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Book description
When we mention hyperreligiosity, we mean the same thing as when others say “toxic faith.” Hyperreligiosity is a more established psychiatrically-used term for toxic faith. There is a timely nature of this work, as religious extremism is in the news every night. The author’s hope is that the ideas in this book will become assimilated so that people drawn to acting out in religious extremism have other perspectives to consider.
This book is essentially a book on toxic faith and is instrumental for understanding why people join destructive cults. This book bridges the gap between psychological understanding and the spiritual drive. Each one done separately is usually disregarded by the audience drawn more to the other. That is, people writing on a secular psychological level do not always take into account historically important spiritual goals. But the most dangerous situation is when people with a religious drive are not instructed on the dangers of what can happen to people who are very religious and have some imbalances. This book describes how these imbalances manifest and how they can be overcome.
Earlier psychologists used to explain psychological concepts to their patients. Psychology seems sometimes in danger of becoming a lost science in the minds of many. I think it’s time that people started understanding again more academic psychological concepts. It seems like there was more of a mainstream knowledge of psychological concepts in the past then there is today.
Hyperreligiosity is at the root of the need to join all destructive cults. This book examines the root causes why a person feels that a small group can have the answer to the greatest questions on earth.
One often sees reports in the news about people who have done various criminal acts because they believe they were guided by God to do so. The tone of this work is at once both psychological and spiritual. The author himself had hyperreligious tendencies but went on to live a normal life, graduating from a secular university and starting and maintaining a software company for over fifteen years. He uses basic psychological language to construct an analysis of the problem that takes into account the positive aspects of religion.
1. Description
The book is called “Hyperreligiosity — Identifying and Overcoming Patterns of Religious Dysfunction.” There is currently no book in print on hyperreligiosity. In fact, at the time of researching the book, it was even spelled four ways almost about equally on a Google search. This book takes a Western psychological approach yet maintains respect for spiritual values to describe how religious thinking can become distorted in people who have certain types of emotional and mental problems. The book also describes ways to overcome this. This book will become important because people are often sold quick religious ideas that promise them everything and often leave them without many things that are needed for a healthy psychological view of the world. This book helps people overcome destructive magical thinking while maintaining a spiritual tone. The audience is the same audience who buy many of books in spirituality and psychology.
2. Table of Contents
This book is written in the style of writing known as the “literary fragment.” It is in the same style of early religious texts as well many important author’s works such as Pascal’s Pensees and Novalis’s philosophical writing. There is a preface and then numbered sections.
3. Market
The audience for the book are those who are interested in religion, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, educators, and those who may know the hyperreligious such as parents or spouses, or the hyperreligious themselves. The author had problem himself with hyperreligiosity himself, but founded his own software company, beaome a successful rare book dealer, and developed theories in brainstorming and art. The book has well-written insights for psychologists and clergy on how the hyperreligious thinks and what kind of thinking may be liberating for them. It is written not from a perspective of an psychoanalytic theorist who must work from an aetheistic perspective, but from a recovered hyperreligious person himself. It describes what it is like living with hyperreligiosity and how he personally understands how to overcome it. He describes why hyperreligiosity is not a form of spirituality but instead a mental illness. There is a desire for a translation into Arabic for the Moslem community.
4. Competing Titles
There are currently no books with Hyperreligiosity in the title, however there are a few books written from a lay person’s or clergy’s perspective on religious addiction and what is called “toxic faith.” The problem with these books is that hyperreligious individuals may not be seen as religiously addicted nor were ever religiously abused. They may consider themselves more sophisticated than someone who gets “addicted” to a particular group or person, and perhaps they feel on a personal “mission from God.” I will show that each of these books comes from a different perspective and the Hyperrelgiosity book appeals more to the higher educated or person drawn to acceptance of interfaith beliefs, such as is common with many people today. The Hyperreligiosity book deals more with core psychological principles rather than only Evangelical or Catholic Christianity, although it is not offensive to those of those faiths.
via Hyperreligiosity as a psychological term for religious addiction and toxic faith.
| Posted on Friday, April 10th, 2009 at 8:41 am in Toxic faith. | |
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