Madness is the gift: the familiarisation of mental otherness through shamanism
Piotr Sobkowiak
Religion September 14, 2026 DOI: 10.1080/0048721x.2026.2731821 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Shamanism |
| Key points | Argues that Western discourse on shamanism has been shaped by a parallel inability to define schizophrenia, and that the idea of shamanism as a healed rather than ill state emerged from colonial-Western comparisons and was fully realized in the 1960s and 1970s counterculture movement, including disability studies. |
Abstract
The article addresses the sociopolitical history of mental otherness within the Western discourse on shamanism. It explores how the inability of various discourses to reveal the ‘truth’ concerning the nature of shamanism has been continuously underpinned by a parallel inability to definitively describe the nature of the mental disorder commonly referred to as schizophrenia. The analysis focuses on the gradual change of perspective regarding mental disorders that has accompanied the growing Western idea that shamanism represents not mental illness but the state of being healed from it. Emerging first as the result of comparison between colonial and Western societies, this idea reached full realisation in the 1960s and 1970s counterculture movement, to which the field of disability studies belongs.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on shamanism, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond | 2014 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Shamanism as the Original Neurotheology | 2004 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Cognitive Neuroscience, Shamanism and the Rock Art of Native California | 1998 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From Culture to Experience: Shamanism in the Pages of the Soviet Anti-Religious Press | 2020 | Historical analysis | |
| Anthropology, Shamanism, and Alternate Ways of Knowing–Being in the World: One Anthropologist's Journey of Discovery and Transformation | 2010 | Reflective essay or personal narrative |