Neuropsychology of Swedenborg's visions.

In 1744, the 56-yr.-old scientist Emanuel Swedenborg underwent a transformative event that could be characterized as convulsive. He subsequently became a visionary and spent the remaining 28 years of his life exploring the spirit world and describing his experiences in an extensive corpus of writings. Retrospective analysis of his visions and trance states indicates signs and symptoms consistent with a vascular anomaly in the posterior area of the left cerebral hemisphere and associated effects due to partial seizures with complex symptomatology. Swedenborg's writings have formed the basis of a church that remains active to this day. His visionary experiences can be interpreted as an instance of neuropsychological symptomatology, under the shaping influence of a powerful intellect, contributing to the formation of an historically significant religious movement. The term neuropathography is proposed for a new genre of neuropsychological case study in which the emphasis on brain-related symptomatology is balanced by attention to autobiographical and broad cultural factors.