In Uganda, people diagnosed with spirit possession by traditional healers report more severe dissociative symptoms and more potentially traumatizing events than a matched nonpossessed group. Both psychoform and somatoform dissociation were significantly associated with these events. However, participants did not subjectively link their dissociative symptoms to past trauma, consistent with local cultural interpretations. Spirit possession may function as a culture-specific expression of dissociation related to potential traumatizing events.
The mainstreaming of psychedelic medicine, a billion-dollar industry, blends psychiatry with spiritual experience, creating new forms of secular mysticism in an age of disenchantment. Drawing on public discourse analysis, ethnographic research in a psychedelic church, a therapy training program, and science conferences, the article argues that this entanglement reveals contemporary social anxieties and yearnings. It shows how attempts to distinguish drugs, medicine, and sacraments in clinical and non-clinical spaces are not only shifting mental health care paradigms but also generating secular mystical practices.