In Uganda, people diagnosed with spirit possession by traditional healers report more severe dissociative symptoms and more potentially traumatizing events than a matched nonpossessed group. Both psychoform and somatoform dissociation were significantly associated with these events. However, participants did not subjectively link their dissociative symptoms to past trauma, consistent with local cultural interpretations. Spirit possession may function as a culture-specific expression of dissociation related to potential traumatizing events.
The mainstreaming of psychedelic medicine, a billion-dollar industry, blends psychiatry with spiritual experience, creating new forms of secular mysticism in an age of disenchantment. Drawing on public discourse analysis, ethnographic research in a psychedelic church, a therapy training program, and science conferences, the article argues that this entanglement reveals contemporary social anxieties and yearnings. It shows how attempts to distinguish drugs, medicine, and sacraments in clinical and non-clinical spaces are not only shifting mental health care paradigms but also generating secular mystical practices.
Political tensions arise between two sources of efficacy in psychedelic therapy: the self and the chemical. Researchers and therapists sometimes emphasize the specificity of chemical effects tied to the neurobiology of particular diagnoses, and at other times foreground the self as the true source of experience not bound to biochemistry. Anthropologists have long seen efficacy as historically and socially embedded, a perspective given new weight by recent theorization of chemicals as material-semiotic structures shaped by experimental contexts. The article argues that while empirical claims of these two efficacies can mutually include each other, a fundamental political tension remains between the efficacious ends envisioned by each. Clinical trials link specific chemical effects to diagnostic populations, enfranchising the chemicals but not all their efficacies.
This work examines the therapeutic processes and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki, a form of Chinese shamanism, through the lens of symbolic healing. It analyzes how the ritual and symbolic elements of dang-ki may contribute to psychological and physical healing for participants, focusing on the cultural and contextual factors that make these practices effective. The findings suggest that the symbolic framework of dang-ki aligns with patients' belief systems, facilitating a sense of understanding, relief, and perceived improvement.