Presentation Information
[SY-72-02]The Role of Mythology in Shaping the Self and Its Transcendental Counterpart
*Goffredo Bartocci1,2,3 (1.Italian Institute of Transcultural Mental Health, Co-Founder(Italy), 2.World Association of Cultural Psychiatry, Co-Founder and Past President(Italy), 3.Transcultural Psychiatry Section, Italian Society of Psychiatry, Co-Founder and Past President(Italy))
Keywords:
cultural construction of the Self,Science–Faith Interface,worldviews
This lecture aims to delve into the cultural construction of the Western approach to understanding the coexistence, clash, and interaction between “Science and Faith.” By following the principles of Transcultural and Cultural Psychiatry, which consider the diversity of worldviews as a key avenue for evaluating the influence of cultural factors on mental health, the focus will be on the role of mythologies in shaping different manifestations of the Self.Identity construction, in fact, is deeply rooted in specific psychological and social contexts that deliver diverse inputs. In this lecture, the emphasis will be on the recurring and influential narratives that often define the ethnic identity of populations. These narratives, embedded in parental structures and broader social groups, exert a profound influence often attributed in traditional psychiatry to interpersonal relationships.Many mythologies include elements involving ultra-human events. Such narratives shift the locus of control from the pragmatic Self to a transcendent Non-Self domain. For instance, the widespread belief that spirituality is a divine gift significantly shapes the psychological climate where the pragmatic Self develops.Although academic disciplines such as anthropology, philosophy, and the social and biological sciences respect the foundation of secular psychiatry, the enduring tension between the concept of a cosmogony "out of nothing" and evolutionary scientific theories remains unresolved. This debate can become more constructive by introducing cultural variables.A cultural and transcultural approach can illuminate the often-overlooked effects of Homo sapiens' unique capacity to enact extreme transcendental acts in response to external reality. The combined influence of cultural factors and individual or collective transcendence techniques activates biological mechanisms that lead to special states of consciousness, such as trance.By adopting a well-tuned bio-psycho-sociocultural approach, it becomes possible to explore the complex exchanges between the realms of Science and Faith without succumbing to the reductionist constraints imposed by institutional dogmas.To shed light on the interaction between culture and the construction of the Self—an implicit theme of this symposium—this lecture will draw on William James' assertion that religious beliefs are “an intellectually respectable object of study.” From a Roman perspective, it seems evident that the forces promoting theological spirituality or idealized secular supremacy (which, at their core, share a similar intent) continue to overshadow the contributions of honest secular psychiatry.It is increasingly evident that psychiatrists require expertise to make clinical inferences and differential diagnoses regarding any form of idolatry.