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Pathologization as Strategy for Securing the Wirklichkeit The Example of Paranormal Experiences

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Krankheitskonstruktionen und Krankheitstreiberei

Abstract

Preliminary note on terminology: Contrary to the English language, German allows for a simple categorial differentiation. The term “reality” (German: “Realität”) means the natural world, which exists independent of social interpretations, like the reality of the earth’s spherical shape.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Etymologically the nominalization ‘wirklichkeit’ derives from the German verb ‘wirken’ (to weave), i. e. the activity of producing cloth – ‘wirklichkeit’ is therefore what has been woven, i. e. manufactured by humans.

  2. 2.

    See remarks in Berger and Zijderveld (2010: 78-79) for clarification.

  3. 3.

    This should be distinguished from what might be collectively called ‘fictional knowledge’ – the knowledge about or of cultural product(s) that explicitly do not appear to claim to describe the ‘real wirklichkeit’ (novels, movies, computer games, etc.).

  4. 4.

    A respectively specific configuration of knowledge of wirklichkeit is not typical for a particular culture, but the other way round, it constitutes this in the first place: we talk of different cultures whenever we are dealing with distinguishable orders of knowledge and the concepts of wirklichkeit controlled by them.

  5. 5.

    On the qucstion oflinguistic particularities in the narratives on paranormal experiences, Wooffitt (1994: 48) observed: "There is a powerful cultural skepticism about people who claim. to have cncountercd paranormal phenomena. Not ooly da such experiences provide an implicit challenge to a commOD-SCDse understanding ofthe world, but they also undermine the pronouncements of the scientific orthodoxy. My interest in accounts of anomalous phenomena thus stcms from the fact that people who claim such experiences place themselves in an inauspicious position. Tbe mere act of claiming such an expenence can lead to assumptions of, at best, crankiness, of worse, same forms of psychological deviancy."

  6. 6.

    “With repeated assurances that one was not at alt mad or ‘actually did not believe in such things’ and anyhow would be someone who ‘bad bis feet firmly planted on the ground’, the storytcller clearly distanccs himself from ‘nutcases ’ who always 0011 unlikely stories, as weU as from naive or gullible contemporaries.”

  7. 7.

    Tbc works by Hergowich/Arcndasy (2007), Hergowich et al. (2008) or LammerslSchöming (2010) show that the diagnosis category is used in a similar way even today.

  8. 8.

    Tbc SPQ is one of a number of empirical scales for the assessment of schizotypal disorders (Brednich provides an overvicw 1993: 24-27).

  9. 9.

    “… high levels in the schizotypy subscale of ‘magical thinking’ cause an affinity for deviant belief systems.”

  10. 10.

    Brednich (1993: 33) also refers to this connection when she says. “daß ‘per dcfi.nitionem’ eine Überschneidung zwischen Schizotypie und magisch-irrationalem Denken besteht [that ‘by definition’ there also exists an overlap between schizotypy and magical-irrational thinking].”

  11. 11.

    Brednich (1993: 90-92) diseusses the general problem ofmatching constructs in the scales of schizotypy and occult beliefs.

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  1. Michael T. Schetsche
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universität Kassel, Kassel, Deutschland

    Michael Dellwing  & Martin Harbusch  & 

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Schetsche, M. (2013). Pathologization as Strategy for Securing the Wirklichkeit The Example of Paranormal Experiences. In: Dellwing, M., Harbusch, M. (eds) Krankheitskonstruktionen und Krankheitstreiberei. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-18784-6_11

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