Learning to Navigate Hallucinations

Abstract

Abstract Hallucinatory experience is a broad spectrum, not confined to what medicine has called psychosis. An anthropological comparative approach can consequently be useful in shedding light on how we understand voices in psychosis and enriching our understanding of this phenomenon. In opposition to the Western biomedical context, among indigenous groups in the Americas, hallucinations are often sought and voluntarily produced, most frequently by the ritualized use of hallucinogenic plants. They are indeed valued in various aspects of social life as religious, divinatory, or therapeutic practices, which have been frequently described by anthropologists as ‘shamanic’. Yet how are the ‘voices’ described by users of psychiatric services similar to, and different from, those perceived by people who are using hallucinogenic substances in the context of shamanic and so-called neoshamanic practices? How do such comparisons invite us to take a fresh look at voices in psychosis, and what can they tell us about the attribution of a pathological dimension to the voice-hearing phenomenon? Comparing data collected in the Peruvian Amazon during ethnographic fieldwork with those of the Voices in Psychosis study, this chapter shows that the ability to control voices is one of the main distinguishing criteria between these two groups, and explores the implications of this difference for a better understanding and treatment of voices in psychosis.