Women, Possession Trance Cults, and the Extended Nutrient‐Deficiency Hypothesis
(1977) has shown more clearly than I did, in Egypt and elsewhere where it occurs this cult is often associated with the embourgoisement of men and women--involving a curtailment of the latter's freedom (see also Ferchiou 1972:66; Lewis, forthcoming). Finally, while I have no quarrel with Kehoe and Giletti's characterization of my interpretation of possession cults as "political," I have never advocated a monocausal explanation of such protean phenomena. By the same token and contrary to their assertions, I have explicitly pointed out (Lewis 1966:325) that in this context the concepts "center" and "periphery" are relative and ambiguous. If authors choose to recycle the reductionist "explanations" of Marvin Harris and his school, they might at least take the trouble to get their facts right.
Rumour of angels and heavenly midwives: anthropology of transpersonal events and childbirth.
Some contemporary women can experience non-ordinary states of consciousness when childbearing. The purpose of this paper is to bring a 'transpersonal' frame to these non-ordinary states of consciousness (hereafter: NOSC). Transpersonal psychology is an interdisciplinary movement in Western science that studies 'religious', 'peak' or 'healing' experiences in different cultures and social contexts. Between 2001 and 2006 in Auckland, New Zealand, while engaged in anthropological fieldwork, I collected stories from mothers, fathers, and midwives who had participated in transpersonal events during childbirth. I will compare the local women's NOSC with ethnographic accounts of spirit-possession and its relationship to indigenous midwifery then revisit and reconstruct the witch-hunts of Medieval Europe from this perspective. Midwives are encouraged to learn to identify and support women's NOSC during labour and birth as many women find strength and wisdom by passing through these states in labour. The subject is also critical to men, whether they are present with women and birth as fathers or health professionals. The hoped for result of this inquiry is to revalorise NOSC among birth-giving mothers, and to educate birth attendants in this field.
Current biochemical approaches to schizophrenia.
THE schizophrenic psychoses that account for more than half the patients in mental hospitals present a major challenge to medical research. Biochemistry, which has had notable success in other areas of medicine, has appropriately been brought to bear on this one, and the ability of many simple chemical substances to produce a toxic psychosis that simulates schizophrenia in certain respects has generated the hope that a relatively simple chemical disturbance may be identified in its etiology. Heuristic hypotheses such as those formulated on this premise are always beneficial to a field because of the interest, thought and research that they . . .