Fields: Religious Fundamentalism Is A Mental Disease
BY SAM FIELDS
Guest Columnist
Has Medtronic discovered a cure for religious fundamentalism?
Every time a man walks out the door, he must rub the doorknob or he starts to feel anxious. We pity him as a victim of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
We now turn to a second man. Every time he walks in the door he must rub a religious amulet nailed to the door jam and say the same preset words. If he fails to do so, he too starts to feel anxious. We revere him an Orthodox Jew.
In point of fact, based on MRI readings of the frontal lobe of the brain, they are exactly the same.
Both have created synaptic connections in the brain that trigger chemical reactions when the learned irrational behavioral patterns are not scrupulously followed. Those chemical reactions produce a sense of anxiety that will not dissipate unless and until the sufferer goes back and completes the resisted behavior.
The compulsive urge to wash your hands fifty times a day, say special incantations before eating a meal, repeatedly check that water is not running, bow in a mosque five times a day, make the sign of the cross prior to shooting a free throw and a million other irrational behavioral acts are all manifestations of OCD.
Enter Medtronic and its Reclaim Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) device which, on February 19th, was approved by the FDA for treating OCD.
Until now, OCD treatment has come in the form of tranquilizers, group therapy and programs of behavioral modification.
The Reclaim device is implanted under the skin and works like a pacemaker for the brain.
When OCD causes unhealthy reactions, electrical impulses bring the brain back to the normal range. Hopefully it will eventually extinguish the irrational behavior.
Five hundred years ago Ignatius Loyola, the leader of the Counter Reformation, and founder of the Jesuits, bragged: “Give me a child until he is seven and he will be mine for life.
He was right.
Rigorous repetitive behavior, as part of a reward and punishment scheme, will, for good or worse, create behavioral patterns that are difficult to break.
Iggy probably saw this in religious terms. The real explanationdoes the name Pavlov ring a bell?
With Medtronic’s Reclaim device we may now have a new arrow in the medical quiver. We have a new way to treat this debilitating brain disorder whether its origin is secular or religious.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Can we suggest a list of test subjects?
Unfortunately, I do not think this will be as effective as one might initially think, because most American fundamentalists, and probably a good portion of fundamentalists everywhere, are faux-fundamentalists. They are only using the religious claptrap as a beard, as it were, for their real agenda, which is purely political and has nothing to do with God or religion. The real fundamentalists are just pathetic, ignorant unimportant little people who are too scared or lazy to take personal responsibility for their own lives and need someone to blame (that old devil) and some one to rescue (God). The faux-fundamentalists just use their fear and general stupidity to further the political agenda.
Face it, we’re all screwed. There are more of them than there are of us and you can’t implant electrodes in all of them.
February 21st, 2009 at 5:08 am
The ultimate slander. Mr. Fields, if individuals get comfort out of religious practices, why do you insist on slandering them? These people are not mentally ill. THEY ARE BELIEVERS. Unfortunately for you, you believe in nothing but Mammon.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:56 am
As once a sufferer of OCD, I find your disgusting article an attempt to make fun of those who are ill. People who make the sign of the cross or touch stone can stop anytime they want. After all, how many people convert from one religion to another? But OCD is uncontrollable without treatment. The two are not alike.
February 21st, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Dear OCD,
February 21st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Dear OCD,
I do not mock OCD. I suffered with it as a child without even knowing what it was. I eventually beat it but had a difficult time getting to sleep for over a year. This was around 1950. Not knowing it was a disorder I told no one because I was embarrassed about it. I would spend as much as an hour a night unable to get to sleep trying to work through this ridiculous ritual. Meanwhile my parents would yell at me for not going to sleep. But I could not tell them what was bothering me because it seemed weird.
Religious Fundamentalism is exactly this. Follow obsessive ritual or suffer anxiety. We now live a world where we understand the biological basis for it and are developing cures.
Mr. Courthouse, who I personally know, (until he wants to use his real name I will refer to him as Mr. Outhouse) is one of these Fundamentalists. He is textbook OCD as manifested through complying with orders he believes are coming from a supernatural being. On second thought he may also be psychotic.
February 22nd, 2009 at 10:23 am
Fields is the one with a mental disease. He admits it here.
He still has OCD. He keeps repeating again and again “I’m sorry” when his clients are sent to jail.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:10 am
If this is an example of one of your arguments that you present as a lawyer then I will definitley never call you unless I want legal trouble.
1) You are making an extraordinary claim that religious practices equate to OCD. Can you at least provide a source? In one minute I found MRI studies that showed that OCD may be genetic but nothing that stated religious observances were the same thing as OCD.
Would you make the same claim that religion is genetic?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312914,00.html and http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/press/dpp/2008072102 (this was provided so that the reader can know that unlike the OP I will not provide “facts” out of thin air.)
2) Please demonstrate some kind of proof that a religious practitioner who fails to complete some religious observations then experiences “chemical reactions produce a sense of anxiety that will not dissipate unless and until the sufferer goes back and completes the resisted behavior.”
3)Interesting quote using Ignatius Loyola (and for the purpose of this I will leave out the blatant disrespect of leaving off the his title and then referring him as “Iggy”).
Despite the fact that this quote has zero relevance to the stated premise of your
articleunsubstantiated assertions and is the exact opposite of current theories of the cause of OCD it actually opens your irrational argument to more holes then I think you have the capability to handle. Or did I miss something and you believe that the proximate cause of OCD is from some kind of indoctrination that is manifested on children before the age of seven?4) Since you introduced St. Loyola’s quote to the duscussion, I pose this question to you: if you use the application of the quote for reasons that are devoid of religion, does that justify the method?
Mr. Fields I understand that your point here is to make wild accusations based on your supposed higher intellectual world view to “educate us unscientific, unlearned fairy tale believers”.
However, all you do is posit inaccurate viewpoints backed by unsubstantiated facts that lead you to illogical conclusions. Before you write the next time, take a minute to research the data and facts behind your “expert” opinions and then we can let you in to the discussion with the rest of the adults.
February 24th, 2009 at 11:22 am
due to an error with coding the XHTML, the previous post came out in error. If the moderator can make the adjustment then this post may be deleted.
3)Interesting quote using Ignatius Loyola (and for the purpose of this I will leave out the blatant disrespect of leaving off the his title and then referring him as “Iggyâ€).
Despite the fact that this quote has zero relevance to the stated premise of your unsubstantiated assertions and is the exact opposite of current theories of the cause of OCD it actually opens your irrational argument to more holes then I think you have the capability to handle. Or did I miss something and you believe that the proximate cause of OCD is from some kind of indoctrination that is manifested on children before the age of seven?
4) Since you introduced St. Loyola’s quote to the discussion, I pose this question to you: if you use the application of the quote for reasons that are devoid of religion, does that justify the method?
Mr. Fields I understand that your point here is to make wild accusations based on your supposed higher intellectual world view to “educate us unscientific, unlearned fairy tale believersâ€.
However, all you do is posit inaccurate viewpoints backed by unsubstantiated facts that lead you to illogical conclusions. Before you write the next time, take a minute to research the data and facts behind your “expert†opinions and then we can let you in to the discussion with the rest of the adults.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:10 am
Dear “Joe Says“,
LOYOLA
Was I disrespectful to Loyola?
I hope so.
Iggy and his Jesuits were the Vatican’s point men for the Counterreformation. This included torture, murder, book burning, ethnic cleansing and my favorite–human barbeque aka the “auto de feâ€
“I love the smell of burning Protestant flesh in the morning. It’s the smell of…godliness. Is it any wonder they made him a saint.
[Note: the Protestants were not much better] While the real argument was about money and power they sent millions to their death proclaiming: “My invisible god is better than your invisible godâ€
OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER
OCD is nothing more than Pavlovian conditioning that has gotten out of control over irrational connections.
Let’s perform the following experiment. We are standing over a messy toilet bowl. I have a plastic crucifix in one hand and pencil shavings in the other. Neither has any intrinsic value
But because you have been conditioned to believe that the plastic crucifix has some magical connections to an all powerful invisible being you are going to react far differently if I flush the former rather than the latter..
At the same time, had you grown up in a world where you were conditioned to believe that pencil shavings were the connector to the all powerful invisible being your reactions would be reversed.
We are all conditioned to react to irrational events. Even I flinch for a second when a black cat walks across my path.
When a person’s reaction gets out of control we call it OCD, unless it is religious in which case we call him pious. And that is a social convention and not a scientific or medical fact.
Do you now understand?
October 29th, 2013 at 10:45 pm
I don’t know how much research you put into this, but I do think you make a valid point. I suspect that I have OCD and I feel like there is a pattern between my train of thought and those of strong believers. If I do have OCD, its definitely a mild case since I am able to think things through rationally.
‘OCD’, I read your post and there really is no reason to attack the author of the passage that way. That just shows a lot of emotional fragility on your part. Yes, OCD is terrible, you don’t have cancer, you’re not confined to a wheelchair (if you are, I apologize, but that would have nothing to do with OCD). If Fields is indeed right, this could prove to be a major breakthrough for our society. Best case scenario, the freakin terrorism could come to an end. Worst case scenario, you won’t be hassled by those crusaders who flock to malls and parks trying to interrupt your day.