Altered states of consciousness have moved, in the course of the past ten years, from being a subject of quiet and even esoteric research to one proclaimed loudly in newspaper headlines. Where once questions concerning such states were studied by psychiatrists dealing with sick people or by anthropologists writing about exotic societies, the drug culture of the 1960s has promoted altered states to being subject matter for public debate.
During the same period, there have also been a great revival and expansion among the hundreds of marginal religious groups in this country. Simultaneously, anthropologists have discovered a renewed interest in the study of religion, particularly in the study of rituals and symbols. Our work must be seen in the context of these developments.
Yet this book does not deal primarily with the drug culture or with the renewed vigor and appeal of minority religions in this country, where the search for altered states is part of the ritual, part of the higher good sought by converts. Nonetheless, we hope that some of what my coauthors and I report of our findings concerning the place of altered states among the religions of other societies may be seen to have some relevance to the current situation in the United States. I have attempted to indicate some of this relevance in the Epilogue.
This volume is the outcome of a research project conducted under my direction at the Ohio State University
between 1963 and 1968, as well as some work carried on subsequent to its formal termination. Titled "A Cross-Cultural Study of Dissociational States," it was supported in whole by Public Health Service Grant MH 07463 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The project was initiated by me in collaboration with a physical anthropologist, Dr. Louanna Pettay, now of Sacramento State University, and a psychiatrist, Dr. Adolf Haas, of the Ohio State University. Our aim was a multifaceted analysis of what appeared to be a widespread psychocultural phenomenon, about which, however, curiously little of a systematic nature was known. The phenomenon with which we were concerned was the religious evaluation, often as possession by spirits, of a psychological state variously termed "dissociation," "trance," or, more recently and more generally, "altered states of consciousness." Having myself carried out anthropological field work in Haiti, I had had the opportunity to study such behavior at first hand and to investigate it and its institutional context in some depth. I was also aware of the debate concerning the "pathology" or "normalcy" of such states.
To develop perspective on this and other issues, two approaches to the subject of altered states appeared necessary. On the one hand, we wished to gather a body of comparative materials, appropriate for statistical analysis, of the relationship between various aspects of society and the presence or absence of institutionalized forms of altered states of consciousness with their associated belief systems. On the other hand, we proposed to carry out a series of highly focused field studies in societies where such patterns of behavior were known to exist in a religious context.
The present volume contains some of the results of both of these types of research. As our title indicates, the behaviors under investigation are institutionalized within a religious framework. We have chosen not to concern ourselves with other types of altered states. We have focused our presentation on the complex interrelationships between religious beliefs and institutions in which altered states of consciousness are utilized and on the problems of cultural change that confront human societies and offer such a crucial challenge to all of us.
(from the preface) MsSVig
During the same period, there have also been a great revival and expansion among the hundreds of marginal religious groups in this country. Simultaneously, anthropologists have discovered a renewed interest in the study of religion, particularly in the study of rituals and symbols. Our work must be seen in the context of these developments.
Yet this book does not deal primarily with the drug culture or with the renewed vigor and appeal of minority religions in this country, where the search for altered states is part of the ritual, part of the higher good sought by converts. Nonetheless, we hope that some of what my coauthors and I report of our findings concerning the place of altered states among the religions of other societies may be seen to have some relevance to the current situation in the United States. I have attempted to indicate some of this relevance in the Epilogue.
This volume is the outcome of a research project conducted under my direction at the Ohio State University
between 1963 and 1968, as well as some work carried on subsequent to its formal termination. Titled "A Cross-Cultural Study of Dissociational States," it was supported in whole by Public Health Service Grant MH 07463 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The project was initiated by me in collaboration with a physical anthropologist, Dr. Louanna Pettay, now of Sacramento State University, and a psychiatrist, Dr. Adolf Haas, of the Ohio State University. Our aim was a multifaceted analysis of what appeared to be a widespread psychocultural phenomenon, about which, however, curiously little of a systematic nature was known. The phenomenon with which we were concerned was the religious evaluation, often as possession by spirits, of a psychological state variously termed "dissociation," "trance," or, more recently and more generally, "altered states of consciousness." Having myself carried out anthropological field work in Haiti, I had had the opportunity to study such behavior at first hand and to investigate it and its institutional context in some depth. I was also aware of the debate concerning the "pathology" or "normalcy" of such states.
To develop perspective on this and other issues, two approaches to the subject of altered states appeared necessary. On the one hand, we wished to gather a body of comparative materials, appropriate for statistical analysis, of the relationship between various aspects of society and the presence or absence of institutionalized forms of altered states of consciousness with their associated belief systems. On the other hand, we proposed to carry out a series of highly focused field studies in societies where such patterns of behavior were known to exist in a religious context.
The present volume contains some of the results of both of these types of research. As our title indicates, the behaviors under investigation are institutionalized within a religious fr
(from the preface) MsSVig