Glossolalia

My Kaplan and Sadock's psychiatry textbook lists sixteen thought form disturbances. Word salad is an incoherent mixture of words and phrases. Echolalia is the psychopathological repeating of words or phrases of one person by another, sometimes with mocking or staccato intonation. Clang association is the association of words similar in sound but not in meaning.

Down at the bottom of the list, number sixteen, is glossolalia: "The expression of a revelatory message through unintelligible words (also known as speaking in tongues); not considered a disturbance in thought if associated with practices of specific Pentecostal religions."

A cursory review of the medical literature revealed several interesting studies on glossolalia.

So a phenomenon of Christian religious practice is considered a symptom of psychiatric illness in a different context. I'm not a charismatic, and I've never spoken in tongues, although I have several close friends who do. I'll bet they have no idea that some non-believers have been given psychiatric diagnoses based in part on their demonstration of the gift of tongues. How would charismatics explain that? Or the fact that glossolalia can resolve with anti-psychotic medication?

Comments

[Bart]

Not all gibberish is the gift of tongues, though they are easily confused.

Some observers at Pentecost thought the newly-anointed apostolic band was drunk, and Paul warned the Corinthians that unbelievers who saw them speaking in tongues would think they were out of their mind.

What non-believers (and probably many believers) utter is not the supernatural gift of tongues but a learned behaviour, evidence of a mental disorder, or ecstatic speech arising out of a profound inner experience.

There's a natural explanation for many cases of glossolalia, although I do believe there is a supernatural gift of tongues that believers should seek today.

Now, do you have a medical opinion on snake-handling?

[Kurt]

Maybe more patients should be sent to church to be "cured" or "resloved" as you mention.

[kurt]

or "resolved"

Sorry....that was my gift of the written Glossolalias kicking in.