Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
Christopher Timmermann, Rosalind Watts, David Dupuis
112 citations
Psychedelics can make experiences feel profoundly true and meaningful, effects that may outlast the drug. This double-edged sword can drive therapeutic benefits but also risks validating false beliefs, worldviews, or memories, potentially causing harm like false memory syndrome. As psychedelic therapy goes mainstream with strong commercial interests, these ethical challenges grow. Using examples from therapy, neo-shamanic, and research settings, the authors argue that current preparation and integration methods are insufficient. They propose a pragmatic framework centered on 'psychedelic apprenticeship,' which emphasizes validation through empathic resonance by an experienced guide or therapist, embedding the experience in historical and cultural context, and recognizing its intersubjective nature.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
David Dupuis
95 citations
The effects of psychedelic substances depend heavily on context. While anthropologists have favored a culturalist approach to hallucinations, how social context structures the features of visual and auditory imagery has been little explored. Using ethnographic data from a shamanic center in the Peruvian Amazon and an anthropological approach that dialogues with phenomenology and Bayesian-inspired models of social cognition, the author argues for a "socialization of hallucinations." Two levels of this socialization are distinguished: cultural background and social interactions organize not only the relationship to the hallucinogenic experience but also its very phenomenological content.
Transcultural psychiatry
June 1, 2005
Marjolein Van Duijl, Etzel Cardeña, Joop T V M De Jong
62 citations
Dissociative amnesia and depersonalization are recognized in Uganda as results of trauma and are useful categories, but dissociative fugue does not match local concepts and is confused with spirit possession, alcoholic fugues, or dementia. Dissociative identity disorder is consistently interpreted as a possession trance disorder by local healers. The DSM-IV classification of dissociative disorders receives only partial support for cross-cultural validity in Uganda.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
Phoebe Friesen
52 citations
In the mid-20th century, psychedelics and psychosis were studied together, with psychedelics used to model psychosis and phenomenological comparisons made between drug-induced and endogenous madness. After the 1960s moral panic halted psychedelic research, the two fields diverged. Today, psychedelic research measures experiences like mysticism and ego dissolution, values set and setting, and responds to crises with warmth and support. In contrast, psychosis research focuses on pathological symptoms, seeks universal causal explanations, and often responds with restraint and seclusion. The author argues these differences hold lessons for psychiatry but may dissolve as psychedelic research adapts to evidence-based medicine.
Transcultural psychiatry
December 1, 2020
Boon-Ooi Lee, Laurence J. Kirmayer
41 citations
In dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese spirit mediumship in Singapore, a deity possesses a human medium to help clients feel hopeful and supported. Many mediums suffer personal conflicts before becoming possessed; they express and transform their distress through possession. Deities embody Chinese cultural traits and moral values, allowing the medium to embody an ideal self and gain spiritual knowledge through cleansing, self-mortification, and altered consciousness. Junior deities also train under senior deities to help clients. Practitioners, clients, and possessing deities are transformed in parallel, reciprocal ways that differ from Western individualistic psychotherapy, highlighting links between healing, cultural beliefs, and concepts of personhood.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2013
Ria Reis
37 citations
Children in parts of Africa use idioms of spirit possession and witchcraft to express and cope with social crises and traumatic stress. In Northern Uganda, haunting spirits allow children to articulate complex feelings about their precarious family and community situations. While local symbolic healing practices can help, obstacles such as generational gaps reduce their effectiveness. Witchcraft idioms sometimes heal the group but harm the accused child. These idioms reflect how children navigate the moral universe of postconflict communities, though they may also increase anxiety. Urgent interdisciplinary research is needed on the microprocesses leading to children being haunted or accused, including emotional and physiological effects.
Transcultural psychiatry
April 1, 2017
Maurice Eisenbruch
32 citations
Mass fainting among garment factory workers in Cambodia is often rooted in cultural beliefs about spirits and historical trauma. An ethnographic study conducted from 2010 to 2015 across 48 factories found that episodes occurred at 34 factories, with 9 triggered by spirit possession. Workers and others attributed fainting to ill-health, toxins, and supernatural causes, including ghosts connected to Khmer Rouge atrocities or fatal accidents, and retaliating guardian spirits angered by foreign ownership. Prefigurative dreams, accidents, or a coworker's possession preceded episodes; witnessing a coworker faint caused fear and fainting in others. Monks performed rituals to appease spirits and prevent recurrence, revealing how cultural motifs of fear, protest, and historical legacy make the phenomenon understandable.
Transcultural psychiatry
September 1, 2010
Simon Dein
30 citations
The article explores links between Judeo-Christian religious experience and psychopathology, drawing on William James's Varieties of Religious Experience, particularly his concepts of self, agency, and the subliminal. It discusses contemporary research on Christian conversion, mysticism, and their connections to psychosis, mental health, and healing. The author proposes future research directions.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
Genís Ona, Ali Berrada, José Carlos Bouso
28 citations
The Global Mental Health movement seeks to expand mental health treatment in low- and middle-income countries, but debates persist about how best to serve diverse cultures. Beyond biomedical interventions, complementary approaches should emphasize social and community aspects. Many cultures have traditional rituals involving communal use of psychoactive plants, which should be respected and promoted as valuable tools for community-level mental health care. These practices foster community engagement, are relatively affordable, and respect local worldviews. Their medical systems can be explained biomedically, and recent clinical trials show therapeutic potential. Psychoactive plants and associated rituals offer benefits as complementary mental health services.
Transcultural psychiatry
April 1, 2018
Marco Aurélio Vinhosa Bastos, Paulo Roberto Haidamus de Oliveira Bastos, Igraíne Helena Scholz Osório et al.
12 citations
Female spiritist mediums who regularly engage in spirit possession showed mild, short-lived physiological arousal during possession experiences, while nonmedium participants from the same religious context showed relaxation. Compared to controls, mediums had increased heart rate and higher plasma levels of noradrenaline, thyroid-stimulating hormone, prolactin, and creatine phosphokinase during possession. These changes returned to baseline within one hour, with no lasting difference in cardiac autonomic regulation. No group differences were found in melatonin levels. The findings suggest that nonpathological dissociation, unlike pathological dissociation, may involve cognitive control processes and produce only transient physiological changes.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2022
Gabriella Gobbi, Antonio Inserra, Kyle T Greenway et al.
9 citations
Psychedelics have been used by human societies for over 3000 years, primarily in religious and healing contexts. Recent research shows promising clinical benefits for some psychiatric disorders, but applying these consciousness-altering substances outside their traditional sociocultural settings raises concerns. The therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics depend not only on neurobiology but also on psychological, social, and spiritual processes. Therefore, physicians and psychotherapists need training to guide patients through the experience, promoting positive outcomes and addressing side effects. Psychedelic therapies may lead to a new psychiatric paradigm integrating psychopharmacological, psychotherapeutic, and cultural interventions.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2019
Justina Kaselionyte, Andrew Gumley
6 citations
Extreme mental states during meditation are framed in two contrasting ways in scientific case reports: as psychiatric symptoms or as spiritual emergencies. A discourse analysis of 22 case studies reveals a divide between biomedical and alternative framings, each offering distinct therapeutic approaches. Some authors blended both perspectives. The findings encourage collaboration between clinicians, therapists, and spiritual teachers to provide a range of supportive options for those experiencing such states.
Transcultural psychiatry
July 1, 2010
Mary V Seeman
5 citations
A 19-year-old university student in Toronto was hospitalized with drug-induced psychosis after attending raves and using Ecstasy. Standard psychiatric treatment failed, but transfer to a facility that allowed a traditional Filipino healing ceremony led to recovery with no relapse after 10 years. The healing session mirrored the sensory and communal elements the young woman sought at raves, but unlike raves, which caused family conflict and illness, the ceremony was family-sanctioned and curative.
Transcultural psychiatry
February 1, 2025
Marucela Uscamayta Ayvar, Rodolfo Sanchez Garrafa, Javier I Escobar et al.
3 citations
A case of non-affective psychosis was treated first by traditional Inka healers and later by Western-trained psychiatrists. The traditional Inka psychopathological framework offered empirical support for the cross-cultural stability of the Kraepelinian dichotomy, suggesting that the distinction between affective and non-affective psychoses holds across different cultural contexts.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2023
Tawni L Tidwell, Heidi E Fjeld
3 citations
In Tibetan medicine, the category of dön (spirit affliction) offers a framework where physical and mental aspects are inseparable in illness, contrasting with biomedical views that often classify spirit possession as psychiatric. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in eastern Tibet, two case studies illustrate opposite ends of the dön spectrum: one resembling stroke and another similar to schizophrenia. Harmful external influences cause both physiological and psychological symptoms, contributing to a shared pathogenesis. The analysis highlights how cultural affordances and bio-looping shape the presentation of these conditions, and how Tibetan medicine integrates cultural, social, biological, and psychological factors. This challenges biomedical paradigms by providing cultural models for diagnosing and treating chronic inflammatory conditions with mental health components.
Transcultural psychiatry
December 1, 2020
Susan Smith
2 citations
The U.S. military has explored lucid dreaming as an alternative therapy to help soldiers cope with PTSD. This article examines how the popular science fiction films Avatar and Inception have been discussed in the media as illustrations of using lucid dreaming and virtual worlds to heal soldiers' minds affected by modern warfare. The author argues that these media portrayals merge psychology and science fiction to promote fantasies of the endlessly salvageable and invincible American soldier, raising concerns about effective rehabilitation and the cost of veteran care.
Transcultural psychiatry
December 1, 2020
David Freis
2 citations
Fischl Schneersohn, a descendant of a Chabad dynasty, developed a 'science of man' that blended Chassidic mysticism with modern psychology into a unique psychotherapeutic approach. His upbringing in the Chabad movement and experiences across Russia, Germany, Poland, the United States, and Palestine shaped his work. Schneersohn's main text, Studies in Psycho-Expedition, universalized and secularized Kabbalistic elements, centering on a universal human need for spiritual ecstasy to treat mental disorders, neuroses, and nervousness. The article argues that this forgotten approach illuminates historical connections between religion and the psy-disciplines and informs debates on spirituality's role in psychotherapy.
Transcultural psychiatry
October 1, 2016
Ayesha Ahmad, Simon Dein
2 citations
In multicultural societies like the United Kingdom, people hold diverse beliefs and norms, yet all must follow standard legal requirements. This paper examines how culture affects criminal responsibility, using a recent UK case where an individual committed a crime during alleged spirit possession. The authors suggest that a cultural defense can help contextualize such actions, improving understanding of the individual's relationship to society and aiding justice in a multicultural setting.
Transcultural psychiatry
April 1, 2016
Khashayar Beigi
2 citations
After the USSR collapsed, new migration patterns between Russia and Central Asia changed how Muslims relate to one another. The concept of ibra, an Islamic pedagogical practice of learning from worldly events, helps explain this shift. Analyzing a spirit possession session of a Tajik migrant in Russia, the author argues that collective participation in the ritual turns the trauma of Tajikistan's civil war and ongoing terror into a cipher for learning and a desire to draw closer to the divine. The session pedagogically invokes and extends post-Soviet historical experience as an exemplary passage, showing how migrants recognize each other as fellow Muslims in a theological geography formed on the ruins of Soviet universal comradeship.
Transcultural psychiatry
August 1, 2023
Jared R Lindahl, Roman Palitsky, David J Cooper et al.
Worldviews can both increase the risk of meditation-related challenges and serve as a remedy for them, depending on the individual. Buddhist practitioners and teachers in the contemporary West navigate both religious and scientific explanatory frameworks, a context shaped by "Buddhist modernism" which presents Buddhism as compatible with science. Interview data from the Varieties of Contemplative Experience project show that for some, having, applying, or changing a worldview helped mitigate challenging experiences or distress, while for others, worldviews acted as a risk factor influencing the onset and course of difficulties.