Stories of "mass hysteria" among teenage girls have often graced the headlines of Nepal's local and national newspapers, creating a public spectacle of a strange and mysterious form of affliction. Treatments include both shamanic rituals and psychosocial interventions, a new therapeutic modality that has gained prominence over the past two decades following the rise of global mental health....
Nonprofit efforts to develop ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA)-better known as the street drug Ecstasy-as a prescription pharmaceutical provide the opportunity to examine recent theorizations of pharmaceuticals as fluid objects transformed in new informational and material environments. Drawing from ethnographic research, this article interrogates MDMA researchers' own distinction...
This article addresses two concepts that are quite widespread among Latin American cultures: susto or "'fright sickness," and the "masters of the animal species" philosophy, whereby individual animal spirits are believed to be "owned" by species-specific spiritual masters. This is the first article to integrate both these aspects, drawing from ethnographic data from the Trinitario people in...
The article examines individuals' attempts to generate meaning following their experiences with psychosis. The inquiry is based on a person-centered ethnographic study of a Danish mental health community program for early intervention in schizophrenia and involves longitudinal interviews with 15 of its participants. The article takes an existential anthropological perspective emphasizing agency...
Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Linda H. Connor and Geoffrey Samuel. eds. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2001. xiii. 283 pp.Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Michael Winkelman. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2000. 336 pp.Was ist ein Schamane?/What is. Shaman? Shamans, Healers, and Medicine Men from....
Funeral customs and beliefs about the dead among the Matsigenka of Peru reflect great anxiety over the contagion of death and the power of the dead over the living. In this article, these beliefs and practices are interpreted in light of a native theory about emotion. For the Matsigenka, excessive displays of emotion, especially grief, anger, and aggressive sexuality, cause a vicious cycle of...
In this article, we elucidate how the Navajo synthetic principle sa'ah naagháí bik'eh hózh [symbol: see text] (SNBH) is understood, demonstrated, and elaborated in three different Navajo healing traditions. We conducted interviews with Navajo healers and their patients affiliated with Traditional Navajo religion, the Native American Church, and Pentecostal Christianity. Their narratives provide...
Of the three religious healing traditions that coexist within the contemporary Navajo health care system, the Native American Church (NAC) and Pentecostal Christianity are more actively involved in the treatment of alcohol and substance abuse than is Traditional Navajo healing. This article examines these two more recent healing traditions as religious responses to the contemporary Navajo...
Diagnosis plays a central, primary role in the therapeutic process across cultures. In this article, the authors examine the role of diagnosis in two Navajo religious healing traditions, the Traditional Navajo religion and the Native American Church (NAC), and examine a case study of a diagnostic encounter between an NAC diagnostician and a Traditional patient. The authors assert that, for...
Spirit possession healing in prerevolutionary China serves as an example of the more general phenomenon of possession trance. After examining universal features of this form of healing, as revealed in Chinese examples, I review social‐psychological and especially neurophysiological explanations for both trance induction and its healing effects. Questions for further investigation are suggested.
Shamanistic healing is often represented in the anthropological literature as a dyadic transactional process in which the shaman helps the patient find meaning in the face of the disordering impact of an illness. A close textual analysis of a curing session among the Aguaruna Jívaro of Peru reveals that the experience created through the ritual is markedly polyphonic rather than dyadic, the...