The Psychic Self

Fiona Bowie

Exploring the Extraordinary 7York 4-6 December 2015

The Psychic Self

Boundaries, separation, integration, relationships

Ontology – a discourse about the nature of being

Epistemology – a discourse concerning the nature and possibility of knowledge about the world

M. Strathern: Western individual persons as individual agents v. Melanesian ‘dividuals’ as ‘the precipitaton of relationships’

Spirit possession and spirit release – extends boundaries of self and incorporates others, physically, psychically and semiotically.

Spirit Possession

Curses and Blessings

A Web of Words

Being affected

Narrating witchcraftExemplary narratives

Told to ‘believers’ by those who have been affected by witchcraft.

Witch not identified, but the rituals that made the curse rebound are described.

The dewitcher only obliquely referred to.

Ends with the reversal of fortune.

Exhortatory narratives

Told in situations of crisis.

Conversations between victims and dewitcher.

Aim to identify the witch and provide very specific remedies.

Reveal how witchcraft is thought to work – through direct contact with the family or their goods, which are then worked on magically.

De-witching as therapy

Spirit release

Carl and Elizabeth Wickland

Edith Fiore

Case study: BarbaraEarth-bound spirits and possession, suicide, weight-loss,Friendship and fear

Energy and matter

Multiple selves, multiple lives

Witchcraft and Spirit Release

Witchcraft Psychic power invested in

people, the witch and the dewitcher

This world oriented – search for power and wealth or revenge

Physical objects can be used to harm and protect (amulets), as well as ritual acts and words

Treatment involves sending the curse back to rebound on the aggressor

Spirit release Psychic power invested in the

healer/therapist and non-physical beings

Involves discarnate entities, often the recently dead

The victim may knowingly or unknowingly invite the possession

Treatment involves releasing the possessing spirit into the light

Help is sought from discarnate spirits or higher powers

Common features

The Self has permeable boundaries

There are different superimposed planes of existence, normally kept separate, but with frequent communication between their inhabitants

Certain actions and conditions strengthen or weaken the energy field and defences of a victim (over indulgence – sex, drugs, addictions, depression, inviting spirits via seances or using Ouija boards)

Outside intervention is often necessary to effect a depossession – a religious figure or specialist healer who can deal with spirits (exorcist, shaman, nganga, faith healer, spirit release practitioner)

We have a Higher Self that gathers experience from this plane, which which we will eventually be reintegrated

The power of thought

The methodological tool kit

Ontological turn – ‘Cambridge School’ 2000 onwards

Eduardo Vivieros de Castro – Amerindian perspectivism

Michael Scott – anthropology of wonder

Share Marilyn Strathern’s call to unsettle Western paradigms by taking the ‘native’s point of view’ seriously and according it ontological validity – or at least the possibility of it.

Critical realism – Graebe; Common core hypothesis – Hufford; Cognitive, empathetic engagement – Bowie