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PSYCHOLOGY AND SHAMANISM

It can be difficult to find a balance between traditional healing and modern medicine and this is no different in

the world of psychology and psychotherapy. Healing for mental illness has been a long battle and it is still

difficult to do more than just treat mental illnesses. Shamanism provides many insights into how we deal with

and battle mental illnesses. Psychologists have researched this and have come to many varying conclusions

about whether shamanic practices are actually beneficial. Psychology and shamanism work in separate spaces,

but also they have the potential to work hand in hand.

Psychologists have researched shamanic culture for many years because of how clearly linked it is to the mind

and cognition. In Trends in Contemporary Research on Shamanism, Thomas DuBois looks into the many

ways that shamanism has been studied over the years and how and why that is important. He mentions that,

“because shamanism as theoretically defined centers on particular altered states of consciousness, it offers a

seemingly ideal test case for the examination of the relation of spiritual experiences and brain function.

Further, because of its apparent antiquity as inductively reconstructed, shamanism has been examined as a

stage in the overall evolution of human religious consciousness” (113). This shows that shamanism is a

psychology of its own. While delving into the inner workings of the mind, and paying close attention to how

people respond to certain stimuli, shamanism has found a way to avoid the pills and medicine to assist those

with mental struggles.

Research has been done on many aspects of shamanism including the ethnography of healing, historical and

political approaches, reconstructions of shamanism, revitalizations, the rhetoric of shamanism, transcendence,

and cognition. Despite this extensive research, not all of it is done without bias. DuBois concludes by saying

that, “the role of scholars as observers, purveyors, and shapers of culture has been perceptively examined,

while the boundary between purportedly objective observers and subjective participants has been productively

problematized and blurred. In this respect, scholarly trends in the study of shamanism(s) can be seen as

symptomatic of broader shifts in the study of religion as a whole” (117). This is a beneficial insight as it

shows that over the years the study of shamanism has only grown and evolved. Studying religion in general is

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