Explain magical thinking from someone with it?

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I have reverse magical thinking, I think that if I want something, it'll never happen.

So much for freedom of religion. If someone's magical thinking is consistent with the dogma of the majority religion, he's sane. If it's based on a minority religious meme or one of his own making, he's suffering from a mental disorder. This means that all religion founders were schizophrenics.

Or crooks. Or invented by other people who were the true founders of the religion.

I enjoyed reading that.

I think a certain 'amount' or kind of magical thinking is 'normal'

Check out the link provided by Verdandi here:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt188118.html

That's not reverse magical thinking, it's just negatively biased magical thinking.

I went through a pronoia phase at one time, which is kinda the opposite of what you're talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoia_%28psychology%29

hmm this is one of those thing's I've given some thought to....based on what I know of magical thinking from various sources, I know I could certainly come off as having it. Since I do have some rather unusual beliefs/ideas about things however most of the things about me that could be labeled as such are real to me........so yeah can't say for sure if I have any examples of magical thinking that are actually magical thinking but heres a couple that where real to me.

1. I got on a bus, a couple stops later I got a very horrible feeling when a couple people got on the bus...and after a while I felt like it was coming from them specifically. Turns out they where jehovas witnesses or mormons can't remember which. But as soon as I could I got off the bus because it literally felt like they where screwing around with some spiritual crap and directing it at me and at the time I believed I had a couple guardian spirits that more or less protected me from that.

2. I am still more or less convinced I've had dreams about things before they happen, like major things.

so as far as I know things like that could fall under magical thinking, but I am not sure if I feel that explains those things.

Ah, I was sure I don't have a name for what I said. Thank you for the correction.




It reminds me of: “I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” - J. D. Salinger

Last edited by Bun on 28 Jan 2012, 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

http://www.freewillastrology.com/beauty ... erapy.html

Exactamundo

Prof. Robert Sapolsky has very interesting hypotheses on the origin of religion and the perpetuation of conditions like schizophrenia and OCD through religious structures. This also relates to magical thinking:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNSe4Ff57n4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8GFQRAlDmE[/youtube]

Basically, the shamans in hunter-gatherer tribes were schizotypal or schizophrenic, which allowed them to "hear" the voices of ancestral spirits or gods, or whatever they came up with. Schizophrenic traits have been confirmed in the shamans of extant hunter-gatherer cultures. Their high social status gave them reproductive opportunities which kept this trait / disorder alive until today.

As religion became more complex, OCD traits were selected for as well. Food preparation rituals, ritual washings, ultimately religious dogma and ritual in its entirety is very obsessive-compulsive. Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, suffered from OCD. He wrote that no matter how often he would wash his hands, they would never feel clean and he just couldn't stop. He was also known to engage in obsessive confessing during his time as a Catholic monk. Founding a new Christian Church with all-new rituals must have come natural to someone like him.

Sapolsky also mentions temporal lobe epilepsy, which often goes hand in hand with obsessive religious writing. It's quite interesting how people with neurological disorders, instead of being marginalized or socially ostracized as it often happens today, managed to establish a societal niche for themselves in the past by basically turning everyone else crazy Of course there were probably also crooks who came up with new brands of religion for their own personal gain. After all, it's a great way to make a living without doing any real work.

Last edited by CrazyCatLord on 28 Jan 2012, 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Interesting.

I do this too. Except my pattern is more adhering to a hymn, and i use it to alleviate anxiety and prevent thoughts from being exposed to others there is feeling of vulnerability. Despite the irrationality, it never fails to alleviate anxiety, although commonly only temporarily.

Everyone engages in magical thinking, to an extent; it's not limited to psychotics. Magical thinking is, more or less, irrational thinking: coming to conclusions that cannot be deducted from the premises or held with a high degree of probability, given the evidence at hand.

I have been into tarot, astrology and spirituality from a longtime now.
I truly believe in magical thinkings, prayers, faith and miracles
There have been innumerable miracles in my life

magical thinking

Great diagram.