The clinical definition of magical thinking

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I'm not sure where to post this, but I think it somewhat belongs here. On the DSM they define believing in ESP or similar beliefs as magical thinking. They never mention religion or prayer. If believing in ESP is magical thinking believing in god and prayer should be magical thinking as well.

I agree. It's like people who deride religious belief, yet read their horoscope every day - another form of magical thinking.

Seeems like an egregious stumbling block in human evolution IMO. It's not their right to say we all lack senses we're still learning to describe.

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I'd just like to point out that the idea of our having five senses is pretty outdated. Examples of senses we have that are separate senses but usually not though of as such are our sense of balance and our ability to percieve temperature.

That being said, things that fall under ESP tend to be things like mind-reading and telekinesis, which are pretty close to magic in my eyes.

I believe that the exact wording is "magical thinking beyond the norm of society".

So praying is ok. But thinking that there is an invisible dragon curled up in your lap like a kitty cat while your friends drive you somewhere is not ok (I read about an actual case of a teen involved in a murder who communed with dragons all of the time).

Someone once said "you're considered sane if you talk to God, but not considered sane if God talks to you".

Its a fine line. And it changes over time. Three hundred years ago folks believed in witches.

I believe that magical thinking is related to the schizotypal spectrum. However this is not the same as saying it is abnormal, on the contrary. The vast majority are sub-clinical as far as mental illness is concerned. This just a neurotype among others very common and, it is not mutually exclusive to other neurotype.

I have had this theory for a while till I found out that Stanford Neurologist Robert Sapolsky shared the same view.

I have a more refined hypothesis about functions of the brain related to this thinking, which plays an important role along side the analytical functions in decision making and has a biological clear purpose. magical thinking is merely a possible result of some patterns of interaction between the two.

I do take your point the clinical definition being fuzzy.

The thing is in psychiatry this trait is not usually taken in isolation but as one of many in a criteria.

You could argue that modern psychiatry isn't as empirical as it aught to be. Also it has been largely standardised these day which make it harder for new approaches to be developed.

This is my criticism of the DSM. If you don't treat traits as free moving you can't establish the true relationship between them. It is not falsifiable to arbitrarily bolt them together do to convenience or anecdotal evidence.

I always loved that scene on the Simpsons, where Marge stands in front of a court and starts praying. Asked what she was doing, she answers: "praying to god for help" and the judge asks:"and this 'god' you're speaking of.... Is he in the room right now?"

But, yeah, exemption for religious belief, it is.
Of course, unless god tells you to build a caliphate, then you collide with a different subpopulation, and it's insanity.

Magical thinking is related to subjective thinking, and this is a key function of the brain.

So whilst magical thinking can be illogical, subjective thinking still plays an important role in decision making.

There is connection between the "leap of faith" of belief systems and more informed subjective conclusions.

Analytical people, like myself, keep on making deductions. You can call this the "analytical loop". We are capable of n-levels of deductions. So those that are hyper-analytical will able capable of a greater number of deductive levels than those that are not.

The reason why multi-level deduction is needed, is because very few answers are definite. This is why people who say they are logical becuase there are always right, are unlikely to be that logical. Those who are drawn to absolutism, have difficulty understating this (at least in the area concerned).

However regardless, we all need to break out of the analytical loop in order to form conclusions. We have to essentially make up our mind. This decision may be seen as exclusively logical, but it relies on subjective thinking at least to determine, if we have enough information to make a reasonable inference or rule.

"Assumption chaining" is superficially similar multi-layer deductive reasoning, but it is based on making assumptions of assumptions especially where the person falsely believes that this process itself is validating of these ideas.

Magical thinking comes in is possibly where the subjective conclusion are premature, and the level of deduction is limited. However this is the not the only possible pattern, and also people can be quite logical in one discipline but may not have the same capacity in another.

Disordered thinking is a quite different animal, where thoughts themselves are based on false connections . So an example would be someone who said "The car stopped becuase blue sky". This is not someone noticing a correlation, as we are assuming will not be a consistent belief. So their thoughts are being mangled somehow.

So there a difference between someone who is consistently illogical (be it superstition or delusion) and someone who has an inconsistent disordered thought pattern.

I suspect schizophrenia has some similarity to sleep states. Not exactly the same but may be a way of understanding it. Dreams often make sense during but not necessarily after you wake up. This is possibly becuase it is not necessary for your brain to work the same way it does when you are awake and it can priorities other function it can't do whilst awake. So from that frame of reference it doesn't seem illogical, it is only when you are not in that state that you realise the behavior or idea is odd.