Psychoanalytic theory appears flawed in the way it has been traditionally applied in anthropological studies of spirit possession in South Asia. It is suggested that pathological spirit possession in South Asia has a similar etiology to multiple personality disorder in North America, which is caused by spontaneous trance reactions to extreme situations in the environment, particularly child...
Psychoanalytic theory appears flawed in its notions of universal oedipal conflict and repression, and unsuitable for the study of pathological spirit possession in South Asia. The biological theory of contemporary psychiatry is no more effective in this analysis because mental illnesses are constituted within culture-bound categories of experience. Dissociation theory offers a better...
From a review of the literature on meditation and depersonalization and interviews conducted with six meditators, this study concludes that: 1) meditation can cause depersonalization and derealization; 2) the meanings in the mind of the meditator regarding the experience of depersonalization will determine to a great extent whether anxiety is present as part of the experience; 3) there need not...