Assignment: Spiritual Explanation Paper Assignment Instructions
For this assignment you will be identifying spiritual/supernatural explanations of a psychological process to later be compared to recent physiological findings about the process. You will also explore cultural influences and ethical implications of this perspective.
1. Identify a psychological process that has had a spiritual/supernatural explanation.
2. Summarize the spiritual/supernatural perspective, making sure to ground this viewpoint in existing literature. This should focus on explanations of what cause the psychological process, not spiritual elements of the psychological process. For instance, a spiritual/supernatural explanation could be that some people believe schizophrenia is caused by demon possession. Spiritual hallucinations would not be a spiritual/supernatural explanation.
3. Address how different cultures may approach and provide different spiritual/supernatural perspectives.
4. The references may be theological, academic, or historical documents.
5. Explore what the ethical implications of this explanation are. These should not be general ethical considerations, but rather how this particular explanation of the problem would affect the ethics of interventions. For instance, if you approach an individual with schizophrenia believing schizophrenia is caused by demon possession, what would you have to consider ethically?
The paper should be 2 to 3 pages (excluding your title and reference pages), using APA format.