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Abstract

Prayer and verbally answered prayer would seem to offer powerful evidence in relation to the question of human agency. Forty members of an English Pentecostal group completed a questionnaire on prayer: 25 reported an answering voice from God, 15 of them hearing Him aloud. The latter groups were interviewed and characteristics of phenomenology and context elicited. The voice of God cannot be held to be ipso facto pathological and many reported its utility in situations of doubt or difficulty.
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Purpose The purpose of this survivor-researcher-led study is to explore the agency of voice-hearers who are migrants and/or from black and minority ethnic backgrounds in actively negotiating the gaps between their understanding of hearing voices, and those of their family, their society or the medical establishment. Design/methodology/approach This study draws four case studies of voice-hearers, who are migrants and/or from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Data were thematically analysed. Findings This study shows how bilingual voice-hearers related emotionally to voices in one or two languages. Originality/value This study is original in that it shows that bilingual voice-hearers may hear their voice/s in either their native language or second language, but that in both cases voices may embody strong positive or negative emotions.
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Chapter
Spirituality and Psychiatry addresses the crucial but often overlooked relevance of spirituality to mental well-being and psychiatric care. This updated and expanded second edition explores the nature of spirituality, its relationship to religion, and the reasons for its importance in clinical practice. Contributors discuss the prevention and management of illness, and the maintenance of recovery. Different chapters focus on the subspecialties of psychiatry, including psychotherapy, child and adolescent psychiatry, intellectual disability, forensic psychiatry, substance misuse, and old age psychiatry. The book provides a critical review of the literature and a response to the questions posed by researchers, service users and clinicians, concerning the importance of spirituality in mental healthcare. With contributions from psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, nurses, mental healthcare chaplains and neuroscientists, and a patient perspective, this book is an invaluable clinical handbook for anyone interested in the place of spirituality in psychiatric practice.
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Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) never completed his Doctoral thesis on prayer. Yet his scarcely mentioned introduction (Books I and II) of 176 pages and privately printed in 1909, can be seen as some of his most important work. His argument that much of prayer is a social act will be of great interest to anthropologists, sociologists and theologians. Here, the first English translation to be published, is preceded by a general introduction by W.S.F.Pickering and finally a specific commentary on Mauss's use of ethnographic material.
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The first new religion in the Caribbean since Rastafari, the Earth People draw on West African sources, assert a renascent African identity, and celebrate female creativity. They argue that Black people are the guardians of a natural environment, which is constantly under threat from European science. In this 1993 book, Dr Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticizes received ideas about pathology and creativity. The founder's ideas emerged in her experience of cerebral disease, and Dr Littlewood shows how the Earth People reinterpret radical personal experiences to build a community. While naturalistic and personalistic interpretations of human life are both valid and necessary, neither can be reduced to the other.
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