Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
An interview with Ann Taves, Ph.D. by Bonnie Bright, Ph.D.
If you began hallucinating, perhaps seeing or hearing things that no one else could perceive, how would you interpret this unusual experience? Ann Taves, Ph.D., professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara and presenter at Pacifica’s upcoming Trauma and Transcendence conference in June 2018, became interested in this topic back in the mid-80s, when there were a lot of people who were being diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. She had a friend who had been abused as a child and who apparently had multiple personalities, or dissociated identity, as the clinicians now call it. Ann says that because she came from a very rational sort of family, it had never dawned on her that our minds could experience changes like what it does with disorders, and she credits knowing her friend and hearing her talk about her experiences as the point at which, for Ann, the door first opened into the range of what was possible.
Ann’s research explores non-ordinary experiences and the way different disciplines might diagnose the same experience, such as hallucinating, in different ways. To illustrate this point in her talks, she often shows the covers of three texts that represent how three different disciplines—psychiatry, religious studies, and psychology—would describe an experience like hallucinating. For the American Psychiatric Association, Ann shows their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and for religious studies, she uses William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience. For the American Psychological Association, she puts up a picture of a more recent book that plays off of William James’ book, called Varieties of Anomalous Experience. Although Ann recognizes that the content of these three texts, the types of experiences included in each, are not identical, she finds that there is a lot of overlap for some kinds of experiences, which are characterized differently in each text.
For example, Ann points out that if you tried to describe an experience like hallucinating as generically as possible, without the language specific to psychology, psychiatry, or religion or spirituality, you might say an individual is hearing a voice, or having a visionary experience. So, if it’s described just in terms of what’s happening, it could wind up in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a dissociative disorder or a hallucination. In the Anomalous Experience book, it could wind up in a chapter on anomalous self and identity experiences, and it could, in some cases and depending on who’s experiencing it, wind up in anthropology or religious studies under the heading of shamanism.
For more information, visit:
DepthInsights.com
OR
InstituteforSoulCenteredPsychologyAndCoaching.com
An interview with Ann Taves, Ph.D. by Bonnie Bright, Ph.D.
If you began hallucinating, perhaps seeing or hearing things that no one else could perceive, how would you interpret this unusual experience? Ann Taves, Ph.D., professor of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara and presenter at Pacifica’s upcoming Trauma and Transcendence conference in June 2018, became interested in this topic back in the mid-80s, when there were a lot of people who were being diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. She had a friend who had been abused as a child and who apparently had multiple personalities, or dissociated identity, as the clinicians now call it. Ann says that because she came from a very rational sort of family, it had never dawned on her that our minds could experience changes like what it does with disorders, and she credits knowing her friend and hearing her talk about her experiences as the point at which, for Ann, the door first opened into the range of what was possible.
Ann’s research explores non-ordinary experiences and the way different disciplines might diagnose the same experience, such as hallucinating, in different ways. To illustrate this point in her talks, she often shows the covers of three texts that represent how three different disciplines—psychiatry, religious studies, and psychology—would describe an experience like hallucinating. For the American Psychiatric Association, Ann shows their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and for religious studies, she uses William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience. For the American Psychological Association, she puts up a picture of a more recent book that plays off of William James’ book, called Varieties of Anomalous Experience. Although Ann recognizes that the content of these three texts, the types of experiences included in each, are not identical, she finds that there is a lot of overlap for some kinds of experiences, which are characterized differently in each text.
For example, Ann points out that if you tried to describe an experience like hallucinating as generically as possible, without the language specific to psychology, psychiatry, or religion or spirituality, you might say an individual is hearing a voice, or having a visionary experience. So, if it’s described just in terms of what’s happening, it could wind up in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a dissociative disorder or a hallucination. In the Anomalous Experience book, it could wind up in a chapter on anomalous self and identity experiences, and it could, in some cases and depending on who’s experiencing it, wind up in anthropology or religious studies under the heading of shamanism.
For more information, visit:
DepthInsights.com
OR
InstituteforSoulCenteredPsychologyAndCoaching.com
