Abstract
The medical model attributes religious and spiritual experiences in epilepsy to delusional or hallucinatory events, sometimes diagnosed as a form of ictal psychosis with its causation lying in epileptic symptomatology. Individuals with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy rarely discuss experiences with medical professionals, fearing judgement and pathologization. I problematize understanding these experiences in a strictly biomedical manner. A medical case study is replaced by autoethnographic narrative to describe and analyse spiritual experiences from a non-medical perspective. This approach emphasizes the phenomenology of the experience and its meaning for the life of the experient. Themes of illness, disclosure and stigma become transformative.
Keywords: epilepsy, spirituality, autoethnography, illness, ictal psychosis
Keywords: epilepsy, spirituality, autoethnography, illness, ictal psychosis
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 50-77 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| Journal | Departures in Critical Qualitative Research |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2021 |
Keywords
- epilepsy, spirituality, autoethnography, illness