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Van Dusen, in a recent exploration of the question of
Swedenborg's sanity, lays the essential groundwork for any discussion of mental
illness.2 Many who have ascribed Swedenborg's visions to mental illness
have clearly done so out of ignorance; insanity is not as easily defined as
lay persons are inclined to believe. Insanity
is as insanity does, he arguesthe disorderly and unproductive life of chronic insanity does not yield
the accomplishments of a Swedenborg. Consistency and integration settle
the argument for Van Dusen, an experienced clinical psychologist. His is a clear and rational argument, from experience, for the validity
of Swedenborg's claims of revelation. But as always, this will not satisfy
all people. No matter what the argument, it seems, we are always left
with two schools of thought on matters of spirit.
There are two important distinctions regarding these matters
that deserve our attention. First, investigators recognize two very
different forms that transcendent experiences may take. Van Dusen's
"visionary experience," the apparently valid spiritual experience of prophets
and saints, "makes sense," and leaves the subject with "a deeper
understanding of religion." In short, these experiences tend to order and enhance
the lives of those who have them. In contrast to this experience are the
hell-like attacks of psychotic hallucinations. These are not integrative or
instructional, and tend to leave the subject in a confused and diminished
mental state. The distinction between these two forms of experience is
important in the discussion of Swedenborg's sanity, because here lies the crux of
one of the major arguments concerning the validity of Swedenborg's
theological corpus: the argument from
quality for validity of the revelation.
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