Sudden religious conversions in temporal lobe epilepsy.

The religiosity of the epileptic has been recognized since the time of Esquirol [12] and Morel [35]. These, and later French workers (including [34]), have sought to explain the epileptic s religiosity as being the result of his disability, social isolation and his enhanced need for the consolation of religion. A specific conversion experience after a fit was reported by Howden [22]. The patient believed that he was in Heaven. He would appear to have been depersonalized, as it took three days for his body to be reunited with his soul. He maintained that God had sent it to him as a means of conversion, that he was now a new man, and had never before known what true peace was . . .. He assured me that he was a converted man and that he was convinced he would have no more fits. Howden also reported on John Engellerecht who, after many years of depression, attempted suicide and appeared to die. After visiting Hell and Heaven, he cast off his depression, and acquired a state of religious ecstasy accompanied by visual and auditory hallucinations. Boven [4] mentions a 14year-old boy who after a seizure saw the good God and the angels, and heard a celestial fanfare of music . He regards the religiosity of the epileptic character as being due to experiences acquired in the course of an epileptic aura and in the subsequent confusional state. Eventually the patient becomes preoccupied with a cure which he believes depends entirely on God, and this belief is the basis of his euphoria. Boven stresses the intensified piety of the epileptic after a severe seizure. Mabille [33] discusses religious hallucinations associated with epilepsy, and presents four case histories with hallucinations of a religious nature. Only one of these cases is interesting. After the seizure the patient declared that God had given him a mission to reform the world by law. He also heard the voices of God and the Virgin Mary who commanded him not to eat until his project was finished. Conversion experiences of this type are uncommon in recent literature. In their large series, Penfield and Jasper [39] did not report a single case, and the same is true of other surveys in the last decade, including those by Hill, Pond, Mitchell and Falconer [21], Falconer [13], Bartet [2], Chafetz and Schwab [8], Stevens [51], Penfield [38], Ostow [37], Kinnier Wilson [57], Henderson and Batchelor [20], Brain [5], Weil [54], Green and Scheetz [18], Falconer, Serafetinides and Corsellis [14], Preston and Atack [41] and Williams [56]. Two patients with a greater awareness are mentioned by Mullan and Penfield [36] in a study of 214 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Karagulla and Robertson [27] discuss four temporal lobe epileptics with visual hallucinations. One of them—a 32-year-old female with a right temporo-occipital focus—had a seizure pattern which included a vision of Christ coming down from the sky. They do not state whether the vision resulted in a religious conversion. W.R. Gowers [16] did not mention any case of religious conversion, although his series included 15 patients whose auras were like dreams which seem to come into the mind . One patient suddenly felt that he had been morally wrong before losing consciousness. In a phenomenological study of epileptic experiences, Sedman [45] mentions states of ecstasy in which the victim sees the Heaven open, hears God speaking, and feels himself transfigured and even believes that he is God. When reviewing the incidence of psychosis arising from temporal lobe epilepsy, Glaser [15] mentioned the frequent occurrence of religious preoccupations. Several patients, when carrying out a battery of tests, tended to associate themes of religiosity with each problem. In their study of the schizophrenia-like psychoses of epilepsy, Slater and Beard [49] found that mystical delusional experiences were remarkably common . Patients were convinced of the reality and validity of their Epilepsy & Behavior 4 (2003) 78–87