Shamanism A Psychosocial Definition

American Academy of Religion
Shamanism: A Psychosocial Definition Author(s): Amanda Porterfield Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 721739 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1464682 . Accessed: 29/11/2013 20:17
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Journal of the American Academy of Religion. LV/4
SHAMANISM: A PSYCHOSOCIALDEFINITION
AMANDA PORTERFIELD
As a religious phenomenon that predates Christianity,shamanism is of special interest to persons concerned with the history and variety of world religions. For students of Native American religions, the anthropologist Ruth Underhill found that, "In some form or other, the shaman existed in almost every Native American tribe" (104). But despite the importance of the term, no definition of it takes full account of the impact of shamans on the social and psychological lives of their people. Reigning definitions focus on otherworldly or transcendental aspects and thus avoid analyzing shamanism as a psychosocial production that both reflects and shapes the world of the shaman'spatrons. Moreover, by depicting shamanismas an ideal form of religious expression, most definitions celebrate its liberating and therapeutic effects but overlook its destructive capacities and its role as an enforcer of social conformity. The concern to defend the sacred and to protect human response to the sacred from thoroughgoing investigation blocks analysis of an important phenomenon in religion. Mircea Eliade advanced the definition of shamanism that is most commanding in present scholarship, especially among writers in religion studies. Eliade defined shamanism as a technique for attaining ecstasy that enabled persons to come into contact with the sacred order of the cosmos.' He celebrated the shaman as the truly religious man and interpreted the shaman's ecstatic experiences of ascension and flight, dismemberment, and identification with the axis mundi as a paragon of religious knowledge. This obvious idealization grounds Eliade's well-known theory of religious devolution. The theory holds that shamanismenabled members of the primitive cultures of Europe, Asia, and North America to live attuned to the timeless, sacred order of the cosmos. With the rise of historicalreligions devoted to temporal
Amanda Porterfieldis Associate Professorof Religion at SyracuseUniversity, Syracuse, NY 13244-1170. 1 Eliade defines the shaman as "the great master of ecstasy. A first definition of this complex phenomenon, and perhaps the least hazardous, will be: shamanism = technique of ecstasy" (1964: 4).
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change and improvement, this sacred order became more distant and less accessible (1959:141-62; 1968:92-113).2 To be fair to Eliade, I should add that he describes the eternal patterns presupposed by mythical thinking as a means of coping with the pain of temporal existence. In Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, he even declares mythical thinking to be a form of escapism (36-7). But Eliade's bow to the primacy of historicalreality is overshadowed by his religious belief that myth is the most valuable dimension of human thought, the solution to the otherwise meaningless flow of temporal existence, and the transcendental realm where different cultures converge and all persons find their depth as human beings. Only two pages after acknowledging the escapist and defensive nature of mythical thinking, Eliade asserts that "It is not enough . .. to discover and admire the art of Negroes or Pacific Islanders: we have now to rediscover the spiritual sources of these arts in ourselves" (38). Similarlyin Myth and Reality he writes that through the technique of "amanesis" offered by his approach to primitive religions, modern "man enters deep into himself" (136). Eliade avoids analysisof the historicalparticularity and psychosocial functions of primitive religions by exploiting them as aids to modern spirituality and self-knowledge. The contending definition of shamanismadvanced by the Swedish scholar Ake Hultkrantz avoids Eliade's theory of religious devolution but not Eliade's retreat from analysis of the psychosocial functions of shamanism. For Hultkrantz, "The central idea of shamanism is to establish means of contact with the supernaturalworld by the ecstatic experience of a professonal and inspired intermediary, the shaman" (1978:11).3 Thus Hultkrantz builds a theological claim about the existence of a supernatural world into his definition of shamanism. As a result of his conviction that this supernaturalworld is beyond rational comprehension and that shamanic spirits are therefore inexplicable and essentially untranslatable, Hultkrantz's Conceptions of the Soul
2 In Myth and Reality Eliade suggests that when " 'Ontology'gives place to 'History,'" as it did in anti-gnostic forms of Judaism,Zoroastrianism, Islam, and Christianity,religious symbolsbecome intellectualized and less immediately experiential(1968: 92-113). 3 Although as a phenomenologist, Hultkrantz is careful to describe the supernatural only in terms of the particularfaiths of the people he studies, he also believes "that the supernaturalis the key concept of religion" and that all definitionsand analyses of religion should revolve around its presumed existence (1983: 231). For Hultkrantz,supernaturalpowers have an obdurate factualitythat precludes translation,and he builds this factuality into his definition of shamanism. For Hultkrantz,contact with supernatural reality is the purpose of all religious activity: "We . . . cannot do better than define he writes. "Religionis ... faith in the existreligion in the context of the supernatural," ence of a supernaturalworld, a faith that is primarilyrealized in religious conceptions of various kinds and concretely visualized rites, ritual observations,and epic traditions" (1983: 253).
Porterfield: Shamanism
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among North American Indians simply categorizes those conceptions without subjecting them to critical investigation. Similarly, his study of the Orpheus myth in North America identifies a type of shamanic tale and its common themes without analyzing the psychosocial contexts in which the tale occurs (1953, 1957). As is the case with Eliade, Hultkrantz's assumption that a plane of spiritual reality exists beyond ordinary awareness leads him to overlook the psychosocial conditions that give rise to shamanism. Conversely, his avoidance of those conditions helps him preserve belief in the independent existence of that realm of spiritual power.4 Other definitions take account of the psychological nature of shamanism but confuse analysis with appreciation and thereby short-circuit discussionof the variabilityof shamanism'seffects. The definitions advanced by Andreas Lommel and John Grim illustrate this problem. Lommel employs psychoanalytic theory to define the shaman as a recovering psychotic whose artistic productions are therapeutic expressions of his emotional pain. But while Lommel's appreciation enables him to penetrate the therapeutic aspects of the shaman'sown experience, it also leads him to overlook the social referents of the shaman's symbols and the social context in which the shaman presents those symbols. While shamanic rituals are indeed psychological events, they are also interpersonal ones that engage the shaman'scommunity and perpetuate the symbols that confirm its social structures. By stressing the individualism and interiority of shamanic performance rather than its social referents and functions, Lommel overlooks both the harmful effects that shamans sometimes have on their communities and their function as enforcers of social conformity. For example, Inuit shamans often scapegoated and saw to the punishment of particularmembers of their bands whom they accused of causing a scarcity of animals, or of bringing weather that prevented hunting. In
4 Hultkrantz'sphenomenological assumptionthat the supernaturalshould not be analyzed in terms other than those used by its spokespersonsdiffers from Eliade's more franklyreligious assumptionthat ecstatic encounters with the sacred can be understood in universal terms. But beneath his phenomenological objectivity, Hultkrantz makes the Protestant distinction between natural and supernaturalreality and the corollary assumptionthat supernaturalreality is a transcendentrealm beyond human comprehension (1983: 237-43). Eliade, on the other hand, takes the more gnostic view that the sacred is a transcendentalrealm that can and has been known. Despite this important difference, Hultkrantzand Eliade are profoundlysimilarinsofaras they build their definitions of shamanismand religion on the premise of an ultimate spiritualreality beyond ordinary awareness. Hultkrantzinsists that the shaman communicateswith supernatural forces but declines to define them in terms that penetrate their mystery. Assent to Eliade's system of interpretation requires acceptance of the existence of a universal plane of reality. Both definitionsvalorize shamanismbut leave it incomprehensible.
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his celebration of the artistic productions of Inuit shamans, Lommel neglects to mention their victims. John Grim, on the other hand, acknowledges the social context of the shaman's psychological powers by pointing to the relationship between the effectiveness of Siberian and Ojibway shamans and their ability to repeat the cosmological symbols that define their cultures and to embody the ethos of individual aggressiveness that is economically significant to their people. Furthermore, Grim offers the psychological insight that the shaman'shypnotic drumming and chanting and impressive feats of magic establish a "therapeutic field" that functions to "ease the patient and promote a curative atmosphere" (109). But Grim aborts the psychosocial analysishe begins by endorsing the symbols he proposes for analysis. He devotes more than a chapter to what he calls a "sociology of shamanism"(54), but what he means by that phrase is discussionof "the manner in which the shaman is sanctioned among the Ojibway"(93) rather than analysisof the shaman'ssociological functions. By sanction, Grim means approval, and his purpose is to show that tribal approval of a shaman "comes as a result of his contact with manitou power" (113, 112). Grim employs the term manitou as shamanic patrons do, as the spiritual power shamans have that sanctions their approval. By confirming shamanic power in this circular manner, Grim attempts to extend the sanction of shamanism to academic readers. But in skirting discussion of the nature and function of shamanic power, he undermines his sociological investigation. Grim also promises "an anthropological perspective on shamanism" (54), but his primary goal of giving religious value to shamanism confines the anthropological investigation to a demonstration of the similarity between the shaman's initiation experience and his subsequent performances. Grim uses the term anthropology more in the theological sense of the human side of spiritual power than in the social scientific sense of the study of peoples and cultures. Similarly,in presenting a "psychological perspective" on shamanism Grim shifts the focus of discussion away from the historical context and effects of the shaman's psychological experience to the universal significance of shamanic trance as a process of spiritual transformationand communication(166-7). Although Grim characterizes his approach as an antidote to the "reductionistic"secularism of ethnology, it is functionally more reductionistic than the social science it aims to supplant. Investing shamanismwith religious sanction and incorporating "the mystery of power" within the definition of shamanism undermines its investigation (25). The investigation of shamanismrequires examination of its effects. Such examination is precisely what the studies of shamanism offered
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by Eliade and Hultkrantz avoid. Even Lommel and Grim, who celebrate the therapeutic effects of shamanism, do not take account of its equally harmful effects or its function as an enforcer of social conformity. All of these scholars undermine examination of the nature and variability of shamanism'seffects by endorsing its religious claims.5 In contrast, Clifford Geertz directs attention to the historical effects of particularreligious symbols. He sees religious symbols not as representations of universal truths but as representations of social and psychological systems that stabilize or alter the functioning of those systems. In The Interpretation of Cultures, Geertz states that he is interested in "the particularityof the impact of religious systems upon social (and personality) systems" (122). But unfortunately, Geertz's hostility to typological categories discourages investigation of the common patterns of psychological and social reality that characterize shamanic performances and shamanic communities. Geertz defines shamanism as one of those "dessicated types" and "insipid categories by means of which ethnographers of religion devitalize their data" (1973:122). As this disapproval indicates, Geertz is not interested in typological categories that help students of religion make cross-cultural comparisons,but only in religious activities in their local context.6 To enable comparative analyses of shamanism,an adequate definition must identify the general relationship between the symbols that comprise shamanism and their psychosocial context. This relationship is one of conflict resolution. We can define shamanism as a symbolic means of addressingpsychological and social conflict because shamanic performances always aim to control or remedy specific problems or bring about a transformation of reality that improves upon existing conditions. The emotionally compelling aspect of shamanism is its dramatization of the distress experienced by the shaman's patrons. Through these dramatizations,shamans can direct the feelings of their patrons and often resolve social tension. Like all religious symbols,
5 Anthropological studies of particular cultures sometimes carry analysis of the psychosocialreferents and functions of shamanism(Kluckhohn;Goldman;Walens). But while such studies offer fine illustrationsof shamanism,they are often emphatically circumscribedand without explicit comparativedimension or discussionof shamanismas a widespread type of religious activity. Victor Turner's work on the Ndembu and Anthony F.C. Wallace'swork on the Seneca are notable exceptions. 6 Although Geertz himself has engaged in comparativework of a certain kind, in which he discussessimilaritiesand differencesbetween specific characteristicsof particularcultures (1968, 1976), he eschews cross-culturalcomparisonsbased on formal, analogical similarities. But as Fitz John Porter Poole has recently pointed out, the distinction implicitly drawn by Geertz between specific and formal comparisonoverlooks the fact that formal,analogicalconstructionsare inevitably embedded in any comparisonof specific culturaltraits. From Poole'sperspective, typologicalcomparisonis a ubiquitousand often valid means of interpreting religion (419-20).
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shamanic ones are open to various kinds of interpretation and refer simultaneouslyto different levels of experience (Turner;Bynum). Also like other religious symbols, shamanic ones are not completely translatable; they are densely suggestive phenomena that "give rise to thought" (Ricoeur). But such thoughts are never completely divorced from the problems that bring them to mind. The shaman helps his patrons appreciate symbols that address, interpret, and contribute to the resolution of their most pressing problems and conflicts. How? By manifesting in his own body symbols that represent the resolution of problems besetting his patrons. The shaman's own body is the locus of symbol production and this aspect of shamanism distinguishes it from other types of religious activity that symbolically address psychological and social problems, such as prophecy and priestly activity. Second, shamans help their patrons resolve conflict by organizing their feelings. This social aspect of shamanism is especially important in light of Eliade's influential work, which defines shamanism in terms of interior states of ecstasy attained by individual adepts and ignores the importance of audience response. Finally, shamans resolve conflict by personifying spirits that symbolize the psychological tensions and social patterns that their patrons experience but have no conscious control over. The theory that shamanic spirits are unconscious projections of human feeling explains their compelling power as transcendent or transcendental theories do not. Let me elaborate. In his study of magic and witchcraft among the Azande of Africa, Evans-Pritchardmade the point that the shaman's body is centrally involved in his production of symbols: "A witch-doctor does not only divine with his lips, but with his whole body. He dances the questions that are put to him" (1976). Similarly in North America and elsewhere, the shaman'sbody, behavior, costume, and props are as much a part of his dramatic text as the content of his prayers and chants. To interpret shamanism adequately, the concept of symbolic text must include more than words. Shamanic texts are best described as dramatic dances. The inseparabilityof act and text finds support in recent scholarly arguments that performance is essential to Native American story-telling and prayer; information is communicated that is not in the words themselves. Indeed, even the most meticulous transcription of a spoken text may not convey the point of the story (Hymes). In non-literate cultures religion is always a performing art, and the sacredness of religious stories or prayers resides not in the words of the texts as they have been or could be transcribed but in the power invested in them through performance (Gill, 1979, 1981, 1982).
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These arguments apply equally to shamanic performance. Here, too, the sacredness and power of religious symbols reside in their performance. But while the primary symbols of stories and prayers are spoken words, the primary symbols of shamanic texts are the visible movements of the human body. Stories about shamans are essential to the meaning and background of the performance, and spoken words in the form of songs and prayers are often an important part of the performance itself, but the visible movements of the shaman's body comprise the foreground of the text. This primacy of the body not only distinguishesshamanismfrom other forms of religious activity but also helps identify the shamanic element in story-telling and prayer ceremonies. For example, in the Navajo prayer ceremonies Gill describes, there is a shamanic element in the attention paid to the bodies of the singer and the one-who-is-sung-over. The ceremonies involve the production of sand paintings that represent aspects of Navajo mythology and the concurrent production of gestures that link the mythology and the painting with the suffering of the patient who is sung-over. The ritual is shamanic insofar as it centers on the body of the singer as he makes the painting and insofar as it centers on the body of the one-who-is-sung-over,which itself becomes a locus of symbols by being associated with the painting and its attendant mythology. Shamansoften embodied symbols in the most dramatic ways. For example, in 1634, an Englishman in Massachusettsobserved an Algonquian shaman who assumed the characteristicsof his spirits and their demands. The Englishman reported that the shaman was "sometimes roaring like a bear, other times groaning like a dying horse, foaming at the mouth like a chased boar, smiting on his naked breast and thighs as if he were mad" (Wood: 101). Performances such as this, in which shamans symbolically expressed and resolved their patron's problems by dancing the spirits of roaring bears or groaning horses often involved absence of rational control and submissionto intense physical pain. A late-nineteenth-century photograph of a shaman embodying the Man Eater spirit in the Kwakiutl winter ceremony shows a face contorted in pain with open eyes rolled back in the head. The face in this photograph testifies to the grueling physical ordeal that was part of the shaman's embodiment of his spirit.7 The shaman's ability to identify with the spirits and dance out their angry demands typically involved a state of trance brought on by a variety of physical and mental techniques for inducing altered states of consciousnessand sometimes by hallucinogens. The role of trance is well illustrated in reports about Inuit shamans who, in times of poor
7 This photograph is part of the Canadian film, "Potlach: A Strict Law Bids us Dance."
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hunting, were called upon to intervene with Takanakapsulik, the Mother of Sea Beasts, and expected to undertake the arduousjourney to the bottom of the sea to petition her to release animals for human food (Rasmussen: 123-9). In acting out this journey, Inuit shamans entered profound states of trance in which they lost consciousness entirely.8 The shaman's fall into a death-like trance, his visible pain and struggle while dreaming, and his return to consciousness represented his journey. His subsequent description of what occurred on the journey was essential, but the visible changes in his body while in trance made the journey apparent. Thus shamanism is identifiable by the primacy of the performer's body as the locus of symbols and by the trance-states that shamanic performances typically require. By contrast, priestly acts center on the manipulation of symbols that exist independently of the performer's body. While a priest may enter a trance that dissolves distinctions between body and thought, that altered state of consciousness is not essential to the priestly role of manipulating external religious symbols and can easily be detrimental to it. The shaman, on the other hand, often requires trance to embody the spirits and their demands. In the emergency situations that typically called for shamanic performance, trances enabled shamansto convey the demands of the spirits and dramatize the human pain, fear, and anger out of which those demands arose. Entranced physical movement not only distinguishes shamans from priests, but also from the prophets described in the Bible. While the early prophets of ancient Israel, like Balaam and Ezekiel, may have been ecstatic dancers whose bodies brought symbols of their peoples' problems to life, the later prophets, like Amos and Jeremiah, were unlike shamansinsofar as their words were dissociated from their body movements. The codified form of their moral pronouncements and the writings that preserved their messages were means by which the verbal symbols produced by late prophets were detached from their bodies (Grim: 180-208).9 While shamanic activity can be formally distinguished from priestly and prophetic activity, in reality, shamanism may be found mixed with other forms of religious activity. Preaching, for example, often combines the prophetic activity of making moral pronouncements with the shamanic activity of representing human dilemmas in
8 For discussion of the different stages of shamanic trance among the Inuit, see Merkur: 70-117. 9 Grim's most important contribution to the study of shamanism is his comparison of shamanism with other types of religious activity. While I have not followed the details of his distinctions between shaman, priest, and prophet, I am indebted to his comparative, typological approach.
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bodily gesture. Some preachers go into trances that enable them to act out the intense pain and hope that is represented by their symbols of sin and redemption. In America, for example, revivalists and evangelical preachers have held great appeal for many people from the seventeenth century to the present day. The compelling power of these preachers is in large part the result of their ability to dramatically embody the emtional problems and social tensions besetting their patrons. Defining shamanism in terms of the bodily movements of an entranced performer makes it possible to distinguish shamanic elements in postcolonial American Indian religions from the priestly and prophetic elements adapted from Catholic and Protestant traditions. Although shamanismhas persisted in Native American religions, it has become intertwined with priestly and prophetic forms developed in response to Catholic priests and Protestant preachers. For example, Neolin, Handsome Lake, Tenskwatawa, Smoholla, and Wovoka were Indian leaders in the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who were influenced both by Native shamanic traditions and by the Judaeo-Christian traditions of their colonizers. Like the biblical prophets they learned about from Christianmissionaries,these Indian leaders called their people to repentance with moral pronouncements that were often formulaic and in some cases transcribed in writing. In addition, Tenskwatwa and Smoholla were also priestly figures who incorporated elements of Catholic ritual into their repertoire of ecstatic dance and moral pronouncement. Combining an inevitable assimilation to western culture with a genius for its subversion, these shamans adapted prophetic and priestly activities from Judaeo-Christian traditions as means of defending their cultures against Christian imperialism. For example, Handsome Lake was a Seneca shaman whose visions led him to exhort his people to repent of their sins and abandon the ways of the white man. His visions included an encounter with Jesus, who showed his wounds and observed that he had been less successful among his people than Handsome Lake was among Indians (Wallace: 244). The Shawnee prophet Tenskwatawa also compared himself to Jesus, taking the name Tenskwatawa, which meant Open Door, after Jesus' saying "I am the Open Door." In his role as leader of an Indian resistance movement against American culture, Tenskwatawa combined the ecstatic dancing of a shaman with the prophetic practice of exhorting repentance from sin and with the priestly practice of assigning prayers over strings of beads distributed among his followers
(Drake; Edmunds). As even brief discussion of these Native American subversions of Christian practice and biblical mythology indicate, distinctions between shamanism as ecstatic dance, prophecy as moral
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pronouncement, and priestly activity as the ritual manipulation of sacred objects are useful in identifying changes in Native American religious history that occurred as a result of Christian influence. A second characteristicof shamanism is its social nature. The shaman does not perform alone; he embodies symbols that identify his community and he addresses the problems that beset his community with those symbols. Moreover, his performance cannot be understood apart from interpretations of it. The meaning of a shaman's performance ultimately resides in the responses of his observers and not, as Eliade would have it, in experiences the shaman has that can be isolated from those responses. Thus shamanism is a social phenomenon dependent on audience response. And, as always, audience response depends on the predilections and expectations of the audience. For example, the seventeenth-century Englishman who observed the Algonquianshaman roaring like a bear perceived the shaman as an exemplar of the savagery that his own socializationhad taught him was antithetical to civilization. The Englishman interpreted the shaman's performance, which was designed to heal people who were "sick and lame" (Wood: 101), as merely evidence of the ignorance and confusion of Native superstition. But to the Algonquians who supported him, this shaman was a renowned healer. His roaringsand groanings represented his embodiment of and wrestlings with the forces that they believed caused their diseases. He had a kind of power for his patrons that he did not have for the Englishman because they expected him to have power. His performance occurred in the arena of those expectations. In an important essay, "The Effectiveness of Symbols," LeviStrauss showed how expectations of the triumph of good over evil forces were fulfilled through shamanic performance in a way that alleviated physical suffering. Levi-Straussanalyzed a song belonging to a Cuna shaman sung for women having extreme difficultyin childbirth. In this song, the shaman undertakes a journey to "Muu's abode," a "dark, inner place" surrounded by whirlpools and demons (186). Wearing shining white hats, the shaman and his spirit helpers march in single file up the dark, narrow road to Muu'sabode. Once inside, they walk in rows of four and the song draws attention to the weight of their marching feet. Levi-Straussargues that the parts of the song correspond to the stages of a difficult but finally successful childbirth. Muu'sabode corresponds to the woman's uterus; the road described in the song is a passageway to the womb through the vagina; the white pointed hats are like penises lighting up and penetrating the difficult passageway;and finally, the many marching feet correspond to a dila-
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tion of the cervix that enables delivery. In this analysis,the song stimulates a physical response in the woman's womb: "the song constitutes a psychological manipulation of the sick organ, and it is precisely from this manipulation that a cure is expected" (187). In other words, the cure consists "in making explicit a situation originally existing on the emotional level and in rendering acceptable to the mind pains which the body refuses to tolerate" (192). Thus the expected power and meaning of the song exist in the woman's response to the song. By envisioning the difficultyin her womb as a contest between whirlpools and demons on the one side and the shaman and his helpers on the other, the woman is drawn through delivery as the contest proceeds. Levi-Strauss'analysis of this Cuna Song supports the view that shamanic performances involve patron response as surely as they do the activity of the shaman. Shamanismoccurs in the interaction between the shaman'sritual activity and the sufferings,conflicts, and desires of his patrons. This is the "magic" of a shamanic performance. It occurs when patrons have no conscious control over the social and psychological forces that shamans embody and manipulate. Shamans embody and manipulate those forces by representing them as spirits. Victor Turner's definition of a symbol is helpful in understanding how shamanic spirits represent the unconscious psychosocial forces that govern the lives of their patrons. Turner begins with Carl Jung's distinction between a symbol as "the best possible expression of a relatively unknown fact" and a sign as "an analogous or abbreviated expression of a known thing" (26). For Turner, the unknown "fact" behind a symbol is the psychological or social pattern it represents. This pattern is "unknown"in the sense of being unconscious. A symbol is emotionally compelling precisely because it represents, for the persons for whom it is a symbol, the social and psychological forces they are controlled by but have no conscious control over. Unlike Jung, Turner draws a clear distinction between the religious process of affirmingsymbols and the analytical process of deciphering them. As Turner understands it, scholarly interpreters of religion have the task of identifying the psychosocial forces represented by symbols that elicit assent from persons and communities as well as the task of identifying the effects those symbols have in reorganizing or restabilizing psychosocial reality (19-47). Turner's definition of symbols helps explain the nature and effects of shamanic spirits. For example, the Man Eater spirit in the Kwakiutl
midwinter ceremonial represented the physical and emotional forces that threatened the Kwakiutl world, and the shamanic presentation of these forces had the effect of maintaining the order of that world. For
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four months preceding the dance, the shaman had lived in the bush hunting the Man Eater at the Mouth of the River whose "body is covered with mouths." After doing battle with the Man Eater, the shaman assumed the spirit's characteristics, including his craving for human flesh. When he returned and broke into the ceremonial lodge, dancing wildly and displaying the appetite of a cannibal, members of the community caught and tamed him and forced him to regurgitate the human flesh he seemed to have eaten (Goldman:94-7). In his analysis of this ceremony, Stanley Walens argues that cannibalism was a Kwakiutlmetaphor for human behavior in general and that the winter ceremonial was a ritual means of controlling that behavior. The shaman's ecstatic dance was a symbolic enactment of the infantile appetites that threatened the stability of Kwakiutl society. As the actor on behalf of the community, the shaman, or "hamatsa,"dramatized the taming of aggressiveness that was demanded of each member of the community: mirrors the In a numberof ways,the tamingof the hamatsa of a child: .. .allchildrendancein the womb,kicksocialization all childrenare hungryand caning and turninglike a hamatsa; not be denied food; all children threatenedto devour their parents'wealth and eventuallytheir identities;all childrenare and ignorantof moralityand properaction,as is the hamatsa; finally,all children are cannibals,not only because they will devour the wealth of their parents,but because (in Kwakiutl live offthe fleshof theirmothers whilein the belief) theyactually are cannibals womb. Thusin Kwakiutl (157). thoughtall humans Like the famous potlach "give-aways" in which wealthy Kwakiutl chiefs disbursed their property throughout the community when brides were added to their families, the midwinter ceremonial was a symbolic means of expressing and governing Kwakiutl appetities for food, sex, and wealth. When the shaman'scommunity tamed him during the winter ceremonial, they collectively acted out the display and discipline of those appetites, thereby affirmingtheir own social management and enforcing group solidarity. The nature of shamanic spirits as representations of emotional forces that threaten group solidarityis further exemplified by the Inuit tale about shamans fighting in a blizzard that is told by the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen and again by Andreas Lommel. The story involves a fight between two shamans in an Inuit group stranded in a hut during a dark and terrible blizzard. After a prolonged struggle, in which the two shamans rolled on the floor and tore at each other viciously while others held the children and tried to protect the oilburning lamps, the first shaman knocked the second unconscious. When the second shaman revived and slowly stood up, the first sha-
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man kicked him to the ground and knocked him out again. Again the second shaman awoke and was knocked unconscious yet again, this time for a long period. When he finally revived, he spoke. Outside in the skies, he reported, among the howling winds, there were many naked spirits locked in combat (Lommel, 81-3). The most remarkable thing about this tale is that the group's anger and desperation about being trapped in the storm could have erupted in uncontrolled violence, but the shamansprevented that violence by anticipating and acting it out. The association between the storm and combat among spirits suggested that the spirits were responsible for the storm and that it would subside when their conflict did. The associationbetween the shamans'fight on the floor of the hut and the combat among spirits in the sky suggested that the cause of the storm was human conflict. Because the battle among spirits and the violent feelings of the human group were identical, the shaman was able to contain the violent feelings in the group by presenting them, in the guise of spirits, as the cause of the storm. In this instance, the shamanic technique of manipulating emotions and behavior by representing them in the form of spirits had salutaryconsequences for the group, even though the shamans themselves must have suffered considerable pain. Fear and desperation subsided, morale was strengthened, and the group's chances of survival increased as a result of their shamans' performance. Stories about Inuit shamansjourneying to the bottom of the sea to petition Takanakapsulikto release her animals for food, mentioned earlier, provide a more troublesome example of how shamansmanipulated the emotions and behavior of their patrons. The Inuit shaman's journey involved his finding out and reporting the reason Takanakapsulik was withholding animals, a reason that typically involved the secret miscarriage of a fetus or some violation of hunting or eating taboos (Rasmussen: 123-9). As a result of the shaman's report, the group singled out and punished an individual for causing the group's misfortune. This individual was usually a woman, since women were allegedly keepers of secrets about their own miscarriages, as well as polluted beings whose menstrual blood could ruin a hunter's luck, and the food makers responsible for the improper preparation of fish and meat. Thus Inuit shamanism functioned as a means of enforcing cultural misogyny and male supremacy. More generally, this shamanic scapegoating implied that the problem of poor hunting was under human control, thereby stimulating group confidence and perhaps male hunting ability as well. The shaman made it possible for his patrons to project their own anger about the situation in the form of a spirit's anger toward them and then to punish one of their own for the anger they had disowned. By giving this anger mythological form, the
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shaman enforced the projective mechanisms that defined his group and held it together. Although the shaman's performance may have indirectly improved hunting by stimulating male confidence, its immediate effect was to enforce the group's mythology and the unconscious defense mechanisms that gave that mythology its destructive power. By reifying human needs and desires in the form of spirits, shamanic performances address problems by manipulating the feelings aroused by those problems. While shamanic dramatizations of the feelings that problems arouse have therapeutic .effects in some situations, they also foster the delusion that the problems themselves are being directly addressed. For example, the once-widespread practice of disease-object removal was an attempt to cure disease by removing stones, worms, or bones allegedly implanted in the bodies of victims by witches and their evil spirits. John Grim emphasizes the therapeutic effects of this practice in his discussion of an Ojibway ritual in which a shaman sucked disease-causingworms out of a patient's side after performing tricks with small bones that he pressed against the patient's side. In Grim's interpretation, the Ojibway shaman established a "therapeutic field" in which the disease was diagnosed and its cause removed, thereby providing the patient with emotional relief, intellectual satisfaction, and a well-defined dramatization of his sickness and cure that helped him toward recovery (107-110). Although Grim's point that patients gain psychological benefits from shamanic performances is well taken and in accord with current thinking about the influence of mental state upon physical well-being, he ignores the facts that the therapeutic benefits of shamanic rituals are the result of psychological deception and manipulation and that such rituals address anxiety about physical illness rather than its cause. Although shamanic performances have undoubtedly had therapeutic side-effects for both individuals and communities, they have also resulted in pain and death both for communities and for individual scapegoats. The Shawnee leader Tenskwatawa destroyed the panIndian confederacy that he and his brother Tecumseh had built over many years in a single shamanic performance. Tenskwatawa's belief that he could conquer the U.S. Army with manitou power led him to provoke a battle at Tippecanoe in 1811 between Tecumseh's warriors and William Henry Harrison'ssoldiers. Through his shamanic ritual, Tenskwatawa led the Indians to project their desire for revenge against white men in the form of the Great Spirit and to believe that this desire was an external force powerful enough to protect them from bullets and to destroy the army that outnumbered them. According to Benjamin Drake, who collected first-personaccounts of
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the battle and incorporated them in a biography of the Shawnee brothers first published in 1841, Tenskwatawa assured his men that unavailthe GreatSpiritwouldrenderthe armsof the Americans at the feet of the Indiing; that theirbulletswouldfallharmless while the ans; that the latter shouldhave light in abundance, formerwouldbe involvedin thickdarkness.Availing himselfof the privilegeconferred office,(Tenskwatawa) pruby his peculiar dently took a positionon an adjacenteminence;and when the actionbegan,he entereduponthe performance of certainmystic rites,at the same time singinga war-song.In the courseof the he wasinformed thathis men were falling:he told engagement, them to fight on,-it would soon be as he had predicted;and his inspiring was then, in louderand wilder strains, battle-song heardcommingling with the sharpcrackof the rifleandthe shrill of his bravebut deludedfollowers (156). war-hoop Tenskwatawa inspired his men to fight on, and fight on they did until they were all killed or routed. A similar incident occurred during the Sioux "outbreak"of 1890, which was triggered by the religious fervor of the Ghost Dance. At the massacre of Wounded Knee, many Indians wore Ghost Dance shirts on which pictures of visions of the spirit world were drawn. The wearers believed the shirts would make them invulnerable to the bullets of the U.S. Army. Although the Army's overeaction to the Ghost Dance was the precipitating cause of the massacre, the delusion of invulnerability promoted by the shamanism of the Ghost Dance helped many Indians to an early and violent death (Mooney: 88-140). In this essay, consideration of the psychosocial nature of shamanic performance has led to a definition of shamanism as a performance in which the psychosocial dynamics that govern persons and groups are projected in the form of spirits and represented in the visible movements of the shaman's body. These visible movements comprise a symbolic text that represents the feelings that the shaman's patrons have in response to problems that beset them. The shaman shapes and directs those feelings as he represents them. This psychosocial definition takes account of the therapeutic effects of shamanismbut does not overlook its destructive effects. This definition also takes account of the fact that the effects of shamanic performance occur in the arena of interpretations. And finally, this definition accounts for the existence and power of the spirits in a way that transcendent and transcendental definitions of shamanic spirits do not. Hultkrantz's conception of the spirits as transcendent realities removes them from analyticalscrutiny. Eliade's transcendental conception of spirits as manifestations of the sacred order behind ordinary reality also prevents analysis of their psychosocial referents and functions.
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The psychosocial interpretation of shamanism also offers insight into the strange familiaritythat shamans and their patrons attribute to their spirits. Because shamanic spirits represent emotional forces that govern human worlds, they have an intimately personal quality that transcendental explanations cannot explain. The post-modern picture of reality as cross-referencing networks of signs may be a better approximation of the visceral and frightening plasticity of shamanic throught than transcendent or transcendental pictures that focus on abstract and universal objects of thought.10 The notion that spirits are representations of supernatural realities or epiphanies of a sacred order beyond temporal existence cannot explain the simultaneously familiar and strange immediacy of spirit manifestations. These manifestations occur in such familiar, strange, and specific forms as the songs of birds, the tracksof deer, otter entrails, thunder clouds, sudden death, women's blood, and male ejaculation. Because the relationship between the spirits and the human needs and desires they represent is unconscious, and because unconscious needs and desires take concrete forms, their projected voices are equally concrete. The psychosocial interpretation of shamanism recognizes these spirit manifestations as disguised representations of human desire, just as it recognizes the shamanic dances that embody the spirits and their demands as also being representations of human desire. Although the unconscious desires of shamanic patrons can never be fully penetrated or systematized, the meaning and power of shamanic symbols can be appreciated by recognizing their relationship to unconscious feeling. And the widespread cultural sanction of shamanism can be explained by showing that shamanic rituals function as means of dramatizing and resolving social tension.
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10I am indebted to Charles H. Long for helping me to see this dimension of shamanism.
Drake, Benjamin 1856
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Life of Tecumseh,and of his brother The Prophet;with a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians. Cincinnati: H.M. Rulison. c. 1841.
Edmunds, R. David The Shawnee Prophet. Lincoln: University of Nebraska 1983 Press. Eliade, Mircea 1959 1964 1967 1968 Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. Trans. by Wilard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row. c. 1954. Shamanism:Archaic Techniquesof Ecstasy. Trans.by Wilard R. Trask. New York:Bollingen Foundation. c. 1959. Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities. Harper & Row. c. 1957. Myth and Reality. Trans.by Wilard R. Trask. New York: Harper & Row. c. 1963.
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Howard, Helen Addison 1978 The Saga of Chief Joseph. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. c. 1914. Hultkrantz, Ake 1953 1957 1978 Conceptionsof the Soul among North American Indians: A Study in Religious Ethnology. Stockholm: Statens EthnografiskaMuseum. The North American Indian Orpheus Tradition: A Contribution to Comparative Religion. Stockhold: Statens EthnografiskaMuseum. "Introduction: Ecological and Phenomenological Aspects of Shamanism." In Studies in Lapp Shamanism. Ed. L. Backman. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. "The Concept of the Supernatural in Primal Religion," History of Religions 22:3. "In Vain I Triedto Tell You": Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Rasmussen,Knud 1930 Intellectual Culture of the Hudson Bay Eskimos: Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-4. Copenhagen: Gyldendals Forlagstrykkeri. Ricoeur, Paul 1972 "The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought." In Waysof Understanding Religion, pp. 309-317. Ed. by Walter H. Capps. New York: Macmillan. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
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Shamanism A Psychosocial Definition

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American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion. LV/4

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Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Gill, Sam D. 1979

1981 1982 Goldman, Irving 1981 Grim, John A. 1983

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

1983 Hymes, Dell H. 1981

Mooney, James 1896

Turner, Victor 1967

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