Constellations of Religious Attitudes of Paranoid Schizophrenics

Abstract

Some years ago Chaplain Boisen ( 1 ) wrote, conclusion follows that certain types of mental disorder and certain types of religious experience are alike attempts at reorganization. He has devoted his life to this thesis and has profoundly influenced today's psychiatric thinking in this area. Boisen proposes the classification of symptoms into religious, mystic or world-reconstruction ideas as opposed to the hostile reaction to supposed external threat and persecution. The former represents an internalization and incorporation as opposed to the latter, which involves external projection and rejection. Boisen has devoted his attention to the religious symptoms. His thinking about the type of person showing such symptoms is interesting and convincing, but what are the typological findings stemming from factor analytic views of psychotic reactions? Factor analyses of paranoid schizophrenics invariably reveal, among others, his two clear-cut types (4, 5 ) . Just recently Boisen, Jenkins, and Lorr ( 2 ) presented a factor analysis of delusional thinking. Again, these two factors emerged, but this time, without any others. This study is directed at determining the empirical constellations of religious attitudes that might exist among paranoid schizophrenics. It is hoped that research in the area of religious attitudes may be stimulated. PROCEDURE The 25 Ss in this study were drawn from a total of 51 recently diagnosed hospitalized schizophrenics. All Ss were listed in the records as Protestant. Seven patients were excluded because they were hostile and uncooperative, nine because they were querulous and perplexed, three because they were suspicious, three because they had an attention defect, and four because they showed much internal test inconsistency. The test items were developed by the authors and drew heavily upon a book by Chave ( 3 ) . Within this book there are quite a few semiformal tests of religious attitude developed by Chave and L. L. Thurstone. The original 128 items2 included seven duplications. These seven duplications made it pos-