Is the shaman schizophrenic, after all? How religious practice may change psychotic experience

About the event

Is the shaman schizophrenic, after all?

How religious practice may change psychotic experience

Dr. Tanya Luhrmann

Department of Anthropology, Stanford University

When anthropology was a young discipline, people smitten with the romance of cultural relativism argued that those who were diagnosed with schizophrenia in our society would simply be artists or shamans in another. When the biomedical model began to dominate psychiatry, it seemed clear that this romantic vision was a mistake. In recent decades, however, not only anthropologists but also psychiatrists have begun to wonder whether forms of cultural practice might alter the experience of even so profound an illness as schizophrenia in powerful ways. In this talk I present the best evidence for this possibility that I have yet encountered by examining a spirit possession practice in Ghana.

Tanya Marie Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor at Stanford University. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications. She is the author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God.

Refreshments will be served

All are welcome to attend!