A Critical Overview of the Psychiatric Approaches to Shamanism
As Kennedy has shown (1973: 1149), the question of whether the shaman is a disturbed individual (neurotic, psychotic, or schizophrenic) or is on the contrary a gifted, balanced and perfectly well-adjusted person, constitutes one of the oldest of all anthropological debates. Indeed R. Hamayon and L....
| Published in: | Diogenes |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
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Cambridge University Press (CUP)
1992
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/039219219204015813 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/039219219204015813 https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0392192100313633 |
| Summary: | As Kennedy has shown (1973: 1149), the question of whether the shaman is a disturbed individual (neurotic, psychotic, or schizophrenic) or is on the contrary a gifted, balanced and perfectly well-adjusted person, constitutes one of the oldest of all anthropological debates. Indeed R. Hamayon and L. Delaby (1977: 8) have pointed out that “the tendency to attribute a pathological source to shamanism, and to reduce its manifestations to the manipulation of epileptic and psychotic episodes” appeared simultaneously with the publication of the first studies on the subject, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Slavic authors in particular, most notably Bogoras (1910) and Czaplicka (1914), were anxious to establish a connection between shamanism and “Arctic hysteria.” Ohlmarks (1939), developing this theory, distinguished between Arctic and sub-Arctic shamanism in order to identify the degree of psychopathology in each shaman. Struck by the frequency of these types of phenomena in the Arctic regions, the authors believed that they had discovered their cause in race, heredity, and climate. |
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