Spirit Healing, Mental Health, and Emotion Regulation

Abstract. Spirit healing is widespread across societies in diverse world regions. Its ritual forms appear in local, popular religions as well as a variety of organized churches. Although aspects of ritual, suchas the identification of spirits and use of symbols and paraphernalia, vary with culture a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Zygon
Main Author: Koss-Chioino, Joan D. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2005
In: Zygon
Further subjects:B spirit healing
B Puerto Rico
B psychiatric illness
B ritual healing process
B Spiritism
B spirit mediums
B Emotion regulation
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:Abstract. Spirit healing is widespread across societies in diverse world regions. Its ritual forms appear in local, popular religions as well as a variety of organized churches. Although aspects of ritual, suchas the identification of spirits and use of symbols and paraphernalia, vary with culture and type of religion, there appear to be basic components of ritual healing process shared by its diverse forms. Using data on Spiritist healing in Puerto Rico as a case example, I first examine aspects of the interface between mental illness as defined by psychiatry and spirit healing. I then raise the question: If spirit healing is effective with some emotional disorders (as I have discussed in previous reports), how does it work? Emotional transactions could be considered foundational to most or all spirit healing rituals as they are to some psychotherapeutic and alternative-medicine modalities. One model of emotion regulation is proposed as a lens through which to view specific processes of change in feelings and emotions in the context of culturally specified ritual structures.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contains:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2005.00672.x