Today I sit down with Richard Saville-Smith, an independent scholar of madness, religion, and psychiatry. We discuss Richard’s book Acute Religious Experiences (2023), which argues that frameworks from Mad Studies can get us out from under the academy’s current habit of either pathologizing or sanitizing religious experiences. Along the way, we talk about the power struggle between psychiatry & the humanities, the influence of Queer Studies on Richard’s work, and his reinterpretation of Jesus as a madman.   

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Resources mentioned in this episode: 

• Acute Religious Experiences: Madness, Psychosis and Religious Studies (2023)

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• Chapter 10 from Richard's book, which presents his D.R.E.A.D. framework for acute religious experiences.

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