This collection of papers represents a wide range of opinions concerning the mental health implications of religious belief and practice.

The often misunderstood modern person syndrome is a disorder linked to the conditions of living in our contemporary society. The author argues that the conditions of modernity have introduced new processes, forces, and cultural motivations that have major implications for all aspects of mental health and social well being. While modernity offers unprecedented opportunities for personal enhancement and creative expression, there is mounting evidence of a mental health crisis that demands the immediate attention of mental health professionals. In order to address the new challenges that have arisen under conditions of modernity, mental health professionals must rethink fundamental assumptions about the relationship between society and mental health, as well as the impact of modern social concerns upon individual behavior and psychological well being.

This innovative approach to mental health seeks to explain a variety of psychological trends, including the steep rise in depression, the sharp increase in the prevalence of existential disorders, and the emergence of consumption disorders. By shedding light on the interaction between modernity and mental health, Schumaker illuminates the emerging patterns of mental disturbance while also offering new and more effective intervention and prevention strategies.

Previous leading commentators on the development of psychology in the Third World have conceived of three major stages: an attempt to assimilate Western psychology, with predictably negative results; the study of indigenous constructs, with more relevant applications; and, finally, transcending stage one and stage two to choose theories and methods on their applied merit alone. Psychology and the Developing World has been assembled to document how close psychology has come to researching that stage. Contributors were carefully selected to provide a unique overview of the latest applications of the discipline as a whole. Their work reveals how psychology is being applied to educational needs, management needs, and health needs. This book shows how development studies and allied disciplines cannot ignore psychology's potential for the Third World.

This groundbreaking volume examines our sometimes strained grasp of reality and sheds new light on three subject areas that continue to fascinate researchers, namely, religion, hypnosis, and psychopathology. In The Corruption of Reality, noted psychologist John F. Schumaker argues that, despite their superficial differences, religion, hypnosis, and psychopathology are all expressions of the unique human ability to modify and regulate reality in ways that serve the individual and society. In turn, these same behaviors can be traced to the the brain's remarkable capacity to process information along multiple pathways, thus allowing us to distort reality in strategic ways that enhance coping. This trance-related brain faculty, known as dissociation, is revealed as a crucial determinant of what we come to experience as human reality. Taking a broad multidisciplinary approach, Schumaker demonstrates that reality is usually orchestrated at the level of culture in the form of traditional religion, with religion having been a total way of life in premodern times. In order to function optimally, religions (with the exception of most Western ones) employ dissociative trance-induction techniques that take advantage of drugs, music, dance, and other sources of repetitive monotony. Many of these closely resemble hypnotic induction techniques as they exist in Western culture. They also operate similarly to the cognitive rituals that establish and maintain nonreligious abnormal behavior, better known as psychopathology or mental illness. In this last area, special attention is given to drug abuse, eating disorders, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and responsesto trauma. Many of these disorders, Schumaker argues, are the direct result of the inability of Western culture, with its severely eroded religious systems, to function adequately in its role as regulator of reality. Schumaker proposes ways to revitalize our sick Western culture, including the controversial prospect of constructing a new religion incorporating our current knowledge about our peculiar relationship to ourselves and the world. Along these lines, he offers innovative solutions to such pressing global problems as over-population and ecological destruction. Rigorously argued yet written in a style accessible to all readers, The Corruption of Reality challenges traditional ideas and paves the way for a far-reaching unified theory of conscious and unconscious behavior.

Motivation and Culture brings together an international list of writers with a variety of academic backgrounds and cultural experiences to explore the ways culture influences motivation. Traditionally, culture has long been neglected by those interested in motivation theories; instead, the focus has been on the individual in relation to biological and cognitive models. While the biological component of motivation is not neglected in this volume, most of the essays emphasize the ways culture needs to be taken into consideration both in formulating theories of motivation and applying them to the modern multicultural world.

An interdisciplinary volume which draws together the concepts of culture and cognition in the wider context of psychopathology. It provides new perspectives on the etiology, treatment, and prevention of psychopathology by challenging current individualistic models and assumptions, while offering new theoretical formulations that take account of the cultural foundation of the cognition process.

This book is divided into three sections. The first offers a history of the existing shortsighted models that see the individual as the source of pathological cognitions. The second section is comprised of nine chapters that examine selected mental disorders. The final section examines the implications of new models that take account of cultural sources of cognition. This book will be of interest to clinical and cross-cultural psychology; anthropology, sociology, and professionals in psychology, social services, and public health.

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