Prophets, Cults and Madness

Publisher and industry reviews

UK Kirkus review

The interlinked subjects mentioned in the title provide a wealth of material for dissection in this intelligently-argued and comprehensive study. The authors begin by asking a series of questions which they then attempt to answer in ensuring chapters. Why do some people receive a 'revelation' which revolutionizes their view of the world and alienates them so profoundly? Why do all societies known to anthropology have religions? Why does a significant proportion of the population of every country suffer from a condition in which they develop delusions, hear voices and become alienated from families and friends? Why do so many people believe in extraordinary things which require the denial of natural science? Why is it so common for human groups to attack and massacre their neighbours? Why are we so often particularly hostile to people unlike ourselves? And finally, why does every human community, tribe or nation tend to think it is best, marked out and chosen by the gods as 'special'? Stevens and Price both read philosophy, psychology and physiology at Oxford in the 1950s but did not meet until the early 1990s at a study group. Both have worked as psychiatrists: Price published work on mood disorders in the 1960s, while Stevens went on to explore Jungian theory for the practice of psycotherapy. Here they examine a range of historical and contemporary figures, from the ostensibly rational to the certifiably mad. 'By the early 1990s a small number of us [psychiatrists] had begun to think of ourselves as evolutionary psychiatrists nad psychologists,' they explain. 'All of us agreed that these strategies [discussed in the book] are inherently shared by all members of the human species, whether they be healthy or ill, and that psychopathology occurs when these strategies malfunction as a result of environmental insults or deficiencies at critical stages of development.' The study is deteminedly empirical, and readers with religious faiths, or those with a more spiritual cast of mind, may find themselves in disagreement with conclusions based on selective examples. That, however, should not stop anyone from reading this ambitious work, which is both lucid and insightful. Review by RACHEL THACKRAY Editor's note: (Kirkus UK)

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