Voices of Spirit, Voices of Madness

Prof. Tanya Luhrmann (Stanford University) makes the argument that the way people think about their minds shapes the way they come to know God. She does this by looking at the kinds of people who have more vivid spiritual experiences (they are more likely to get absorbed in their inner worlds), the way prayers train attention to inner experience, and above all at the way that different cultures invite people to think differently about inner life. She sees a paradox: the more a culture imagines an inner world as separate from an outer world, the less vividly they experience gods and spirits. These observations should shape how we understand and treat mental illness.

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Howard H. and Jessie T. Watkins University Professor of Anthropology and Professor, by courtesy, of Psychology at Stanford University

Event sponsored by the James R. Bindon Endowed Lectureship Fund, the Departments of Anthropology, Psychology, and Religious Studies, the McCollough Institute for Pre-Medical Scholars, and the Blount Scholars Program.

FREE OF CHARGE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.