After an overview of the phenomenology of numinous experience in mysticism, conversion, and related states in psychosis, the intersection and distinction between contemporary transpersonal psychologies of spiritual development and psychodynamic/clinical perspectives on pathological states is addressed from cognitive-developmental, psychophysiological, personality, and socio-cultural perspectives. Debates about the nature of mystical and conversion experiences have a long history in the psychology of religious experience and raise fundamental methodological issues concerning the potential inclusiveness or narrowness of the human sciences. A genuine psychology of numinous experience and its impact on life histories must find its way between the twin dangers of "over-belief" and false reductionism.
The Journal of Mind and Behavior (JMB)recognizes that mind and behavior position, interact, and causally relate to each other in multi-directional ways; the Journal urges the exploration of these interrelationships. JMB is particularly interested in scholarly work in the following areas: the psychology, philosophy, and sociology of experimentation and the scientific method; the mind-body problem in psychiatry and the social sciences; critical examination of the DSM-biopsychiatry- somatotherapy framework of thought and practice; issues pertaining to the ethical study of cognition, self-awareness, and higher functions of thought in non-human animals.
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