naked in mud, claiming to be the Messiah,

which today is considered apocryphal (Talbot, 1998). Maudsley concluded

that ‘though he [Swedenborg] was insane, he was capable of taking care of

himself sufﬁciently well, and of managing his affairs with prudence’

(Maudsley, 1869b: 434). This view appears to be in line with the French

proto-psychiatrists’ concept of Swedenborg’s hallucinations coexisting with

sanity, except that Maudsley saw Swedenborg’s hallucinations as being intrin-

sically constitutive of insanity. This seemingly paradoxical conclusion becomes

clearer when we note that, although Maudsley was aware of the existence of

hallucinations coexisting with sanity, he proposed that this concept applied

only to hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations (Leudar and Thomas,

2000). Hallucinations, such as Swedenborg’s, occurring in clear conscious-

ness were understood by Maudsley as being pathological and indicative of

mental illness.

After Maudsley’s (1869b: 434) conclusion that Swedenborg was ‘capable

of taking care of himself sufﬁciently well, and of managing his affairs with

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prudence’, it is somewhat troubling when he adds that ‘had he [Swedenborg]

lived at the present day in England it is very doubtful whether he would have

been left in undisturbed possession of his freedom and his property’ (ibid.).

Maudsley’s hypothetical scenario was later played out in court three decades

later when the hallucinations experienced by Daniel Paul Schreber, ‘the most

frequently quoted patient in psychiatry’ (Leudar and Thomas, 2000: 52),

resulted in a similar court case. In Schreber’s case the court ruled that although

Schreber was ‘insane’ this was not all-encompassing, being restricted to his

religious ‘ﬁxed ideas’, and was hence not a reason to deprive him of his legal

rights (ibid.).

20th-century understanding of Swedenborg: consolidation of psychiatry

A number of events around the end of the 19th century provided further

impetus for considering Swedenborg’s experiences as non-pathological. First,

large-scale empirical investigations of hallucinatory experiences in the normal

population began. In a survey of 17,000 normal participants, the Report on

the Census of Hallucinations (Sidgwick et al., 1894: 33) asked the question

‘Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid

impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object,

or of hearing a voice: which impression, so far as you could discover, was not

due to any external physical cause?’ Ten per cent of respondents replied in the

afﬁrmative, though approximately half reported these experiences occurring

as they were either falling asleep or waking up. In terms of the modality of

the experiences, 56 per cent were solely visual, 23 per cent solely auditory, and

6 per cent involved combined visual and auditory hallucinations.

Secondly, William James’s publication of The Varieties of Religious Experi-

ence in 1902 argued for alternative ways to understand religious experiences.

James (1960: 35) noted that what he termed medical materialism ‘ﬁnishes up

Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion

of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic’, ‘snuffs out Saint Teresa as an

hysteric, [and] Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate’. James

claimed that such an approach was simple-minded, and argued that experi-

ences such as hallucinations should be dealt with not by ‘superﬁcial medical

talk’ but by an inquiry into ‘their fruits for life’ (ibid.: 398).

Despite the existence of these conceptual tools, at the dawn of the 20th

century it was commonplace for hallucinations still to be seen as pathological

and indicative of mental illness (Leudar and Thomas, 2000). The psychiatric

framework remained the dominant method of understanding hallucinations,

and, inspired by Maudsley, psychiatry limited the phenomena conceptualized

as hallucinations of the sane to hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations.

Hallucinations in clear consciousness were seen as implying mental disorder

(Leudar and Thomas, 2000), as they still often are today (American Psychi-

atric Association, 2000).

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With the further rise of medical psychiatry in the 20th century there were

a number of attempts to apply the French proto-psychiatrists’ approach of

retrospective medicine to Swedenborg and, partly due to Maudsley’s view on

hallucinations in clear consciousness, correspondingly fewer attempts to

understand his experiences as hallucinations coexisting with sanity. Sweden-

borg’s experiences accordingly continued to be predominantly understood

as a symptom of an illness, the most common proposals being schizophrenia

and epilepsy.

Claims for a diagnosis of schizophrenia

Jaspers (1923) argued that Swedenborg was suffering from schizophrenia on

the grounds of the hallucinations that he claimed Swedenborg experienced,

as well as the delusional messianic beliefs he understood him to espouse.

Jaspers considered the diagnosis of schizophrenia ‘a certainty’ (ibid.: 125)

even while conceding that ‘the available data do not sufﬁce to render the

diagnosis absolutely foolproof’ (ibid.). Jaspers’ broad conception of schizo-

phrenia, encompassing ‘all irreversible processes which are not known as

organic cerebral processes or epilepsy’ (ibid.: 191), differed considerably

from contemporary deﬁnitions. However, some modern psychiatrists still

suggest that schizophrenia may be an appropriate diagnosis for Swedenborg

(e.g. J. Johnson, 1994). It is easy to see how some of Swedenborg’s experiences

could lead to such a conclusion. In addition to his apparent hallucinations and

delusions, statements such as ‘my hand was so manifestly directed to the

writing that the words hardly appeared to have been written by my hand;

my hand was being ruled’ (WE, n5741) could be interpreted as exemplifying

delusions of control associated with schizophrenia (Frith, 1992). A further

point of comparison concerns the intellectual quality of the voices and visions

Swedenborg experienced. Van Dusen (1990) claims to have been able to de-

lineate ‘higher’- and ‘lower’-order voices of patients with schizophrenia. The

lower-order voices he found to have a level of knowledge ‘far less than the

patient’s’ (ibid.: 154). Contrastingly, he found the higher-order voices to be

‘more gifted’ than the patient (ibid.: 150). As Van Dusen notes, Swedenborg

experienced both ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ voices according to this deﬁnition.

Claims for a diagnosis of epilepsy

In addition to views of Swedenborg as suffering from schizophrenia, there is

a long history of viewing his experiences through the lens of epilepsy, a

neurological disorder characterized by seizures resulting from abnormal or

excessive neuronal activity in the brain. There is a prima facie case to be made

for a diagnosis of epilepsy from the observations that at the onset of Sweden-

borg’s anomalous experiences he lost interest in sex (DD, n14), turned his

focus exclusively to religious matters, and started to produce voluminous

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writings on this topic. These coincide with the three primary features of the

epileptic syndrome described by Geschwind (hyposexuality, hypergraphia,

and hyperreligiosity) which now bears his name (van Elst et al., 2003), although

the characterization of this as a personality disorder associated with epilepsy

remains controversial (Devinsky and Najjar, 1999).

Foote-Smith and Smith (1996) have also proposed that Swedenborg

suffered from epilepsy. They interpret Swedenborg’s report that, just prior

to experiencing a vision of Jesus, ‘there came over me a strong shuddering

from head to foot with a thunderous noise, as if many winds beat together;

which shook me; it was indescribable and prostrated me on my face’ (ibid.:

214) as being a generalized tonic-clonic epileptic seizure. They also claim

that Swedenborg demonstrated 8 out of the 18 possible behavioral correlates

of epilepsy described by Bear and Fedio (1977), as well as noting examples

of an ecstatic aura, typically associated with epilepsy, being reported by

Swedenborg.

Going beyond the evidence presented by Foote-Smith and Smith (1996),

a number of other facets of Swedenborg’s experiences could be seen as being

consistent with epilepsy. First, the presence of psychotic experiences such

as hallucinations and delusions, commonly associated with the positive

symptoms of schizophrenia, is a signiﬁcant complication of epilepsy (Toone

et al., 1982). This is particularly the case in the most common form of epilepsy,

temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), in which seizures originate in the temporal

lobe (ibid.). Psychotic experiences are found in many case reports of indi-

viduals diagnosed with epilepsy. For example, Oner et al. (2005) found almost

daily auditory verbal hallucinations, as well as brief visual hallucinations, in

an individual diagnosed with complex partial epilepsy. Furthermore, Hansen

and Brodtkorb (2003) report an instance of an epileptic patient who reported

the sensation of being in two different worlds. In one attack this patient

imagined encountering a wise woman who, in a non-verbal manner, attempted

to present to her the ultimate mission of her life. The patient was unable to

interpret the details of the message, save that it was related to saving children,

and was extremely important. The experience of being in another world, as

well as receiving an extremely important message, both characterize some

of the experiences of Swedenborg. Another patient reported by Hansen and

Brodtkorb (2003) related that during seizures his surroundings felt strange

and unfamiliar as if they were in another world.

The link between epilepsy and hyper-religiosity can be seen to provide

further support for a diagnosis of epilepsy. TLE has been found to be associ-

ated with an enhanced emotional response to speciﬁcally religious stimuli,

rather than neutral or sexual stimuli (Ramachandran and Blakeslee, 1998).

Furthermore, when the religious experiences of individuals with TLE with

prominent religious inclinations have been compared to healthy church-

goers, it has been found that hyper-religious epileptic individuals adopted

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signiﬁcantly more non-mainstream (for the United Kingdom) religions than

healthy churchgoers (Trimble and Freeman, 2006). Hyper-religious epileptic

individuals are also signiﬁcantly more likely to report the awareness of an

evil presence, the feeling of being punished by God, and sensory experience

of spiritual ﬁgures, as well as believing such experiences to be a source of

valid knowledge, which, although non-rational and insightful, are felt to be

not merely subjective (ibid.).

Swedenborg also reported a number of experiences that we may interpret

as simple partial epileptic seizures (seizures in which consciousness is not

impaired). First, he reported instances where he experienced unintended

facial muscular movements. For example, he writes that ‘there are spirits who

do not speak but [who] expressed their meaning by changes induced on my

face . . . This was affected by variations around the region of the lips extend-

ing thence into the face, and also around the eyes’ (AC, n1762, see also AC,

n5720). Elsewhere he states how a ‘region of my face was moved out of shape’

(SpD, n626). As Hopkins and Appleton (2003: 14) note, in partial seizures

cells in the motor cortex ‘which supply the corner of the mouth . . . are most

likely to be those in which a seizure discharge begins’. In a related vein

Swedenborg elsewhere notes that spirits ‘brought about an urge’ for him to

thrust his tongue between his teeth and so cut it off (SpD, n1361, see also

SpD, n1465). Second, Swedenborg notes that one evening spirits caused him

to smell ‘the odour of human excrement from the dry foods, and a foul

ruinous odour from the liquids’ (SpD, n618). Similarly he notes that ‘on two

occasions . . . sugar tasted almost like salt’, an experience which he attributed

to spirits from Jupiter (SpD, n645, see also WE, n4793). Both experiences

could be attributed to a seizure discharge in the anterior part of the temporal

lobe (Hopkins and Appleton, 2003). Third, Swedenborg reports an occasion

when ‘he [a spirit] induced a contraction or painful straitness in the lower

region of the belly’ (AC, n5388). Such epigastric sensations are also associ-

ated with epileptic seizures. Fourth, Swedenborg notes a number of experi-

ences in which he saw lights. Among these were small stars (SpD, n613,

n913), ﬂashes of lightning (SpD, n914), and bright lights (AC, n1116, n6922).

Such experiences could be interpreted as elementary visual seizures (Ebner,

2001). Finally, Swedenborg also described out-of-body experiences, which

in addition are reported by some epileptic patients (Devine and Duncan,

2007).

Any interpretation of Swedenborg’s experiences as symptoms of epilepsy

would still leave open the question of what triggered his seizures. Benz (2002:

293) notes that ‘a great number of Swedenborg’s visions actually occurred

while he was sitting in his room and reﬂecting on a particular passage in the

Bible’. It could be speculated that Swedenborg experienced language-induced

epilepsy in which seizures can be precipitated by speaking, reading, or

writing (Valenti et al., 2006).

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Reconsidering diagnoses of schizophrenia and epilepsy

We may ﬁrst reconsider the claim that Swedenborg was suffering from

schizophrenia. As noted above, Jasper’s (1923) claim that Swedenborg suffered

from schizophrenia was partly based on stories that Swedenborg claimed to

be the Messiah. As noted above, such claims appear apocryphal (Talbot,

1998). Furthermore, Swedenborg’s ‘delusions of control’ – feeling his hand

was moved by another power – occurred only for a short period. Foote-

Smith and Smith (1996: 216) have argued that the inappropriateness of a diag-

nosis of schizophrenia is self-evident from the fact of Swedenborg’s ‘lifelong

involvement in public affairs as a nobleman’, ‘his scientiﬁc achievements’, and

his membership of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Social and occupational

dysfunction is indeed one of the current diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia

(American Psychiatric Association, 2000), and, as the evidence presented

earlier has shown, Swedenborg was clearly able to function at a high level

after the onset of his anomalous experiences. It would hence appear that this

psychiatric diagnosis is not appropriate.

However, this does not necessarily validate the alternative conception that

Foote-Smith and Smith (1996) have put forward, namely that Swedenborg

suffered from epilepsy. A reexamination of Foote-Smith and Smith’s evidence

for Swedenborg’s epilepsy shows much that is anecdotal, selective and vague.

For example, examination of their suggestion that Swedenborg possessed

many of the eighteen possible behavioral correlates of epilepsy (Bear and

Fedio, 1977) shows that their claim of his alleged ‘sadness’ comes from a diary

entry where Swedenborg relates that he wept because he had not loved God.

The citing of a single episode of a transient emotional state in Swedenborg

does not amount to proof that he possessed sadness as a personality trait.

Evidence of the latter in Swedenborg is lacking, and as Pendleton (1998)

notes, Foote-Smith and Smith (1996: 215) themselves, elsewhere in their

article, cite a contemporary of Swedenborg describing him as ‘always

contented, never fretful or morose’.

There are also a number of aspects of Swedenborg’s account that suggest

that an explanation of his experiences as due to epilepsy is not appropriate.

First, Swedenborg never seemed to be overwhelmed by his experiences in

public. As Benz (2002: 307) notes, ‘not one of his friends or visitors report

sudden raptures, which might have overpowered him against his will at an

unsuitable moment, in company or before witnesses’. Second, Pendleton

(1998) has queried Foote-Smith and Smith’s (1996) interpretation of some of

Swedenborg’s experiences as generalized tonic-clonic seizures (GTCS).

Other aspects of Swedenborg’s experiences that question the appropriate-

ness of a diagnosis of epilepsy are their frequency, duration and length. First,

it is not common for patients with epilepsy to experience the multiplicity of

sensations that Swedenborg did (Landtblom, 2004). Although the contem-

porary experiences of individuals with epilepsy reviewed above show some

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similarities to Swedenborg’s experiences, none of these individuals presented

with the variety of experiences Swedenborg underwent. Second, as a recent

review concludes, the hallucinations of epilepsy are ‘usually brief, stereotyped

and fragmentary’ (Mamford and Andermann, 1998: 1826). Swedenborg’s

experiences were not like this. Furthermore, the hallucinations of epilepsy

usually follow a similar pattern as they most frequently are derived from the

same epileptic focus (Landtblom, 2004). The variety of Swedenborg’s experi-

ences is not consistent with this.

We may also reconsider the claim that Swedenborg’s hyper-religiosity was

a manifestation of TLE, as such an attitude may equally well be explained as

arising from the religious culture in which he was raised. The content of

hallucinations has been shown to be inﬂuenced by the culture in which the

individual is situated. For example, whereas much of the hallucinatory

content in Saudi Arabia is religious and superstitious, in the United Kingdom

hallucinations are more centred around instructional themes and running

commentaries (Kent and Wahass, 1996).

In a related hypothesis, Bradford (1999) has proposed that Swedenborg’s

experiences resulted from non-epileptic partial complex seizures associated

with vascular disease. From evidence that Swedenborg occasionally reported

experiencing the spirit world in the right portion of his visual ﬁeld, Bradford

concludes that ‘Swedenborg experienced a right-superior quadrantanopia

which corresponds with damage along the temporooccipital geniculocalcarine

pathway’ (ibid.: 379). Unfortunately, like Maudsley, Bradford does not appear

to have consulted Swedenborg’s original writings, instead relying on repro-

duced quotations in Benz (2002). Swedenborg’s works actually show that he

also saw spirits in the left visual ﬁeld (e.g. AC, n5180, n5387, n5390, n7170).

In conclusion, although cases exist where patients with epilepsy have experi-

enced either auditory, visual or olfactory hallucinations that individually bear

some resemblance to Swedenborg’s, we are not aware of reports of patients

experiencing all of these in clear consciousness and with no intellectual

impairment.

UNDERSTANDING SWEDENBORG’S EXPERIENCES

TODAY

Given the above review, Johnson’s (1994: 691) conclusion in the British

Journal of Psychiatry that ‘Swedenborg’s messianic psychosis was due to

acute schizophrenia or an epileptic psychosis’ is likely to be misplaced. The

attempts reviewed above to ﬁt Swedenborg’s experiences into some form of

psychiatric diagnosis can be seen as operating in the context of a speciﬁc

understanding of the term ‘hallucination’. Despite the introduction of the

category of hallucinations of the sane by the French proto-psychiatrists, for

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much of recent history the concept of hallucinations has been ‘pejorative,

coterminous with madness, lunacy, and schizophrenia’ (Sarbin, 1967: 379).

However, as Leon James (2001: 161) notes, there have always been those in

the arts who have seen Swedenborg’s experiences and writings ‘not as a

madman’s psychosis, but as intellectually valuable, convincing, and unique’.

The positive opinions of Swedenborg held by thinkers and writers such as

William Blake, Ralph Emerson, Carl Jung, August Strindberg and Henry

Thoreau have had little impact on psychiatric thinking about hallucinations

which has remained dominated by the 19th-century conceptions discussed

above (Berrios, 1991). Those outside of psychiatry have called for a re-

consideration of how we perceive Swedenborg’s experiences. For example, the

Reverend Brian Talbot (1998) notes that Swedenborgians are disappointed

that psychiatrists have not ‘considered a third option, and that is that Sweden-

borg was sane and his unusual experiences were genuine’. In the remainder of

this article, we consider how contemporary discourses about hallucinations

provide just such a ‘third way’ of understanding voice-hearing and related

experiences, through a revival of the concept of hallucinations in the sane.

A third way: hallucinations without mental disorder

The contemporary reconstruction of the 19th-century concept of hallucin-

ations in the sane may be traced back to the interactions of one psychiatrist,

Marius Romme, with a particular patient, Patsy Hague. Romme was led to

investigate the presence of speciﬁcally auditory hallucinations (voice-

hearing) in the general population after discussions with Hague who herself

heard voices. These meetings directly led to a television appearance by Romme

requesting voice-hearers to contact him. Of the 173 respondents who agreed

to complete a questionnaire, 76 were not in psychiatric care (Romme et al.,

1992). This and later work led to Romme’s being confronted by a large

number of ‘well-balanced, healthy people, who happened to hear voices’

(Romme and Escher, 1993: 59). This provided the impetus for a series of

studies into psychosis-like experiences in the general population, similar to

those at the end of the 19th century. These studies provided further evidence

that otherwise healthy individuals may experience hallucinations in the absence

of the social dysfunction or distress associated with clinical psychosis, and

that such experiences exist on a continuum stretching into the normal popu-

lation (Johns and van Os, 2001; Posey and Losch, 1983; Tien, 1991). The

annual prevalence of such hallucinatory experiences in the general population

(in both the visual and auditory modality) has been found to be 4 per cent

(Johns, Nazroo et al., 1998).

As a result of such work, a growing worldwide movement exists today

based around the view that hallucinating does not necessarily imply mental

illness (Romme and Escher, 1993). For example, in the United Kingdom this

has led to the creation of a large user-movement, the Hearing Voices Network,

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with parallel organizations now existing throughout the world. Although

such individuals’ experiences are predominantly auditory, members of the

Hearing Voices Network also experience hallucinations in a range of other

modalities; for example, visual and tactile (Romme and Escher, 1993). This

movement has resulted in a large number of such individuals rejecting the

label of ‘patient’, and the reinvention by such individuals, partly in partner-

ship with psychiatrists, of the paradigm of hallucinations in the sane. In order

to encompass the range of sensory modalities in which these experiences can

occur, we henceforth use the term ‘hallucinations without mental disorder’

(HwMD) to refer to these experiences.

There is a gathering consensus that whether an individual experiencing

voices and/or visions receives a psychiatric diagnosis depends much on the

emotional content of the experience, and her or his emotional response to it.

For example, voice-hearers’ interpretation of their voices, not just the experi-

ence of the voice-hearing per se, is an important determinant of the amount

of resulting distress and social/occupational disability (Krabbendam et al.,

2004). In this framework, social representations (Moscovici, 1988) of voices

and visions as being coterminous with madness and insanity may act as self-

fulﬁlling prophecies through their impact on how individuals who have these

experiences interpret them. Today many individuals who experience voices

and visions are able to lead productive lives, and encounter their experiences

in a non-psychiatric, non-mental illness discourse. Contemporary examples

of this include a prominent professor of Mathematics who reports receiving

beneﬁcial mathematical insights from her voices (Malone, 2006) and a leading

pianist who hears a voice that illuminates his playing as well as experiencing

a number of anomalous visual experiences (ibid.). In line with such examples,

Leudar (David and Leudar, 2001: 256) has argued that ‘hearing voices (and

the experiences we may categorize as hallucinations) should be judged as sane

or insane in terms of their consequences for life. They are not in themselves

signs of madness, any more than, say, thinking and remembering.’

Given the religious background of Swedenborg, and the cultural milleu in

which he was situated, it seems appropriate for us today to consider his

experiences as those of an individual experiencing HwMD. It should be

stressed that such an account is not an explanation of Swedenborg’s experi-

ences, but rather offers an established framework within which to understand

them that does not invoke concepts of mental illness or insanity.

Swedenborg’s experiences in a modern context

It is interesting to compare modern characterizations of the experiences of

HwMD with what Swedenborg reported. As most research into such indivi-

duals’ hallucinations has focused on ‘hearing voices’, we focus our comparison

on Swedenborg’s early experiences in the mid-1740s, which, as noted above,

were largely auditory. The majority of individuals experiencing HwMD in a

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sample interviewed by Leudar et al. (1997) reported being the target of the

voice, which spoke to them rather than addressing another voice or person.

Swedenborg’s experiences also included direct conversations with spirits, as

well as overhearing their conversations with each other. Secondly, Leudar

et al. found the majority of those experiencing HwMD reporting hearing

voices giving commands – for example, ‘Get the milk’ or ‘Go to the hospital’

(Nayani and David, 1996) – which typically focused on mundane, everyday

activities. Swedenborg’s early voices also gave him explicit directions, in his

case to write. Although it might seem odd to describe Swedenborg’s pro-

foundly spiritual experiences as being focused on mundane or everyday

activities, his voices were nevertheless able to go into great depth about the

speciﬁcs of life in a spiritual realm. It was this that led William Butler Yeats

to remark that he liked Swedenborg because he tells us that the angels don’t

use butter (Johnson, 1997).

Surveys of the numbers of different voices heard by individuals experi-

encing HwMD have found an average of 2–3 voices (Leudar et al., 1997).

Swedenborg heard many more than this number, indeed by 1748 he had

counted 60 different voices (SpD, n1499). Swedenborg also experienced voices

which themselves claimed to believe that other people could hear them.

While it is common for many experiencing HwMD initially to think that

their voices can also be heard by others (Romme and Escher, 1993), no

phenomenological surveys have reported examples of individuals reporting

that the voices themselves think that other people can hear them. This may

be seen to reﬂect Van Dusen’s (1990) observation that some voices can be

seen to be independent from the individual’s conscious self. Another facet

aspect of Swedenborg’s experience is that he claims to have often spoken

with spirits ‘by ideas of thought’ (AC, n1639). While the idea that we think,

not in natural language, but in a speciﬁc language of thought (today termed

‘mentalese’) is still a popular philosophical position (e.g. Fodor, 1975), it is

not known whether voices reported by those experiencing HwMD often

have this quality.

Currently, a lack of relevant evidence prevents us from comparing Sweden-

borg’s later experiences, in which he felt himself to ascend to the spirit world

and there converse with spirits, and similarly combined visual and auditory

experiences in modern accounts of HwMD. However, we would note that

personal accounts from those with HwMD indicate that when visually hallu-

cinating most experience themselves as ﬁrmly in this world, with their visual

hallucinations also embedded in it (Romme and Escher, 1993).

What can we learn from Swedenborg’s experiences?

Conceiving of Swedenborg’s experiences as those of an individual experi-

encing HwMD argues against previous proposals that it is not worthwhile

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‘to study him at all seriously; [as] he is commonly accounted a madman’

(Maudsley, 1869a: 169). When viewed as worthwhile of investigation, Sweden-

borg’s experiences present us with a number of questions. One such question

is the relation of the knowledge and intelligence of the voices and visions

experienced by an individual to his or her conscious persona. Swedenborg

was clearly able to hold dialogues with his voices and visions, while not

experiencing the answers or arguments they gave as his own. This raises the

question as to whether it is possible for voices and visions to have access to

information that the experiencer may not be able to consciously access. If so,

what are the cognitive mechanisms that allow voices to offer insightful, novel

information to those experiencing HwMD? This issue is highlighted by

contemporary cases, such as that of an otherwise healthy woman who heard

voices telling her to get a brain scan for a tumour, which was subsequently

found and removed, at which point the voices stopped (Azuonye, 1997). We

may also ask what the relation is between such experiences and the creative

process, where novel ideas enter into consciousness and are experienced as

generated by the self. Research showing an association between schizotypy

(non-clinical equivalents of the symptoms of schizophrenia) and creativity

(e.g. Brod, 1997; Nettle, 2006) suggests that the creative process may be linked

to ideas that are experienced as alien to the self (see also Taylor et al., 2004).

We may also consider what we can learn from the efforts of Swedenborg

and other historical ﬁgures to cope with their experiences. Swedenborg’s

talking back to the spirits may have been actively beneﬁcial to him. One

experimental therapy for individuals experiencing HwMDs already acts

through treating the voices as separate entities with which the voice-hearer

can engage in a dialogue. This was explored in a case study by Davies et al.

(1999), in which one of the authors (Davies), a voice-hearer diagnosed with

schizophrenia, initially experienced two dominant voices. The ﬁrst voice,

which she termed her ‘guardian angel’, commented on her behavior and often

ordered her to do ‘wicked’ things. Such commands were hard to resist. The

second voice she referred to as her ‘little devil’. This voice did not direct her

but gave her information necessary for performing the actions it suggested.

When, as part of a therapeutic intervention, Davies started to write out poten-

tial responses to the voices’ suggestions, as part of a dialogical engagement

with them, a new voice arose, which Davies termed her ‘holy angel’. This voice

reassured her, supported her, and had the effect of increasing her self-esteem.

CONCLUSION

This article ﬁrst offered a summary of the experiences of Emanuel Sweden-

borg, and an account of how he and others have attempted to explain these

experiences. It was shown how the birth of psychiatry increased the range of

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conceptual frameworks available for making sense of Swedenborg’s experi-

ences, including interpretations of his experiences both as a spiritual visionary

and a madman. However, as has happened with many other historical ﬁgures

(Leudar and Sharrock, 2003), Swedenborg’s experiences became translated

into pathological symptoms. In the 20th century this understanding, through

further medicalization of Swedenborg’s experiences, continued, with Sweden-

borg understood as suffering from epilepsy or schizophrenia. We have argued

that Swedenborg’s experiences are not consistent with such diagnoses, and

that instead they may be understood (though not may be explained) within

a non-medical framework. Speciﬁcally, we have proposed that Swedenborg

be understood as an individual experiencing HwMD, a discourse which can

exist outside of that of mental illness. David (David and Leudar, 2001: 256)

has claimed that ‘A [healthy] voice-hearer who is not in any distress, who

lives a fruitful and productive life according to commonsense criteria, would

never even enter the arena in which the possibility of mental illness was up

for discussion’. We suggest the frequent historical attempts to diagnose

Swedenborg with a psychiatric disorder have arisen due, not to the failure of

Swedenborg’s life to be fruitful and productive, but its failure to do so

‘according to commonsense criteria’.

We should also consider some possible limitations to our analysis. First, it

may be correctly noted that we have not consulted the writings of Sweden-

borg except in translation, and that the quotations we have used to support

our case are selective. In response to this we note that Swedenborg’s volumi-

nous output means that such a review must be to some extent selective. Second,

it may be noted that, just as Talbot (1998) has argued that some psychiatrists

may have an interest in promoting Swedenborg as an example of someone who

was insane, our account has been partly motivated by an attempt to demon-

strate that Swedenborg can be conceived of as experiencing HwMD. We are

happy to let the reader, and particularly those who have studied Swedenborg’s

writings more closely, judge whether our review of Swedenborg’s experiences

in the context of the psychiatric literature is fair. Even if others wish to

dispute our characterization of Swedenborg as experiencing HwMD, this

article has shown how a number of productive lines of enquiry relevant to

our contemporary understanding of hallucinations may be developed.

Finally, it appears from our review of Swedenborg’s experiences that the

formation of an active partnership between the scientiﬁc community and

those experiencing HwMD would be likely to be highly beneﬁcial to both

parties. The active involvement of such individuals in the research process

should help to reduce the perception of such individuals as ‘patients’, and

instead promote a conception of them as rational, healthy individuals who

are attempting to understand experiences that are present, albeit in lesser

degree, in many of us. Such a partnership should also provide researchers with

a better acquaintance with the varied phenomenology of such experiences,

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TALKING BACK TO THE SPIRITS

forming a bridge between clinical and research aspects of psychology. This

approach would appear to be a good step towards what Romme (cited in

Bentall, 2003: 511) has termed the ‘liberation not cure’ of those experiencing

HwMD. Ignoring or sidelining the experiences of individuals undergoing

voices and visions, such as Swedenborg, may constitute a barrier both to

further understanding of the phenomenon and, if necessary, therapeutic

progress. Although consulting such individuals may at ﬁrst raise more ques-

tions than answers, it is only by such a process that these most mysterious

of experiences can come to be more fully understood.

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et al. (2005) ‘Psychobiology of Altered States of Consciousness’, Psychological

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Valenti, M. P., Rudolf, G., Carre, S., Vrielynck, P., Thibault, A., Szepetowski, P. et al.

(2006) ‘Language-induced Epilepsy, Acquired Stuttering, and Idiopathic Gener-

alized Epilepsy: Phenotypic Study of One Family’, Epilepsia 47: 766–72.

Van Dusen, W. (1990) The Natural Depth in Man. New York: Swedenborg Foun-

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

SIMON R. JONES is a doctoral candidate in psychology at Durham University.

His research interests include hallucinations in clinical and non-clinical

populations, and the experience of conscious volition.

CHARLES FERNYHOUGH is a developmental psychologist with a particular

interest in Vygotsky’s theory of the relation between language and thought.

In recent years he has been exploring its implications for psychosis and other

forms of psychopathology. His book, The Baby in the Mirror: A Child’s

World from Birth to Three, is forthcoming from Granta.

Address: (Corresponding author) Simon R. Jones, Department of Psychology,

Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK. Tel.: +44 1913

343240. [email: s.r.jones@durham.ac.uk]

TALKING BACK TO THE SPIRITS

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The interpretation of independent agents and spiritual content in dreams

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2018

Andrew Paquette

Mystical experiences and spiritual dreams have been studied to learn how to defi ne them, who has them, and why. Rarely is the content taken seriously except as evidence of physical or psychological pathology, religious beliefs, or the infl uence of local culture. A challenge posed by spiritual dream content and mystical experiences in general, is that spiritual experiences refer exclusively to things that cannot be tested because they supposedly exist in a non-physical continuum. For this reason, spiritual or mystical content is generally described as ‘subjective’ in the literature. However, there can be some overlap with objectively veridical psi content. This research utilizes a single dataset comprised of 34 dream journals containing 12,224 dream records produced by this author over the past 27 years to explore the relationship between veridical and spiritual content in dreams. The results suggest that it is unreasonable to characterize all spiritual content as subjective when veridical secondary evidence is available. It also suggests that so-called ‘folkloric’ or ‘primitive’ explanations for dreams are more consistent with the data than modern psychological, cultural, or neurological explanations.

A Comparison of Keywords in the Dynamic Psychology of Jung, Swedenborg and Freud

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2015

Leon James

This article provides some comparative data on the frequency of occurrence of key words that can be found in the complete set of collected works of Gustav Jung (1875-1961), Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), and Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). These three historically important writers have each made significant contributions to the formulation and development of dynamic and analytic psychology. These data provide a comparison of the intensity in topical focus in the works of these three writers. There is visible overlap between all three writers in the intensity of focus on certain key concepts. The overlap is greater between Jung and Swedenborg than between Freud and the other two. An interpretation of this finding is presented in terms of the attitude of each author regarding the existence of a psychic “world” that is distinct from the physical world. Freud’s individual unconscious is contrasted with Jung’s collective unconscious and Swedenborg’s collective conscious. Full text available at: http://medcraveonline.com/JPCPY/JPCPY-03-00134.pdf

Hearing voices as a feature of typical and psychopathological experience

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2022

Hearing a voice in the absence of any speaker can be a significant feature of psychiatric illness, but is also increasingly acknowledged as an important aspect of everyday, non-pathological experience. This recognition has led to a growth of interest in voice-hearing in individuals without any psychiatric diagnosis, coupled with greater attention to the subjective experience of voice-hearing across diagnostic groups. Research has also focused on the overlap between some aspects of voice-hearing phenomenology and everyday experiences such as ‘hearing’ the voices of fictional characters and spiritual experience. In this Review, we synthesize research on the range of cognitive, neural, personal and sociocultural processes that contribute to voice-hearing as it occurs in clinical, non-clinical and everyday experience, with particular emphasis on linking mechanism to phenomenology. Heterogeneous forms of voice-hearing can be understood in terms of differing patterns of association among underlying mechanisms. We suggest an approach to hallucinatory experience that sees it as partly continuous with everyday inner experience, but which is critical regarding whether continuity of phenomenology across the clinical–non-clinical divide should be taken to entail continuity of mechanism. Hearing voices has long been associated with severe mental illness but also occurs in the general population. In this Review, Toh et al. describe the cognitive, neural, personal and sociocultural processes that contribute to voice-hearing in clinical, non-clinical and everyday experience, with emphasis on linking mechanism to phenomenology.

THE ELEMENTS OF CREATION MYTHS IN HALYNA PAHUTIAK’S NOVELS “YULIIA’S AND HERMAN’S DREAMS” AND “THE ENCHANTED MUSICIANS”

Chapter

Jan 2019

Halyna Matusiak

Transpersonal States of Consciousness

Working Paper

Jan 2015

Paul Francis Cunningham

Understanding dissociation

Article

Jan 2009

Paul Dell

"Динамика на креативността във феномена гранична ситуация" (Докторска дисертация по философия)

Thesis

Sep 2021

Petar Radoev Dimkov

Настоящият труд включва философско и научно изследване на креативността във феномена „гранична ситуация“, както е развит във философията на Карл Ясперс. Трудът е разделен на три части: 1) Въведение във философията на Карл Ясперс и концепцията за „гранична ситуация“, 2) Описание на функциите на психо-соматичния комплекс в норма и патология и техните отношения към философията и философското съзнание и 3) Изследване на креативността преди, по време и след преживяванията на гранични ситуации. Първата част е историко-философска. Втората – научна, а третата е синтез между първите две, като двете линии – философската и научната – са развити паралелно. Използваните методи са: историко-философски анализ, сравнителен анализ, концептуален анализ. Излагат се редица подстъпи към едно сериозно изследване на граничните ситуации и на ролята на креативността по отношение на методите за тяхното превъзмогване. Включени са редица изследвания в рамките на конкретни области от познанието, свързани с ядрената тематика труда, като: понятието „креативност“, епилепсията на Достоевски, животът на Е. Сведенборг, фармакометафизиката, депресивно-песимистичния реализъм, психичните защити по А. и З. Фройд, понятието „Аз“, логотерапията на В. Франкъл, психозомиметиците и др. Фокусът е върху способите за превъзмогване на граничните ситуации, в частност каква роля играе креативността при тях. Предлага се богата съвкупност от перспективи за бъдещи изследвания в горепосочените области и проблемни точки. Глава 1: Понятието „гранична ситуация“ в екзистенциалната философия на Карл Ясперс В тази глава се анализира понятието „гранична ситуация“ в рамките на философията на Карл Ясперс или т. нар. Existenzphilosophie. Става въпрос не за вид екзистенциална философия, а за философия на Existenz. Разгледани са в детайли основните понятия на Existenzphilosophie, а именно: Всеобхватно, Existenz, Transcendenz, Разум, Операцията „трансцендиране“, Крушение и Философска вяра. Понятието „гранична ситуация“ е дискутирано, от тази перспектива, в следните главни точки: Същност, Кой попада в гранична ситуация?, Методи за превъзмогване (вж. Глава 3), Гранични ситуации и психопатология, Видове гранични ситуации и Навлизане в гранични ситуации. Разгледано е и понятието „мистично преживяване“ в рамките на Ясперсовата Existenzphilosophie. Приведени са голямо количество цитати от основните трудове на Ясперс (от преводите от немски на английски език), които не са преведени на български език и които сами по себе си представляват една миниатюрна антология на Ясперсовата Existenzphilosophie. Глава 2: Науката на психо-соматичния комплекс срещу философското съзнание В тази глава изложението включва главно дискусията на научни понятия и концепции, но са дадени и редица философски такива. Ясперс е считал, че за философстващия са от ключово значение наличните обширни научни познания. Това е така поради факта, че самата Existenzphilosophie или философската светова ориентация, така да се каже, надгражда научния светоглед или т. нар. от Ясперс научна светова ориентация. Поради този факт, главата започва с дискусия върху отношението, взаимовръзката и взаимоотношението между науката и философията. След това в детайли е анализирано понятието „съзнание“, както от научна, така и от философска перспектива. На читателя се предоставя и кратка научна дискусия върху функционалността на човешкото съзнание и човешката психика в норма и в патология; тук е включено и изложение върху т. нар. механизми за психична защита по А. и З. Фройд. Главата завършва с кратко изложение на главните постановки в когнитивната наука, вкл. и афективната наука: възприятие, познание, емоции и деятелност. Включено е и изложение, което представлява кратко въведение в основите на функционалната невроанатомия, както и основните принципи на невро- и психофармакологията. Емоционалността или афективността е разгледана и от философска перспектива в лицето на т. нар. екзистенциални чувства. Главата завършва с кратко, но богато изложение върху психологията и философията на креативността. Глава 3: Динамика на креативността във феномена „гранична ситуация“ Тази глава се базира на Глава 1 и Глава 2, като представлява синтез между двете глави. Фокусът е върху динамиката на креативността, която се анализира в рамките на преживяванията на гранични ситуации. Приведен е списък с възможните методи за превъзмогване на граничните ситуации, който е далеч по-пълен от този, представен в съответната секция в Глава 1. Разгледан е случаят със SARS-CoV-2 като актуална световна гранична ситуация. Впоследствие се въвежда понятието „миниатюра на гранична ситуация“, което представлява смес между креативността като процес (и черта) и граничните ситуации – самата креативност се разглежда като миниатюра на гранична ситуация. Към всичко това, ние сме привели и следните дискусии (като вид практическо приложение на знанието за граничните ситуации): Логотерапията на Виктор Франкъл (и изобщо екзистенциалната психотерапия) като метод за превъзмогване на граничните ситуации, Феноменология на психеделичното състояние (като метод за превъзмогване на гранични ситуации и като метод за индуциране на гранични ситуации, респ. мистични преживявания), Видовете светогледи и граничните ситуации – в частност т. нар. от нас Депресивно-песимистичен реализъм, Философията на човешкото когнитивно фармакологично подобрение – Фармакометафизика и граничните ситуации, Екстазната аура като мистично преживяване при епилепсията на Достоевски и граничните ситуации (вж. секцията за мистичното преживяване в Глава 1), Метафизиката на душата като парафрения на психиката – случаят на Емануел Сведенборг – граничните ситуации и обективацията на езика на Трансценденцията.

Метафизиката на душата като парафрения на психиката: Emanuel Swedenborg

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2018

Petar Radoev Dimkov

The history of mankind comprises many unique cases of combinations of exceptional characteristics in one and the same individual. Most often, the combinations include positive as well as negative characteristics. The combinations are almost entirely random as they depend on too many variables, both endogenous and exogenous. In the current paper, a description of the personality of the scholar Emanuel Swedenborg, a truly unique personality in all investigational aspects, is offered. A psychiatric evaluation of the personality of Swedenborg is performed and it is concluded that his life is an example of a psyche, which has developed paraphrenia, i.e. a late-onset or involutional schizophrenia. Many of the fundamental moments from the writings of Swedenborg are quoted in the paper and a philosophical as well a as neurological-reductionistic analysis are performed. Attention is directed to two other cases involving paraphrenization of the psyche. The metaphysical world of the soul is revealed as a psychopathology of the psyche, an idiosyncratic paraphrenization of the inner world of man.

Might Hallucinations Have Social Utility?: A Proposal for Scientific Study

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2016
J NERV MENT DIS

Paul Kauffman

There are many historical examples of people who heard voices or saw visions but were not classified as having a mental illness and who were supported by a religious community. The article offers a perspective for effective psychosocial supports for schizophrenia. The author analyzes data on 95 people who experienced verifiable persistent non-drug-assisted hallucinations in Europe, North America, and Australasia and discusses the life outcomes of 39 subjects. They include founders of religions, dysfunctional monarchs, persons with cosmological beliefs, and mental health workers. Their psychoses were intrinsic to their personalities and contributions. Hallucinations generated by psychosis were useful for cultural innovation, particularly in religion as many hallucinators were integrated into church history. Community, work, friendship, and supportive practices are discussed. A scientific study of effective psychosocial support to supplement medication for schizophrenia is outlined.

Spiritualized Bodies and Posthuman Possibilities: Technologies of Intimacy in Julia Ward Howe's The Hermaphrodite

Article

Jan 2011

Suzanne Ashworth

Julia Ward Howe, c. 1887. Engraving by C. A. Powell, 34.7 x 24.8 cm, from a photograph by J. J. Hawes. From The Century Gallery of One Hundred Portraits Selected from "The Century Magazine" (New York: The Century Co., [1897]), plate no. 26. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-8221. In his 1768 exposition Conjugial Love, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) sketches the prospect of heavenly marriage, detailing an extended quest for monogamous union in the afterlife. Swedenborg theorizes that husbands and wives meet again after death to test the staying power of their earthly bonds. If they prove incompatible, they divorce and search for new, more suitable partners. In Swedenborg's heaven, the unattached spirit chases the transfigurative force of conjugial love, a force so strong that it ultimately collapses sexual difference and produces intersexed angels made one body by divine coupling. As he rhapsodizes about celestial unities, Swedenborg lets fly an acerbic critique of earthbound marriage, cataloguing an ambitious list of legitimate causes for separation, including lunacy, intemperance, intractability, deception, indiscretion, impropriety, venereal disease, and impotence. Although Swedenborg maintains that adultery is the only justifiable reason for civil dissolution, he acknowledges that mortal unions are often contentious, sorrowful, and unsatisfying. Swedenborg's conceptions of love and sex reverberate throughout nineteenth-century spiritualist understandings of marriage. Following Swedenborg, spiritualists "viewed conjugal love as an exalted ideal and appropriate sexual feelings as part of the natural order that drew affinities together." The free-love movement turned the Swedenborgian doctrine of celestial attraction into a moral barometer, so that sex within marriages that lacked the sanction of conjugial feeling were judged illicit. If low or libidinal impulses propel a partnership, free lovers argued, husband and wife should live platonically or divorce. Like Swedenborg, spiritualists prioritized soulful couplings and spiritual affections, deriding the power imbalances, pecuniary exploitation, and sexual violations that corrupt earthly marriage. Julia Ward Howe—poet, abolitionist, suffragette, and one of Margaret Fuller's first biographers—records her reading of Swedenborg in Reminiscences, 1819-1899 (published in 1899). Howe lists Conjugial Love among the writings that interest her most and says she is "much fascinated by [Swedenborg's] theories of spiritual life." Gary Williams notes that "her letters show she was already something of an authority on his work by 1847." For Howe, Swedenborg's depiction of divisive couplings would have resonated with a painful, proximate reality. Julia's marriage to Samuel Gridley Howe was tumultuous and strained from its beginning. According to Williams, Samuel's abiding romantic attachment to Charles Sumner immediately triangulated the marriage, and Julia's domestic inexperience, her isolation in their Boston home, and Samuel's immersion in his work fueled tensions between them. Moreover, Samuel was chronically contrary about Julia's literary efforts and infuriated by the 1854 publication of Passion-Flowers. Early on, Samuel told his wife he dreamed of marrying again, "'some young girl who would love him supremely,'" and he took a mistress decades later. In 1846, three years into the marriage, with two of her eventual six children just out of their infancy, Howe began writing an untitled novel Williams subsequently called The Hermaphrodite. Reading the never-finished text as an "encoded autobiography," Williams (who first brought it to print in 2004) argues that the closeted manuscript enabled Howe to process her volatile union. Conceived as a first-person narrative, the novel chronicles the family history, education, and star-crossed loves of its intersexed protagonist, Laurence. Williams recognizes Swedenborgian influences on Howe's vision of Laurence, suggesting that he might be "understood as an earthly incarnation of a Swedenborgian hermaphroditic angel." The manuscript stages Howe's creative engagement with Swedenborg's theories in other ways as well, especially in two interrelated narratives of spiritualized love. Topically, this essay centers primarily on a section of the manuscript that details Laurence's sojourn in Rome as the welcome guest of an aristocratic bachelor tutor, Berto, and his sisters, Briseida, Gigia, and Nina. In this interval, Laurence makes an ethnographic study of Italian gender while he masquerades as "Cecilia" and grows increasingly fascinated with Berto's youngest sister, Nina. Nina exists in a...

Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

Book

Nov 2002

Leigh Eric Schmidt

Dream, Creativity, and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France

Book

Dec 1995

Tony James

The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology since the Nineteenth Century

Book

Apr 1996

German E. Berrios

The History of Mental Symptoms: Descriptive Psychopathology Since the Nineteenth Century

Article

Jan 1999

Report on the census of hallucinations

Article

Changing the Past?

Article

Aug 2003

The value of the notion of 'indeterminacy in the past' continues to be contested. Ian Hacking's claim that the notion is perspicuous in the examination of historical instances is questioned through discussion of the possibility of retrospective application of the relatively recent diagnostic category Post-traumatic stress disorder'. Kevin McMillan maintains that there are deeper philosophical merits to the idea - particularly with respect to questions of truth - but neither Hacking's treatment of historical cases nor McMillan's directly philosophical elaboration of Hacking's position sustain this claim.

Dreams, Creativity and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France

Article

Jul 1997

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

Book

Jan 1998

Auditory Hallucinations of Hearing Voices in 375 Normal Subjects

Article

Oct 1983

Jaynes' elaborate theory of the evolution of human consciousness speculates that unconscious language use by the right hemisphere produced frequent auditory hallucinations in primitive people [1]. Jaynes offers some explanation as to why hearing voices would now be less common. It is parsimonious, however, to predict that hearing voices is still common, although usually unreported, in the modern normal population. Some clinical literature gives support to this prediction. This study tested the prediction by means of surveying 375 college students with a two-part questionnaire. The first section presented fourteen different examples of auditory hallucinations and asked whether the subject had experienced such occurrences. The second section asked for information concerning the characteristics of any hallucinated voices and for information about the subject that might relate to cerebral laterality. The results support the prediction that hearing voices is common within the normal population. Overall, 71 percent of the sample reported some experience with brief, auditory hallucinations of the voice type in wakeful situations. Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations were also reported. The most frequent incidents were hearing a voice call one's name aloud when alone (36%) and hearing one's thoughts as if spoken aloud (39%). Interviews and MMPI results obtained from twenty selected subjects suggested that these reports of hearing voices were not related to pathology. Further findings of a significant relationship between high rates of auditory hallucinations and the extent to which subjects reported skills in music, art, and poetry were interpreted as weak support for Jaynes' speculation that right hemisphere activity may account for auditory hallucinations. Overall, the results are seen as supportive of several of Jaynes' theoretical points.

Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment

Article

Sep 2001

Talking back to the spirits: The voices and visions of Emanuel Swedenborg

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