Spiritual Transformation, Ritual Healing, and Altruism

Abstract. Based on studies of spirit healing in Puerto Rico and the United States, this essay proposes a model of ritual healing process focused on the core components of spiritual transformation and empathy. It describes the central role of spiritual transformation in healers from which emerges the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Koss-Chioino, Joan D. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Open Library of Humanities$s2024- 2006
In: Zygon
Year: 2006, Volume: 41, Issue: 4, Pages: 877-892
Further subjects:B ritual healing
B Healing Process
B Empathy
B Altruism
B spiritual transformation
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Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
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Summary:Abstract. Based on studies of spirit healing in Puerto Rico and the United States, this essay proposes a model of ritual healing process focused on the core components of spiritual transformation and empathy. It describes the central role of spiritual transformation in healers from which emerges their capacity for relation, empathy, and altruism. Many spirit healers, following a spiritual transformation, begin to exercise what I label here radical empathy, in which individual differences between healer and sufferer are melded into one field of feeling and experience. This produces a type of altruism in which spirit healers feel compelled to be altruistic in responding to suffering whenever they encounter it. The model is compared and contrasted with aspects of healing process in some psychotherapeutic and analytic therapies. These comparisons are offered in the light of the growing interest in incorporating spirituality into psychological and medical treatments.
ISSN:1467-9744
Contains:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00785.x