Abstract
Recent developments in radical therapies for dealing with mental disorders bear an overwhelming similarity to some of the instrumental and expressive aspects of the black religious experience. This paper suggests areas of the church which might prove fruitful for systematic research. Four possible therapeutic functions of black religious activities are discussed: the articulation of suffering; the location of persecutors; the provision of asylum for “acting-out”; and the validation of experiences. Within the framework of sociological concepts of “labeling” (Scheff) and the radical critiques within psychiatry (Laing) the importance of such research is discussed with consideration of the relatively low rate of mental illness, and particularly within certain diagnostic categories, of the black community in the United States (Blackwell).