Paper short abstract:

This paper traces the metamorphosis of an individual from ‘one among the many individuals’ within the space of a shared community to ‘the healer’ (mata/pita) of a community. The metamorphosis is not merely in terms of the changes in the role and responsibilities but also in terms of the space inhabited (the house and the temple) by the individual undergoing this metamorphosis.

Paper long abstract:

The cult of spirit possession and the spirit possessed healers referred to as matas/pitas are found among the Nepali community of Darjeeling, India. Possession by a spirit or a god/goddess is not viewed as an abnormal phenomenon against the background of the Nepali culture in which they appear but may however be a-normal at the individual and family level by the standards of everyday life. The healer practices healing within spaces of his temple where they are sought by the sufferers undergoing interpersonal crisis or disruption in the balanced relationship between person and nature or the person and supernatural which is manifested in the form of physical and emotional symptoms. The healer using his healing techniques involving offering tika, divination (jokhana hernu), examining the pattern of rice (acheta) or beads (mala), brushing (jharnu) to remove evil influences or blowing mantras (phuknu) tries to understand the cause of the illness and suggest remedies.

The healer here is constantly performing a dual role - one as an individual belonging to the shared space of a community and the other as the healer within his/her healing space. It is the space that he/she inhabits which determines his/her role in the society.

This paper is an attempt to trace this metamorphosis of a healer in terms of the healing space and the shared space outside his/her healing room that she inhabits.

Paper short abstract:

Possession and sorcery are officially excluded from reinvented ayurvedic psychiatry while in practice doctors often bridge the gap between mental disorder and vernacular framings of mental illness as possession or sorcery. This paper traces the double engagement of ayurvedic psychiatry with biopsychiatric and vernacular explanatory models.

Paper long abstract:

The positioning of institutionalized and academically taught ayurvedic psychiatry in Kerala between hegemonic biopsychiatry and ritual practices of treating mental illness is a process of constant negotiation. Ayurvedic psychiatry engages the hegemonic biopsychiatric discourse on mental disorders: Globally circulating disease entities like depression are translated into ayurvedic concepts whereby biopsychiatry's power of definition is maintained as well as contested. Ayurvedic research work aims to prove the effectiveness of ayurvedic procedures and herbs and to develop Ayurveda into an evidence-based medicine based on placebo-controlled clinical trials. All "non-scientific" etiologies and treatment practices related to spirit affliction and sorcery which have long been part of bhut vidya, a branch of ayurveda now translated as psychiatry, are marginalized or reinterpreted along biopsychiatric and psychological ideas. But sorcery and possession persist to play a role in many patients' explanatory models and their interpretation of the ayurvedic practices like induced vomiting or fumigation as well as for some traditional families and singular practitioners who combine ayurvedic and ritual healing. So despite all efforts to present ayurvedic psychiatry in a scientific garb, in practice ayurvedic psychiatrists often navigate between scientific and vernacular understandings of mental illness and of the effectiveness of therapeutic measures.

Drawing on fieldwork in two ayurvedic psychiatric institutions in the town of Kottakkal and one private clinic in Ankamally from 2009 to 2010, this paper traces how ayurvedic psychiatrists engage in the scientification of ayurvedic psychiatry, while in practice they often try to bridge the gap between mental disorder and vernacular framings of mental illness as possession or sorcery.

Paper short abstract:

Scientific medicine and modern Hinduism tend to contest possession and healing as irrational. This paper discusses practical transformations and rationalisations of controlling occult madness in the context of the Swaminarayan panth in Gujarat.

Paper long abstract:

Mental illness and possession provide foci of contention in current discourses of modernity and tradition in regard to both religion and psychiatry in contemporary India. Based on fieldwork, this paper examines how the "reformed Hinduism" of the Swaminarayan panth includes the rationalization of the expulsion of ghosts and spirits causing behavioral and emotional trouble in people by possessing them. It looks at the ritual procedures of healing practiced in the name of Hanuman Kastbhanjan at a Swaminarayan monastery and pilgrimage place attracting "patients" from the region as well as from the global Gujarati diaspora. By providing a ritual-bureaucratic frame of order resembling a modern clinic, it will be argued, the religious site allows for "heteroglossialising" a code of mental suffering/madness whereby the dichotomous opposition between psychiatry and faith healing becomes decentered and transcended.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at understanding the explanatory models of mental illness among British Asian families the UK and the role that culture and ethnicity play in seeking medical help. It draws on ethnographic interviews conducted in the inner city areas of Birmingham

Paper long abstract:

Anthropological literature on mental illness speaks about the role of explanatory models of distress and well being as being key in determining help seeking, but more generally in understanding issues of compliance and non-compliance and disengagement with services. Using such perspectives, in relation to ethnicity and culture was the focus of larger study from which this paper is derived. It draws on ethnographic evidence from the qualitative narratives collected for the larger study.

While services claim that ethnic minorities have cultural explanations of mental illness and hence don't seek help, our narratives show how these explanations in many cases are competing and contrasting and hence, no one model can explain the complex interplay between culture, illness explanations and help seeking. Ambiguity, both in relation to explanations of mental illness and cultural understandings of mental illness was identified as a key finding, however, religion, culture and cultural rituals were central to the stories of relief that patients and their carers told. This paper, unpacks these contradictions and taps into the dynamic healing practices that the South Asian diasporic communities engage in.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I report on my planned research on transcultural possession, focusing on possession amongst South Asian immigrants in the UK.

Paper long abstract:

Little research has been done on "transcultural possession" -- that is, on cases where immigrants display possession or possession-like behavior in a context where it is pathologized and stigmatized. And yet such phenomena (which presumably are not uncommon) can tell us a great deal about how identities, ontologies, and subjec-tivities change (or do not) as a consequence of migration. In this paper, I present my plans for forthcoming research on jinn-possession amongst Bangladeshi immigrants in the UK. How does the stigmatization of such beliefs and practices, paralleled by growing Islamophobia among Europeans and the demise of multi-culturalism, shape modern subjectivities, not only of South Asian migrants in Europe, but also of their indigenous European "hosts", and how can such research best be carried out?

Paper short abstract:

Does South Asia have a recognizable history of similarly construed expectations of ritual efficacy with respect to possession and healing practice? This will be addressed utilizing classical and pre-modern (largely Sanskrit) texts, and compare these findings with what we see in modern India.

Paper long abstract:

What is known from classical healing ritual in South Asia, particularly with respect to possession, and what is expected from it? From our reading of explicitly medical and generally non-medical texts, what is at variance with the knowledge and expectations of an individual undergoing healing ritual in modern India, and can we read a discernible history into it? Most of the medical and anthropological literature today pays little (if any) regard to the possibility of such a history. What I hope to do is contextualize present-day experience by examining it in relation to descriptions found inclassical Indian medical texts, the great Indian epic (Mahābhārata), and pre-modern (15th-tth c.) texts on yoga and medicine, the latter of which present a somewhat different perspective from what is found in earlier periods. This is not to argue that these texts influenced popular perceptions or notions of ritual healing except in a secondary or tertiary manner; I am not attempting to construct a top-down argument. But I would like to inquire into the expectation of ritual efficacy as a cultural phenomenon with deep roots.

Paper short abstract:

Based on research conducted in Kerala, this paper attempts to explain the effectiveness of ritual healing of possession and psychopathology and its relevance for WHO studies of serious mental disorder

Paper long abstract:

Psychiatry and anthropology have not yet come to terms with findings by the WHO of a better recovery rate for serious mental illnesses in "developing" countries. India was an important site in these studies, and fieldwork conducted in Kerala on biomedical, ayurvedic and religious treatments for psychopathology indicates that while religious healing may not fully explain the developing country "advantage" in recovery, many patients suffering possession or psychopathology do benefit from this form of therapy.

The paper will outline the types of possession encountered, distinguishing between benign, empowering forms of possession that are sought out by mediums who provide healing services at temples and more adverse forms of possession that are experienced as afflictions or pathologies. Drawing from interviews with and observations of possessed individuals and their family members, this paper will also examine the modes of onset and phenomenological changes people encounter in undergoing possession experiences and consider the reasons these healing rituals may be effective. The engagement of the senses in healing and the location of the controlling agent of the suffering outside of the person are proposed as factors that contribute to this effectiveness.

Paper short abstract:

Questions about the ‘efficacy’ and ‘functions’ of healing need to be understood from a critical perspective. This paper draws on ethnographic research on possession and healing in Mahanubhav temples in Maharashtra to discuss issues in the theorization of ritual healing.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on my doctoral research on spirit possession and ritual healing in the Mahanubhav sect in Maharashtra, India. The Mahanubhav sect has a long association with spirit possession and healing due to a tradition of providing temporary residence to people suffering from spirit-related afflictions. Persons possessed by ghosts stay in the temples for a specified duration and experience trance during the worship sessions. The trance is seen as crucial in drawing out the illness from the person, thereby moving the person towards healing.

In this paper, I question certain taken-for-granted assumptions about healing. Much of the research on ritual healing has been guided by attempts to understand how healing works, and what factors constitute the efficacy of healing. At the same time, I argue that such questions about the 'functions' and 'efficacy' of healing draw from a conceptualization of healing as effecting 'cure' through universal processes and mechanisms. Rather than studying healing in terms of abstract universal processes and functions, I focus on the articulation of healing in specific cultural contexts. Drawing on extensive ethnographic research in three Mahanubhav temples, I present the narratives of healing articulated by persons experiencing possession and monks in the temples. These temple narratives and discourses of healing suggest a conceptualization of healing that questions biomedical notions about cure and efficacy. I discuss these findings, which have important implications for the theorization of possession and healing in psychological and anthropological theory.

Paper short abstract:

The research paper will explore the relationship between ritual healing and spiritual transformation. Spiritual transformation plays a key role in ritual healing. The healer's actions work with empathy and impact upon relationships. This process may include medical therapy and psychotherapy .

Paper long abstract:

The research paper will focus upon the model of transcultural psychiatry which is also one of the effective means of spiritual healing. The paper aims at exploring the relationship between the spiritual transformations of the patient and healing within the perspective of empathy and "radical therapy". A religious and scientific perspective is involved in spiritual transformation. Spirit transformation is a universal potential of human life and a central element in the actions and interactions of the healing process. The ritual healings process is directed at the core components of spritual transformation, social relatedness and empathy. The spiritual transformation plays a key role in ritual healing of healers according to empathy and the relationship with the patient. The sufferer undergoes a different type of experience as the healer makes a link between past and present conditions of the patient. There are different ways and means of psychotherapy that the healer applies throughout the different stages of healing. This involves transcultural psychotherapy, medical treatment and religion. This process has the far-reaching implications and positive effects in getting the desired results .