Spirit Release Therapy as a Contemporary Healing Practice
Beiträge zur Praxeologie / Contributions to Praxeology January 1, 2026 Fiona Bowie
The notion that spirits can attach to people and cause distress, requiring specialist healers, is uncommon in Western cosmology. This ethnographic study of spirit release therapists and clients in the UK describes practices for removing unwanted spirits and energy attachments. Unlike shamanic societies where individual apprenticeships are typical, Western practitioners acquire skills through books, technology, and courses. Despite differing methods, cross-cultural continuities exist in concepts of the self, the dead, and spirits, particularly spirits of the dead. The study discusses how therapists practice, how clients come to believe they are troubled by spirits, and the understandings of self and unseen worlds developed by both groups, drawing on first-hand ethnographic experience, workshop reports, and published accounts.