Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
In this paper the author explores notions of illness and health among a
particular group of spirit mediums in Havana: the Sociedad de Estudios
Psicologicos Amor y Caridad Universal. For its members and leaders,
the development of mediumship is not just therapeutic but prophylactic.
And traumas (of spirits and persons) must not simply be acknowledged
but metabolised through the execution of good mediumship. More
importantly, people’s existences are chemically and psychologically
entangled with those of their protective spirits, making of their ‘selves’
systems, rather than bounded essences. The author argues that such
concepts of personhood offer alternative modes of understanding the self
in relation to forms of otherness, including dysfunction and pathology.
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Pedagogical Context
Citation
Espírito Santo, D. (2010). 'Who else is in the drawer?' Trauma, personhood and prophylaxis among Cuban scientific spiritists. Anthropology and medicine, 17-3, 249-259