Paul also shows signs of ego inflation, an excessive expansion of self-worth often linked to religious archetypal symbols in Jungian psychology.1 Paul placed himself on a level with the apostles, and beyond that claimed that his gospel came straight from heaven.
He made himself the center of universal spiritual experience, while the disciples, the living witnesses to the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam (ʿalayhi al-salām, peace be upon him), were treated as no longer relevant. In psychological terms this is self-mythologizing,2 making oneself the absolute narrative.
Wells supports that reading when he argues that Paul’s teaching “was not derived from experience of the historical Jesus”; it came from his own visions and personal interpretation.3 Wells shows that Paul displayed no interest in the life of Jesus, and that his teaching developed independently of the Palestinian tradition.
That strengthens the view that his theological system was self-made, and no inheritance of a legitimate tradition.4 In psychological terms it supports the idea that Paul’s grand narrative arose from an inner compulsion to give meaning to his own psychotic experience, and never from historical continuity.
Religious psychosis
Contemporary clinical study supports the interpretation. Some neuropsychiatrists regard Paul as a classic example of an individual experiencing religious hallucination with psychotic features. Symptoms such as hearing a sourceless voice and seeing a bright light are read in one study as possible signs of prolonged psychosis or a mood disorder with psychotic features.5
Researchers have even proposed a new diagnostic category of religious psychosis to explain cases like Paul’s. His experience at Damascus, on this analysis, was more than a mystical matter; it reflects a deep, clinically untreated mental conflict.6
Paul created a system that justified an inferiority complex born of his past. It was a dramatic transformation from oppressor to spiritual “savior,” a process Freud describes as neurotic conversion, in which inner conflict is diverted into a grand mission to reach psychological equilibrium.7 Because his past as a persecutor could never be erased, it had to be overcome, and it was overcome by creating a new theological reality that redeemed and whitewashed him, and never by open confession.
The clinical model of pathological narcissism
The contemporary clinical model of pathological narcissism gives a further frame for understanding the phenomenon empirically.8 In that model, pathological narcissism springs from three main dysfunctions: failure of self-regulation, disturbed emotion regulation, and dysfunctional interpersonal relations. Together they produce two main forms of expression, grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism, each of which can be overt or covert.
Paul shows all four forms at once. In overt expression he sets himself up as the exclusive recipient of revelation, claims a direct commission from heaven, and orders his followers to imitate him. In covert form he uses suffering, loneliness and rejection as the capital of spiritual legitimacy.
In emotion regulation, his excessive reaction to congregations that did not follow him, as in Galatia, shows a disturbance in the management of inner conflict. His social relations were unstable too: his open confrontation with Peter and his tendency to deny the authority of the other apostles reflect a difficulty in building spiritual cooperation among equals. Paul’s personality spans the whole spectrum of pathological narcissism, and it functioned as a tool to protect a fragile self-structure by forming a closed theological dogma.9
Temporal lobe epilepsy
The hypothesis of temporal lobe epilepsy advanced by several neurologists gives a neurological explanation for Paul’s mystical visions and change of personality.10 The Gastaut-Geschwind syndrome, with symptoms such as hyper-religiosity, hypergraphia, overflowing emotion and a deep sense of personal mission, has been connected directly with Paul’s personal profile.
These features explain the radical change in him, and they form the psychodynamic basis of the teaching he created. If the experience was epileptic, the revelation is, ex hypothesi, neurological.11
Paul’s doctrines, Original Sin, redemption through the cross, the abolition of the law, can therefore be understood as reflections of a confused and unstable personality, and never as a continuation of the message of the prophets. Paul was a man caught in the tension between a defiling past, as oppressor and killer of the followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, and a new identity he tried to build through a narrative of salvation and self-apostleship.
That tension was never resolved openly, and it erupted in the questionable spiritual experience he claimed took place at Damascus. From the standpoint of psychology and neurology, the experience resembles an episode of deep psychological pressure, a trauma reaction that restructures existential meaning through prophetic delusion, a pattern also known in studies of post-ictal psychosis and delusions of apostleship.12
Two readings, one verdict
What looks like a contradiction in the interpretation of Paul’s personality, between the claim that he was a subversive who infiltrated the teaching of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and the view that he suffered a psychospiritual disorder, in fact reveals the complex sides that make up the figure. Like other great historical figures, he should not be confined to a single frame of analysis.
If one side shows his actions as deliberate and strategic, such as the manipulation of circumcision and the law to win Gentiles, the other side, reflecting inner pressure or neurological symptoms, does not cancel the first. Read carefully, both describe a soul struggling among trauma, desire and a dream of apostleship assembled from the fragments of a shattered identity.
Likewise, the approach that examines Paul’s self-mythologizing through the frame of pathological narcissism need not conflict with the assumption that his actions sprang from a moral crisis born of deep guilt.13 History shows that great trauma often gives birth to a new identity as a defense mechanism of the psyche, sometimes in the form of revelation or a divine call. His religious narrative can be traced as a strategy of power, and also as an unconscious effort to redeem a wound that never healed.
The discussion here therefore uses a layered approach. Theological interpretation of the deviation in his teaching, historical analysis of his clash with the disciples, a psychological reading of his personality disorder and neurological reflection on his mystical phenomena are combined in one complementary frame of interpretation.
Like a portrait that emerges only after many layers of color and shadow, so is the understanding of the character who set off this great transformation in the history of religion. In judging Paul we see more than one face: the whole of his complexity, a man who may have thought himself a great reformer, and who ended as the chief corrupter of the message of tawḥīd (توحيد, “the oneness of God”) brought by al-Masīḥ (ʿalayhi al-salām).
This psychological interpretation, though built on modern method, agrees with the view of the Muslim scholars who from the earliest times identified Paul’s subversive role in diverting the message of tawḥīd. Classical Islamic discourse gives a firm assessment: Paul was more than a controversial figure. He was the principal agent in the corruption of the continuity of the revealed religion.
Whichever reading is preferred, the Islamic verdict does not depend on choosing between them. Revelation is judged by its agreement with the prophets who came before, and Paul’s gospel fails that test whatever its psychological origin.
- Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion: West and East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 134–135. ↩
- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, trans. H. L. Mencken (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920), pp. 40–43. ↩
- George A. Wells, The Jesus of the Early Christians: A Study in Christian Origins (London: Pemberton, 1971), pp. 146–148. Quoted as rendered in the Malay edition of the book. ↩
- ibid., pp. 148–149. ↩
- Evan D. Murray et al., “The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, vol. 24, no. 4 (2012), pp. 410–426. ↩
- ibid. ↩
- Freud, The Future of an Illusion, p. 57. ↩
- Ross McIntyre, “Paul and Narcissistic Personality Style,” Academia.edu, pp. 7–10, https://bit.ly/43ySthy (accessed 24 May 2025). ↩
- Ross McIntyre, “Paul’s Contribution to the Radicalization of Christianity,” Academia.edu, pp. 5–9, https://bit.ly/3H7F0Wt (accessed 24 May 2025). ↩
- D. Landsborough, “St Paul and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,” pp. 661–663. ↩
- Leonardo Cruz de Souza et al., “Saint Paul, the Apostle, and the Gastaut-Geschwind Syndrome,” Dementia & Neuropsychologia, vol. 18, no. 1 (2024), pp. 2–6. ↩
- Shahar Arzy and Roey Schurr, “‘God has sent me to you’: Right temporal epilepsy, left prefrontal psychosis,” Epilepsy & Behavior, vol. 60 (2016), pp. 210–217. ↩
- See 1 Timothy 1:15, where Paul confesses himself “the chief” of sinners, an admission that opens the way to a psychodynamic interpretation of his personality. ↩