Schizophrenia and Shamanism

I went to the British Library to read this article and it was so interesting I ended up noting the whole thing down. I have (perhaps a little cheekily) copied it up here. I haven't included references.

Schizophrenia and the origins of shamanism among the Kawtikuti Martitime cultures of northwest North America: A hypothesis
Rif S. El-Mallakch, mood disorders research programme, department of psychiatry and behavioural sciences, University of Louiseville School of Medicine.


Dear Editors

19th Century anthropological field workers investigating Siberian natives were the first to introduce the idea that the shamans of this culture were 'psychopathic' individuals, whose psychopathology contributed to their success as shamans (refs). Subsequent investigations by psychologists and psychiatrists were limited, inconclusive or negative (refs).

The concept of shamanism has been poorly defined. The term "shaman" represents a wide range of medical, religious and political healers, practitioners and leaders in various cultures world-wide (refs). Consequently the term takes its meaning only when placed in the context of both time and place.

This paper will focus on shamans in the late 19th and early 20th century maritime cultures of North West North America. These cultures were relatively intact when anthropologic workers documented their cultures in the 1800s and 1900s. The shamens of this area served primarily as communicators with the spirits. Because of their unique and valuable ability, they could, at times, heal, foretell future events, and advise in individual and community decisions (refs).

In this culture, there were two general types or levels of shaman: the family and the professional shaman (refs). The family shaman was usually a family member with several relatives and, perhaps, an extended small community. Professional shaman usually lived in larger communities and served all. It is generally believed that professional shamanism evolved from the tradition of family shaman (refs), but the origins of family shamanism are much more obscure.

1. Pacific North West Maritime Cultures
Family shamans were men or women who were indistinguishable from their peers during their early development. Would-be shamans often became evident in late adolescence and early adulthood (Refs). They would endure a period of severe psychological distress that would lead the would-be shaman to seek solitude. In the depths of their distress they would either hear or see (or both) a spirit. This experience was often their salvation. From that point on, the shaman would have special contact with 'their' spirit. Some shamans, especially those connected with very powerful spirits, would be able to communicate with more than one spirit (refs).

Because of their special relationship with their spirit, these individuals would serve as family shamans whose essential service was communication with the spirits. They were sought when a spirit with whom they could communicate was felt to be involved in an event or process (refs). Family shamans were neither primary healers nor priests.

Family shamans never charged directly for their services. However they were generally 'cared for' by their family or community. This was essential since most family shamans were inept at performing the tasks needed for survival (ref).

Professional shamans probably evolved from the family shaman tradition (refs). They served larger communities and generally received some compensation for their activities. Although a mystical experience was still a necessary start to their shamanic career, there are few other similarities to family shamans. Apprenticeship among the professional shaman was a common practice. Frequently individuals with epileptic seizures were purposely recruited (refs). There is considerable evidence that professional shamans deliberately deceived or fabricated their supernatural feats (refs).

Professional shamans generally gained more status and wielded considerably more power than the family shamans. It is thus not surprising that anthropologic field workers generally sought and studied the professional shamans (refs).

2. Synthesis
An examination of the patterns of life histories of family shaman and modern schizophrenics reveals striking similarities. The prevalence of shamans in small communities is similar to most estimates of the prevalence of schizophrenia - roughly one per 100 - 150 individuals. The boringly unremarkable childhood and dramatically tumultuous early adulthood are striking. The requisite mystical (psychotic?) experience in the setting of severe psychological distress is very reminiscent of the schizophrenic's first psychotic break. Unlike the modern schizophrenic, the would-be family shaman finds that he / she is frequently sought out and respected by others. Despite the dramatically different cultural response, the family shaman and modern schizophrenic go on to lead somewhat similar lives. Both choose to isolate themselves and keep interactions with others to a minimum, psychotic or mystical experiences continue to occur throughout most of their lives. An apparent lack of initiative, and inability to blend into the mainstream of life and its demands, makes both shaman and schizophrenic incapable of performing the functions of everyday life. Members of the respective communities must care for these individuals (refs).

3. Summary
The dramatic failure of schizophrenics to assimilate into modern western style culture creates a subtle prejudice against the illness. Consequently, there is a visceral response when the word is used. This makes objective  comparisons regarding other cultures difficult, especially when there is a heightened acceptance of cultural differences. Nonetheless, the observation that shaman of some cultures suffer from some forms of psychopathology, even when viewed in the context of their own cultures, has been made repeatedly. Unfortunately, a series of historical circumstances prevented objective examination of this hypothesis. In the late 19th and early 20th century North West North American Maritime cultures there existed two types of shamans, a fact not appreciated in previous investigations of this question (refs). It appears that one type of shaman - the family shaman - has sufficient similarities with modern schizophrenics to support the hypothesis that psychopathology may have been a force in the origin of shamanism in that culture.

Schizophrenia and Shamanism

Of course I'm not the first person to see it like this :)

I just googled it and found:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12018978

http://scandinavian.wisc.edu/dubois/Courses_folder/shamanism_readings/8_10_11/noll2.pdf

http://www.hayehwathainstitute.org/pdf/science/krippner/Perspectives.pdf

http://www.crowcity.co.uk/mad/


http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/shamanism-schizophrenia.html


http://www.1stpm.org/articles/shaman.html


http://www.jungcircle.com/roberts2.html


http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1818

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I want to be free. I want to be free to read all of this and more and keep my goats and create the path forwards.

I believe the response for me is not to go and study this and get sucked into creating more research papers. The task is to create experience and form. The school of contemporary social shamanism. The Centre for Contemporary Social Ritual. Something like that.

The task is to create it!

Not alone...

Schizophrenia and Shamanism

I'm still broiling on Henry's Demons.

He was sectioned during a rather extreme wander.

He tried to swim across the estuary in all his clothes. Of course he had all his clothes on; he'd need them on the other side. Of course he swam across. He was trying to wander keeping the most direct contact with nature possible. Feet on land, and swimming through water. One or two thousand years ago I bet it was perfectly common for young men to swim across bodies of water in all their clothes during a journey, just to get to the other side and keep going.

This is not cause to section someone. It is an indicator that they are in a deep part of what Bill Plotkin terms 'stage 4' - the wanderer, opened to a spiritual awakening, yet to find clear purpose.

Of course he felt guided by the wind. I feel guided by the wind. It is a clear conversational partner, a clear interlocutor and now that I have learnt how to read it I trust it's guidance. During a personal development course near Bristol just two weeks ago a registered therapist told me to trust the wind more.  I should strengthen my alter practice, I said. Alter practice is a widely recognised method of prayer, aka technology of discourse with the non-material aliveness - across various religions. Yeh, he had said, you could do that, but it sounds like you have already got your practices of talking with the wind and nonsense singing. Why not stick with those and deepen them?

Another thing I do is sing random nonsense until wisdom starts coming out of my mouth. When it comes it becomes firm and useful guidance.

How vastly vilely awful that he was captured and trapped and deadened. I see it like that. I feel it like that. When did this start? This is just a modern version of burning witches, killing shamans. How did we get to this?

It must change.

The problem is with the more extreme behaviour. What is that about?

I would imagine...

Wanderers without well developed survival skills can act oddly and be picked up for it. Eg Henry did not know how to deal with the cold when he got out of the water on the other side so he got back into the water for that was warmer. There he was picked up by a fisherman. I wouldn't know how to deal with that situation either but there must be a way. That's a survival skill - and, recognising this, Plotkin counsels the stage 4 wanderer to become well equipped with them so that they can find the experiences in nature that they need.

The paranoia - I don't know, I felt very paranoid when I lived in Brighton and smoked a lot of fags and drunk a lot of beer and didn't exercise or have a clear sense of purpose. Paranoia can be overcome by establishing a healthier way of life. Not by medication and imprisonment.

Is it political this treatment of our shamans and if so would we have a fight on our hands to rescue them?

The point of opportunity I see is at those very early stages before the medication and the incarceration weakens them so.

He seemed spaced out, says his mother. Well you and I would be if we were shut in a small cell and surrounded by other incarcerated now-mad people!

The response I think is to create great appropriate forms of ritual, clarify the role of the shaman, gather and nurture the great contemporary social shamans, and create a culture of practice within which the young can find path. 


I'm struck by the way that the connection between the shamanic and the schizoprenic encourages us to not bleach the magic out of ritual.

The 'schizoprenic' experience, the visions and voices, is all about the magic. And the potency is all about the magic.

By magic I mean connection with the non-material aliveness.

Henry's Demons

I've just heard extracts from Henry's Demons on Radio 4, a father and son account of living with Schizophrenia.

It strikes me as completely tragic how people with what I perceive to be emergent shamanic characteristics are treated. The system jumps upon them and tries to deaden them. It simply tries to deaden them, and the person experiencing them. And it succeeds - it succeeds in a deadening effect. It does not succeed at health or healing.

I tried to send this to Patrick Cowburn, the co-author, but he's proving hard to connect with.

Dear Patrick

I have just heard Henry's Demons on radio 4.

I would encourage Henry to read four books:

Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin

Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin

Talking with Nature/ Journey into Nature by Michael J Roads.
Shamanism: Ecstatic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade, and

I am a social researcher and I have worked for, for example, the think-tank Demos and Government departments.

For the past two years I have been contracted to research practices of collective joy, which has led me to an understanding of ritual, rites of passage, and the role of the shaman in shamanic cultures.

It is my strong belief that what Henry is experiencing is not schizophrenia but shamanic characteristics trying to come into life.

Many of the experiences he reports - following the guidance of the wind, 'hearing' messages (not with one's ears but with one's mind) from nature and so on - are perceived by many, including US psychologist Bill Plotkin and myself, to be healthy.

Moreover, the shamanic role can provide a powerful service to community wellbeing and our culture is, to my eyes, thirsty for it.

I am currently writing a book about this.

I too had a kind of 'breakdown' when I was in my first term at Brighton University. I went on to study political science at Berkeley, graduate with a first, and have a healthy life and career. I lost my dear childhood friend Charlie to schizoprenia and, later, suicide, a week after his thirtieth birthday. His death was not said to be due to a particularly bad bout of symptoms and symptom/system conflict. Rather it seemed to be a measured decision; one has expectations of how life should look by the age of thirty, and, upon reaching it, Charlie saw how his life compared to those of his old friends and decided to step aside.

Coming to understand the role and characteristics of the shaman I see these in Charlie. My friend Jo lost her brother Ed to schizophrenia and suicide and seeing videos of him, one sees again these characteristics - the deep and instinctual empathy, the instinct for music and poetry, the ability to see and voice the subtle, the connection to nature, the sense of spiritual opening to messages from the non-human world.

These are qualities that we all too easily dismiss as psychopathy and try to suppress with drugs and institutionalization, but these responses do not seem to work.

I write this to you with hope for Henry.

I am a social innovator, I have created successful social projects before and I am currently mulling about What To Do With This One. It is not yet clear but is becoming so.

I am also a singer, by the way, and I hear voices! They're what I rely on. I've sung on cheesy pop chart records but that is not the musical world in which I find utter magic; it is more in the circles of Zimbabwean Shona music, which has a totally different understanding of the spiritual world, where I hear these voices, and I follow what I hear, and what I then sing to others brings them a sense of magic. I am receiving teaching in this from Chartwell Dutiro who used to teach Ethnomusicology at Soas.

O, on that note, I would also recommend The Healing Wisdom of Africa by Dr Malidoma Some.

I wish Henry, you and your family all the very best with what I hope can become a healthy growth out of and beyond this situation.

Yours sincerely,

Briony