Medical Anthropology Quarterly
December 1, 2025
Aidan Seale-Feldman
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....
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
March 1, 2021
Katherine Hendy
11 citations
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...
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
June 1, 2002
Beth A. Conklin
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....
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
June 1, 2002
Glenn H. Shepard
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...
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
September 1, 1988
Tara L. Avruskin
4 citations
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.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
June 1, 1988
Michael Fobes Brown
55 citations
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...