Religion and Spirituality, Meaning, and Faith in American Psychiatry From the 19th to the 21st Century.

Since the beginning of American psychiatry, we have discovered and rediscovered connections among religion, spirituality, meaning, and mental health. In the 19th century, religion was an embedded attribute of moral therapy, the framework for treatment in mental institutions. During the decades in the 20th century when psychoanalysis was ascendant in the profession, some psychiatrists collaborated with the emerging field of pastoral care. As biological psychiatry has come to dominate the profession, though, pastoral care providers and some psychiatric researchers have identified gaps in the human interactions that characterize ideal and meaningful encounters with patients. This article examines how religion has been mobilized in American psychiatry over the centuries within institutional settings, but also looks at a broad consideration of faith in psychiatrists' clinical interventions, how that has affected their interactions with religious ideas and people, and where they have found meaning and purpose in mental health care.

El pluralism médico en los siglos XVII y XVUIII a partir de los procesos de canonización / Medical pluralism in the 17th and 18th centuries from the canonization processes

El fenómeno del pluralism médico o asistencial era una realidad a lo largo de los siglos XVII y XVIII, así como en periodos anteriores y posteriores. La combinación de remedios terapéuticos de fundamentación diversa se ha planteado como una práctica cotidiana frecuente entre aquellas personas que debían hacer frente a la enfermedad, una dinámica ya estudiada por la historiografía a través de fuentes muy variadas. No obstante, los procesos de canonización han sido menos utilizados y trabajados para analizar esa diversificación de recursos asistenciales, por lo que en este trabajo buscamos poner en valor dicha documentación a partir de un caso de estudio concreto: el de la religiosa valencia Sor Josefa María de Santa Inés, mejor conocida como Beata Inés de Benigànim. Durante su vida a lo largo del siglo XVII y tras su muerte fue protagonista de numerosas intervenciones curativas interpretadas de numerosas intervenciones curativas interpretadas como prodigiosas, una faceta en la que también observamos la participación de médicos, cirujanos y otros recursos de carácter creencial

The phenomenon of medical or healthcare pluralism was a fact throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as previous and posterior periods. The combination of therapeutic remedies of diverse basis was taken as daily practice among the people who had to face the disease, a dynamic already studied through historiography from various sources. However, the canonization processes have been less used and studied to analyses this diversification in healthcare resources, thus in this work we are looking to evaluate said documentation from a specific case study: that of the Valencian nun Sister Josefa Maria de Santa Inés, better known as Beatus Inés de Benigànim. During her life in the 17th century, and after her death, she was the protagonist of numerous healing procedures interpreted as prodigious, a facet in which the participation of physicians, surgeons and other belief-related resources can be observed

Plagues and artistic votive expressions (ex voto) of popular piety.

In past centuries, epidemics, the scourge of humankind, caused pain, anger, uncertainty of the future, social as well as economic disorder and a significant impact on their victims, involving also their spiritual sphere. The latter effect led to undoubted effects on participation in the religious and social life of communities. The custom of preparing artistic votive expressions has been lost in the mists of time and evidence of ex voto gifts, offered by believers to pagan gods, has been found in prehistoric archaeological sites. Furthermore, several finds from the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds may be observed in our museums. These remains are generally ceramic and metal artifacts, reproducing limbs and other body parts which had been healed. These elements, according to the belief of those making the offerings, had benefited from the miraculous intervention of a thaumaturgical deity. With the advent of Christianity, some pre-existing religious practices were endorsed by the new religion. Believers continued to demonstrate their gratitude in different ways either to miracle-working saints or to the Virgin Mary, because they thought that, thanks to an act of faith, their own health or that of a family member would benefit from the direct intervention of the divine entities to whom they had prayed. In the Ancient Greek world, it was believed that the god Asclepius could directly influence human events, as testified by the popularity of shrines and temples to the god, especially at Epidaurus. In the Christian world as well, particular places have been detected, often solitary and secluded in the countryside or in the mountains, where, according to tradition, direct contact was established between the faithful and Saints or the Virgin Mary Herself. Manifestations occurred by means of miracles and apparitions, thereby creating a direct link between the supernatural world and believers. Religious communities, in these extraordinary places, responded to the call through the building of shrines and promotion of the cult. Over time, the faithful reached these places of mystery, performing pilgrimages with the aim of strengthening their religious faith, but also with the purpose of seeking intercession and grace. In this case, the request for clemency assumed spiritual characteristics and also became a profession of faith. Accordingly, the shrines in the Christian world are places where supernatural events may occur. In these environments the believer resorted to faith, when medicine showed its limits in a tangible way. For the above reasons, while epidemics were occurring, the requests for clemency were numerous and such petitions were both individual and collective. In particular, by means of votive offerings (ex voto) the believers, both individually and collectively, gave the evidence of the received grace to the thaumaturgical Saint. Through the votive act, a perpetual link between the believer and the Saints or Holy Virgin was forged and a strong request for communion was transmitted. The aim of the present study is to describe the role played by votive tablets (ex voto) in the last 500-600 years, as visible evidence of human suffering. From this perspective, these votive expressions may assume the role of markers because, in accordance with the expressions of popular faith, they allow us to follow the most important outbreaks that have caused distress to Christian communities.

La curación prodigiosa de la ciega de Villafranca / The prodigious recovery of the blind woman of Villafranca

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Análisis de la enfermedad dermatológica en 8 Cantigas de Santa María del Rey Alfonso X el Sabio. Parte II: mutilación genital, escrofulodermia, sarna, erisipela y los males del Rey Alfonso / Dermatologic Diseases in 8 of the Cantigas of Holy Mary of Alfonso X the Learned. Part 2: Genital Mutilation, Scrofuloderma, Scabies, Erysipelas, and the Ailments of the King

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Incubatio: una práctica olvidada / No disponible

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I Want to Believe: A Short Psychobiography of Mary Baker Eddy.

The 18th and 19th centuries were beset with new religious movements in the United States: Shakers, Latter Day Saints, Millerites, and Seventh Day Adventists to name a few. One group, Christian Science, held radically different views than their counterparts and their origins lay in the most unlikely of places, a perpetually ill and poor woman from New Hampshire. Much has been said about Mary Baker Eddy: some say that she was a prophet, others that she was a fraud. Herein no such judgments are made. This study seeks to look into the life of Mary Baker Eddy from a psychological lens in the hopes that insight can be gained into the founding of the First Church of Jesus Christ Scientist and perhaps to allay the binary of Mrs. Eddy as either prophet or fanatic.

[Spiritual ties of the Military Medical (Medical and Surgical) Academy].

Before the revolution in its educational, research and clinical potential of Military Medicine (medical and surgical) Academy was on the head position among European institutions. Not less outstanding position among all secular institutions Russian Academy held by the number and wealth of churches, chapels and baptisteries. In the temples of the academy was concentrated a significant number of miracle-working icons and of the particles holy relics, there served some of faith and piety devotees and some of them were canonized. The article presents a brief historical overview of the major Academy shrines--spiritual ties of the different generations.

Women, writing, and healing: rhetoric, religion, and illness in An Collins, "Eliza," and Anna Trapnel.

Focusing on An Collins, "Eliza," and Anna Trapnel, this essay considers the interconnections of mind, body, and spirit in the mid-seventeenth century. Given their gender and their era, that the writing of all three serves as a means of expressing religious devotion is not surprising--what may be, however, is the role of illness as both catalyst for and topic of work that is also deeply and consciously rhetorical. Articulating what may be as much illness enabled as it is divinely inspired, their work further suggests a more than merely intuitive sense of language's capacity to heal body as well as soul.

[History of medicine in the Amazon region. Disappearance of the shaman and Christianization of healing rituals among the tariano Indians, at the urban outskirts of Manaus]. / Histoire de la médecine en Amazonas. Disparition du chamane et christianisation des rites de guérison chez les indiens tariano, a la périphérie urbaine de Manaus.

A brief history of medicine in Amazonas: the end of shamanism and the progressive Christianisation of therapeutical rites among the Tarianos, in the suburbs of Manaus.

The Lourdes medical cures revisited.

This article examines the cures recorded in Lourdes, France, between 1858, the year of the Visions, and 1976, the date of the last certified cure of the twentieth century. Initially, the records of cures were crude or nonexistent, and allegations of cures were accepted without question. A Medical Bureau was established in 1883 to examine and certify the cures, and the medical methodology improved steadily in the subsequent years. We discuss the clinical criteria of the cures and the reliability of medical records. Some 1,200 cures were said to have been observed between 1858 and 1889, and about one hundred more each year during the "Golden Age" of Lourdes, 1890-1914. We studied 411 patients cured in 1909-14 and thoroughly reviewed the twenty-five cures acknowledged between 1947 and 1976. No cure has been certified from 1976 through 2006. The Lourdes phenomenon, extraordinary in many respects, still awaits scientific explanation. Lourdes concerns science as well as religion.