If Religion Is a Mental Illness, Let's Treat It

"When lip service to some mysterious deity permits bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday, cash me out."

Frank Sinatra

The idea that religious belief and practice constitute a form of mental illness goes all the way back to Freud and Marx, but nobody seems to do anything about it, even as the evidence continues to pile up. Hearing voices, believing in the reality of imaginary people, places and impossible stories that are demonstrably false...these are the signs of a diseased mind, as is readily obvious from even the most informal descriptions of schizophrenia and psychosis.


Similarly, the repetitive practice of religious ritual -- in psychological terms, the obsessive compulsive disorder that mitigates the anxiety caused by never knowing when one's actions will appease the deity -- is also a mental illness. A newspaper article on OCD (Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2009) lists, under "Common obsessions," "fear of violating religious rules"; under "Common compulsions," there is "preoccupation with religious observances."



Religion as OCD

People of various religions differ in the amount of life-resources they devote to this observance: some not all, some a little, but for the Orthodox in every faith, religion is all-consuming. What are they but classic obsessive compulsives?

Different religions require different levels of involvement and preoccupation. I would like to see the religions of the world pinpointed with respect to two axes, Required Input and Promised Consequences. Thus, Islam ranks very high on both measures: there is a well-defined Paradise (with 72 virgins, for martyrs who can't get laid in this life; I myself would prefer experienced women) -- and much required input: dietary laws, praying five times a day, memorizing the Koran, etc.

Christianity, of course, comes in many flavors, some requiring a great deal of observance; others, very little. But it is a high output ideological system, with a well-defined hell (some mediaeval portrayals of eternal damnation are gruesome even by the standards of David Cronenberg). Hell is so well defined, in fact, that its hideous images scar many Christians for life, even those who abandon Christianity. There is also a rather more gauzy, soft-focus heaven which is variously described but, by some accounts, places one in direct contact with the deities and divinities to whom one has been praying throughout his/her own life. In some variations, one also encounters friends, relatives, and anyone else who happens to be dead at the time.

Judaism is made for obsessive-compulsives.

There are some 600 commandments that must be obeyed. There are 39 different kinds of work that must be avoided on the Sabbath. The Sabbath requires many special preparations. You have to tear your toilet paper before sundown, because that would be a form of work.

There are prayers in the morning, afternoon, and evening, with more prayers for the Sabbath and holidays.

There is a huge number of intricate dietary laws which require careful, perfectionistic observance. Sometimes it seems to me that only Jews, with their powerful intellects and capacity for bloviating, could take a single command in Deuteronomy 14 -- don't boil a calf in its mother's milk -- and explode that into the innumerable prohibitions against mixing milk and meat, extending even to the machinery used to make the food. There are rabbis in China, teaching the Chinese food producers to make a kosher product. It's big business.

Full observance occupies every waking hour. And despite all the required input, it's LOW on Promised Consequences, with little attention to the afterlife! So why bother?

If OCD is hereditary, the fact that Jews so often marry Jews (and Muslims intentionally marry family members) ensures that succeeding generations will continue to embrace the all-encompassing ritual, safe and comfortable in the knowledge that Whoever Controls Everything listens and is pleased -- or least that they have something that is socially reinforced and perceived as worthwhile that they are doing with their lives.

Many Jews may seldom or never get a glimpse of this kind of Judaism, this cloistered, stifling, obsessive-compulsive world of frum ('piety,' 'righteousness'). They may see the black hats occasionally, but they have no idea how rigid these people's lives are. The best thing that can be said about their compulsions is that they are nonviolent (except in Israel) and often harm only those who stray or intermarry. In fact, they are undertaken cheerfully, thanks to the wonders of modern marketing.

Yes, there are websites specializing in all kinds of products to make total observance easier...and a whole host of gadgets for avoiding work on the Sabbath! What a clever people!

On one site we have a special sweater-like overgarment, the left sleeve of which has a zipper, such that it can be folded back while the tefillin (phylacteries, consisting mainly of leather straps) are applied correctly to the skin, and the davener remains warm and cozy on those cold mornings when he says the morning prayers. Ingenious! In 2,000 years of talking to God, did he not reveal this simple gimmick?

The thought-paradox -- to use the products and methods of SCIENCE to enable the more precise practice of ancient meaningless rituals -- is enough to make my head split open, but these folks live with it. Best not to think too much about it.

If this were nothing more than the ravings and eccentric behavior of the village lunatic, we could let it go with a condescending smile. Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz says that psychotics should not be treated, much less institutionalized, if they mean or do no harm to anyone.

Dangerous delusions

But religion is far from harmless. It is a very dangerous set of delusions, which pit one human being against another in unending conflict, discrimination, ostracism, persecution, violence, war, suicide, terrorism, and human misery and suffering of all kinds, including the mutilation of children. Religion is a poison, a cancer, a mental illness that threatens to engulf us all with its demented apocalyptic visions.

Pussyfootin' around

It's a pity that we in Western societies are so ambivalent about religion, that we pussyfoot around it, as the late George Wallace might say. The voices warning of the dangers of religion may be getting louder (and more numerous on the Net), but Richard Dawkins is only one man, and he cannot influence in the least the daily atrocities perpetrated by religion, including, most sadly, the relentless indoctrination of the children who will become tomorrow's fanatics and terrorists.

The voices that flatly identify religion as a dangerous mental illness are few indeed, compared to the massive pro-religious weight of government, business, and the media. The obvious connections between religious belief and schizophrenia, between religious practice and obsessive-compulsive disorder...are politely ignored, such is the weight that religion swings in societies around the world today.

Enslaving children

In Western societies, we are taught to value life. How do we deal with an enemy that does not? I read that during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran sent children into minefields with the keys to Paradise around their necks.

Last night I saw a Penn and Teller Bullshit program, in which threre were images of a chiropractor manipulating a little girl. Penn said he found the unecessary stressing of the child's tender frame to be almost too gruesome to watch. I feel the same way when I read of the latest suicide bombing or any incident in which lives are lost to religious fanatics. Our soldiers will keep on dying, and we will never win this war we are in unless we call religion out, unless we confront it for what it is: mental illness.

In our medical journals, and occasionally in the newspaper, as I saw a few days ago, we obliquely, quietly, refer to it as a mental illness. But never in public. You never hear a peep (or a tweet) from society's thought leaders.

Disease model

This is most unfortunate. Religion is dangerous. It's not good for you or for your health. Here in the West, we are very much concerned with risks to our health. We read eagerly of the next nutrition fad or antioxidant. Well, don't you think religion is a threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, weighing people down with guilt, fantasy stories, endless rituals, and promises of an afterlife? And how many people die each year from religious persecution and violence? Surely the number must be comparable to those who suffer and die from breast cancer, smoking, alcoholism, heart disease, diabetes, and so many others, against which we mount crusades, conduct walkathons, collect the money, and badger politicians for special programs and research grants.

If religion were truly understood as the disease it is, wouldn't the CDC be on top of it, researching the most effective treatments? Wouldn't there be public service ads? Would the President or the Surgeon General be speaking out on it, the way they speak out on drugs or drunk driving? Would there be infomercials, support groups for the afflicted? Would there be facilities where people could seek treatment, like drug or alcohol treatment centers, and free themselves from their delusions? Wouldn't there be government programs (there are always government programs) to fund research on how to end religion or at least severely limit its influence on society, government, and education? We already have cult deprogrammers with well-established techniques.

Would we conduct interventions -- medical personnel visiting religious services unannounced and giving everyone the opportunity to seek treatment for their delusions and compulsions (actually, I wouldn't try that in a mosque -- it could get you killed, which simply illustrates my point once again)? Would CNN or John Stossel be doing hour-long programs on the evils, past and present, of religion?

It's probably too late. Fundamentalists have very high birth rates, and they indoctrinate and proselytize relentlessly. We already know which parts of the brain are associated with religious belief and practice, i.e., the parts that entertain fantasy and that compel the obsessive-compulsive practice of ritual. Perhaps we can slow religion's destructive process. We might start by calling it what it is.