Religious psychosis of Gene Wilder

[Ahriman]

Actor Gene Wilder presents a very interesting look at his own unexplained need to pray and talk to god he didn't believe in (much).

He grew up in a Jewish family where religion was pretty much nonexistent, but as he grew into early adulthood he was suddenly faced with an uncontrollable need to pray. As you can see, he describes it as a mental disease that grips him and takes control of him that he sometimes loses hours in prayers. One of the reasons he was doing it was because he would suddenly feel guilt for being alive and for not being miserable as some people living in poverty were.

And it wasn't always in a form of praying, like he would make himself deliberately "ugly" and go to class because he wanted to feel humble for the sake of feeling gulty.

Here is how he describes it in his autobiography available on archive.org

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I find that almost unbearably sad. Poor fella. I guess you never know what people are battling.

Boru

Well, in all fairness, he might not have been "suffering" from these delusions, they might have just been idiosyncrasies.