Ghost encounters were found to be a key part of the trauma ontology among Cambodian refugees at a psychiatric clinic, a key idiom of distress. Fifty-four percent of patients had been bothered by ghost encounters in the last month. The severity of being bothered by ghosts in the last month was highly correlated to PTSD severity (r = .8), and among patients bothered by ghosts in the last month,...
The notion of affect has generated much confusion in anthropology given its focus on that which seems to escape our language. The evanescent features of affects have irritated many anthropologists who consider affect theory as an empirically weak or esoteric hermeneutics. In this article, I respond to these critiques by developing an anthropology of therapy that foregrounds the role of affects....
Sensorimotor research is currently challenging the dominant understanding of autism as a deficit in the cognitive ability to 'mindread'. This marks an emerging shift in autism research from a focus on the structure and processes of the mind to a focus on autistic behavior as grounded in the body. Contemporary researchers in sensorimotor differences in autism call for a reconciliation between...
This study examines the perceptual basis of diagnostic virtuosity in East Asian medicine, combining Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and an ethnographic investigation of Korean medicine in South Korea. A novice, being exposed to numerous clinical transactions during apprenticeship, organizes perceptual experience that occurs between him or herself and patients. In the process, the fledgling...
Since spirit possession in mediumship and shamanism resembles psychotic symptoms, early researchers perceived spirit mediums and shamans as psychiatric patients whose psychopathology was culturally sanctioned. However, other researchers have not only challenged this assumption, but also proposed that spirit possession has transformative benefits. The idiom of spirit possession provides cultural...
Recent studies in African contexts have revealed a strong association between spirit possession and severe trauma, with inclusion into a possession cult serving at times a therapeutic function. Research on spirit possession in the Dominican Republic has so far not included quantitative studies of trauma and dissociation. This study evaluated demographic variables, somatoform dissociative...
In this article, we discuss the impact of migration and acculturation processes on the cultural, personal identity, and mental health of children who immigrate to a Western, multicultural environment, and the challenges clinicians in such environments face, when confronted with non-Western idioms of distress and healing practices. We do that by presenting a challenging clinical case of an...
The current study examines cultural explanations regarding sleep paralysis (SP) in Italy. The study explores (1) whether the phenomenology of SP generates culturally specific interpretations and causal explanations and (2) what are the beliefs and local traditions associated with such cultural explanations. The participants were Italian nationals from the general population (n = 68) recruited...
Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews collected with meditation teachers and students in the United States, this article will argue that active training in meditation-based practices occasions the opportunity for people with traumatic stress to develop a stronger mind-body connection through heightened somatic awareness and a focus on the present moment that they find to be...
Ritual healing has been one of the core topics in anthropology and, to a lesser extent, in psychology as well. Much of the research on ritual healing has focused on how healing works, and what factors constitute the efficacy of healing. In answering this question, scholars have focused primarily on two main factors-the symbolic significance of rituals, and the relationship between the healer...
In Nepal, spirit possession is a common phenomenon occurring both in individuals and in groups. To identify the cultural contexts and psychosocial correlates of spirit possession, we conducted a mixed-method study in a village in central Nepal experiencing a cluster of spirit possession events. The study was carried out in three stages: (1) a pilot study consisting of informal interviews with...
In the current research we report data from two studies that examined rates and characteristics of sleep paralysis (SP) in the general population of Denmark and Egypt. In Study I, individuals from Denmark and Egypt did not differ in age whereas there were more males in the Egyptian sample (47 vs. 64 %); in Study II, individuals from Denmark and Egypt were comparable in terms of age and gender...
Vodou as an explanatory framework for illness has been considered an impediment to biomedical psychiatric treatment in rural Haiti by some scholars and Haitian professionals. According to this perspective, attribution of mental illness to supernatural possession drives individuals to seek care from houngan -s (Vodou priests) and other folk practitioners, rather than physicians, psychologists,...
Recent research has highlighted the importance of traditional methods of healing in relation to the treatment of psychological distress in non-Western populations. This pilot study, conducted in Massachusetts, investigates what Buddhist Cambodian monks consider to be the causes, phenomenology and appropriate intervention strategies for anger among Cambodian refugees. Six monks were interviewed...
There is a special emphasis today on integrating traditional healing within health services. However, most areas in which there is a system of traditional healing have undergone colonization and a number of pressures suppressing tradition for hundreds of years. The question arises as to how one can understand today's tradition in light of earlier traditions. This article is based on material...
Spirit possession is a common, worldwide phenomenon with dissociative features. Studies in Europe and the United States have revealed associations among psychoform and somatoform dissociation and (reported) potential traumatic events. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships among spirit possession, dissociative symptoms and reported potentially traumatizing events in Uganda. One...
This study focuses on the therapeutic process and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki, a form of Chinese shamanistic healing, in Singapore. It aims to understand the healing symbols employed in dang-ki, whether or not patients find them helpful and whether their perceived helpfulness can be explained by the symbolic healing model (Dow, Am Anthropol 88(1):56-69, 1986; Levi-Strauss, Structural...
This article examines nightmare narratives collected as part of a person-centered ethnographic study of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and supernaturalism in a mainland Puerto Rican community in the late 1990s. Utilizing a descriptive backdrop informed by cross-cultural studies of ASCs and highlighting the relevance of recent insights from the cognitive sciences of religion and from the...
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...
The anthropological literature on spirit possession cults offers a distinction between voluntary possession or mediumship and involuntary possession or illness. Fieldwork was carried out in a Mahanubhav healing temple. Contradictory interpretations of trance and affliction were found to be held by the different temple inhabitants. Beliefs about the nature of spiritual affliction, its...
Spirit possession is a common experience shared by many women in northwest Madagascar. In the town of Ambanja, possession by volatile and dangerous Njarinintsy spirits is an affliction which strikes young, adolescent schoolgirls. When Njarinintsy is contrasted with tromba, another well-known class of spirits found in this region, it becomes clear that Njarinintsy possession is a relatively...
Based on Saedi's description of spirit possession beliefs and practices on the southern coasts of Iran, this paper attempts to isolate the culturally and psychologically significant categories through which the possessed define and differentiate their possessing spirits or "Winds." It examines the play of these categories in the complex of relationships between the possessing spirits, the...