The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing 9780520919068

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Ritual Healing: Affliction and Transformation
3. Therapeutic Process and Experience
4. Embodied Imagery and Divine Revelation
5. Imaginal Performance and Healing of Memories
6. Image, Memory, and Efficacy
7. Demons and Deliverance
8. Encounters with Evil
9. The Raging and the Healing
10. Envoi: The Sacred Self
Notes
References
Index

Citation preview

The Sacred Self

THE SACRED SELF A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing

Thomas

J.

Csordas

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley / Los Angeles / London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press London, England Copyright © 1994 by The Regents of the University of California First Paperback Printing 1997 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Csordas, Thomas J. The sacred self: a cultural phenomenology of charismatic healing / Thomas J. Csordas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-20884-1 1. Spiritual healing. 2. Pentecostalism---Catholic Church. 3. Pentecostalism-New England. 4. Self. 5. Identification (Religion) 6. Catholic Church-New England-History-1965- 7. New England-Church history. I. Title. BT732.5.C86 1994 234' .13-dc20 93-34279 CIP

Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 08 07 9876543 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. 9

Contents

PREFACE

Vll

Chapter 1 Introduction

1

Chapter 2 Ritual Healing: Affliction and Transformation

25

Chapter 3 Therapeutic Process and Experience

57

Chapter 4 Embodied Imagery and Divine Revelation

74

Chapter 5 Imaginal Performance and Healing of Memories

109

Chapter 6 Image, Memory, and Efficacy

141

Chapter 7 Demons and Deliverance

165

Chapter 8 Encounters with Evil

200 v

vi

CONTENTS

Chapter 9 The Raging and the Healing

228

Chapter 10 Envoi: The Sacred Self

276

NOTES

283

REFERENCES

305

INDEX

323

Preface

The answer to the question of ''what it means to be human" is the same as the answer to the question of "how we make ourselves human." This is an enduring premise for cultural anthropology and means that an inquiry into a topic like the "sacred self' is an inquiry into human creativity, and in particular self-creativity. I have termed my approach to this issue cultural phenomenology because it represents a concern for synthesizing the immediacy of embodied experience with the multiplicity of cultural meaning in which we are always and inevitably immersed. Beginning from this standpoint, in this book I examine one aspect-that is, ritual healing-of the creation of a sacred self in a contemporary North American religious movement called the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. For nearly twenty years, since 1973, I have followed the development of the Charismatic Renewal and its healing system. Having studied the movement for this length of time, I must acknowledge the impossibility in a single volume of representing its diversity, even within the United States and within a focus on its healing system. There is regional diversity within the movement as there is within American Catholicism at large. To mention only one feature, Charismatic groups in the Midwest tend to be "ecumenical" in membership, including both Protestants and Catholics, whereas New England groups tend to be predominantly Catholic in membership. The former tend to minimize denominational elements of ritual life, whereas the latter emphasize the Catholic, often incorporating the Mass into their prayer meetings. Somewhat indepenvii

viii

PREFACE

dent of region, there is also a distinct difference between parochial Charismatic prayer groups and the highly organized intentional communities called "covenant communities."1 Styles of healing and even the overall emphasis on healing in group life may vary substantially between these kinds of group. Most of the research on which this book is based was carried out among Catholic Charismatics in southeastern New England between 1986 and 1989. New England Catholicism is a particular blend of French, Irish, and Italian ethnic Catholicisms superimposed on a Puritan landscape. In a book of this nature there is no opportunity to fully account for the subtle regional and stylistic bias this may have introduced into my account. Based on my prior experience with the movement and familiarity with its indigenous literature, I have attempted to compensate for these factors. In any case, I am confident that the data are adequate to the task of defming the experiential specificity of therapeutic process among those Charismatics with whom I worked most closely. These data include interviews with eighty-seven healers of varying degrees of experience and "giftedness," including both laypeople and priests/nuns. Paper and pencil questionnaires regarding healing experience were completed by 587 participants at large public healing services conducted by five of these healers. Finally, detailed phenomenological data were gathered in sixty private sessions with eighteen supplicants conducted by six participating healers. Yet it would be only partly correct to say that this book is about ritual healing among Catholic Charismatics in the United States. Such a book would consist of a description of healing practices in their social and cultural context, detailing the kinds of problems these healing practices address and speculating about how they achieve whatever beneficial effect they appear to have. I must admit from the outset that I fmd this formula unsatisfying, as it has produced a voluminous literature on healing that, despite its empirical diversity, is in large part theoretically redundant, reaching the same conclusions over and again. Thus, while I have addressed the standard issues in the chapters that follow, my strategy has been not to write about Charismatic healing, but to ask what Charismatic healing is about and write about that. In a word, my thesis is that Charismatic healing is about "self." The scare quotes, of course, will be a dead giveaway to many readers that we are about to embark on an intellectual adventure at best, or a theoretical slippery slope at worst. 2 Some might prefer that the book were, after all, simply about Charismatic healing and decide not to read on. For

PREFACE

ix

the others, let me sketch out why I have written this book, where I think its argument goes as a contribution to anthropological thinking, and why I think the trajectory of my argument is a necessary one. One might start with the observation that a book solely about Charismatic healing would be of interest solely to Charismatics and certain of their supporters and opponents. A more elaborated version of this point would be that in order fully to grasp the existential significance and cultural meaning of a phenomenon like Charismatic healing, one must go beyond description of its unique features and the experience of its participants. It is necessary on the one hand to identify features in it that are comparatively and cross-culturally relevant, and on the other hand to analyze it with theoretical constructs that are themselves valid for comparative study. The notion of self fulfills both of these requirements. It is both a topic widely discussed in anthropological studies and one that with care can be used as a valid theoretical tool. Taking care to achieve theoretical validity is indeed the primary challenge, as much, I must hasten to add, for the reader as for the writer. This is the case for two reasons. First, there are as many ways to theoretically construe "self' as there are writers about the topic. This requires methodological choices, which have led me to structure my argument as follows. To meet the criterion of a minimal working definition of self that is both appropriate to the ethnographic case at hand and crossculturally valid, I have drawn on phenomenology for a working definition of self as orientational process. The particular self processes that I have found articulated in Charismatic healing are imagination, memory, language, and emotion. Insofar as these are constitutive of self, to say that the book is about self is also to say that it is about these processes. In particular, I show how these processes bring about orientation in terms of psychocultural themes salient for participants in North American Charismatic healing, those of spontaneity, control, and intimacy. In addition, in order to achieve analytic precision and specificity, I have based my account on a particular variant of phenomenology in which bodily experience is understood as the existential ground of culture and the sacred. In order to balance my account, however, I have wherever possible complemented my analyses with perspectives drawn from what I regard as phenomenology'S methodological twin, semiotics. To include a discourse about the various theories of self, the variants of phenomenology, or the relation between phenomenology and semiotics would, I think, risk indulging in theory for its own sake, and this leads to our second point. The reason, after all, that there are so many

x

PREFACE

construals of self is that it is not an empirical entity but a theoretical construct. Since theoretical constructs cannot be studied directly, to say that a book is "about" the self has a special kind of meaning. That is, it can only be about the self insofar as that self is the product of intellectual dialogue with concrete phenomena-such as the phenomena of Charismatic healing. This last point defines the methodological place of Charismatic healing in our argument. It is a vehicle for a discourse about self, which in itself is a construct that can only properly be defined within a coherent body of empirical data. Methodologically, what we require is a close dialectic, a tight hermeneutic circle revolving around the theoretical construct and the cultural phenomena. I have attempted to construct an argument in which the notion of self is neither inductively derived from the data, nor deductively demonstrated in terms of the data, but dialogically suspended between theory and data. & an anthropologist I would argue strongly that it is not possible to write a book about self without grounding it in cultural phenomena, simply because self has no existence outside of such phenomena. By the same token, it is not possible to arrive at a valid notion of self from within the cultural data in themselves. To understand the culture exclusively "in its own terms" would leave us with a definition of what Charismatics mean when they use the word "self," but not with a cross-culturally useful theoretical concept of self. Thus, while Charismatic healing is a vehicle, it is not a "mere" vehicle. If it is correct to say that I am not interested in Charismatic healing "for its own sake," it is equally correct to say that I am not interested in the theoretical gyrations of "self' outside of its instantiation in the empirical phenomena at hand. If this were not the case, I would have no business referring to my approach as cultural "phenomenology." Let me carry the notion of dialogue a bit further, for it is useful to understand a text such as ours in terms of multiple dialogues, overlapping and simultaneous. I offer you a model of our text as a fabric of dialogical threads, some full-throated and some in whispers, some continuous and some intermittent. From the foregoing discussion, we could formulate the relation between the minute particulars of experiential processes and the generality of psychocultural themes as such a dialogue. Likewise, we have touched on the dialogue between phenomenology and semiotics that will animate a good deal of our argument. In a less metaphoric vein, we can overhear snatches of dialogue between Catholic Charismatics and the Roman Catholic Church, between Catholic Charismatics and their mentors, the Protestant Pentecostals, and

PREFACE

Xl

between the early Catholic Charismatics of the 1960s and the Charismatics they became in the 1980s. Quite literally, the text records dialogues between me and individual Charismatics, and between Charismatic patients and healers. There are two points to be made about the dialogues that include me. First, at those points in which I enter the text-as if entering a space created by the new technology of "virtual reality"-my role becomes doubled. I am simultaneously author and actor, or, more precisely, I am my virtual double whose actions I analyze as author. The second point begins with the observation by Good and Good (1981) that, insofar as all healing systems are attempts to make sense of affliction, anthropological understanding of healing requires a double hermeneutic. It is a hermeneutic of a hermeneutic, an interpretation of an interpretation. We apply our interpretive strategies (including theoretical notions like that of self), motivated by our constant impulse toward crosscultural comparison, to the interpretive strategies of the people whose cultures we study. But if a healing system is an interpretive system, it also includes its own forms of reflexivity. Much has been made in the past decade about reflexivity in ethnography. Oftentimes this amounts to self-consciousness of the anthropologist with respect to how she or he construes data or relates to the ethnographic other. Sometimes it leads to giving voice to the other (Clifford 1988), and occasionally to an understanding that culture is created dialogically with the other (Daniel 1984, Crapanzano 1992). Seldom, however, does ethnographic reflexivity fully take into account the reflexivity of the other. Yet those dialogues in which I engaged were inevitably constituted by the reflexivity of my Charismatic informants in interaction with my own. Thus, to the extent that it is possible, we must not only describe Charismatic healing practices in cultural context, but realize that a full account includes the Charismatics' interpretation of their own practices. "Native exegesis" is not simply one among other sources of data, but an inevitable element of reflexivity among practitioners and patients in a healing system. Recognizing this is especially urgent when much background culture is shared between anthropologist and "natives." The reflexivity of Charismatics does not typically include a comparative stance, but it may include notions that we would recognize as theoretical rather than popular (such as certain concepts of self). Charismatics also reflect on the relation between their practices of ritual healing and those of conventional medicine and psychiatry, especially those among them who are trained and practice in both. The dialogue of reflexivities creates

xii

PREFACE

an opportunity for data of a richness seldom attainable when one works in a foreign society. By the same token, this dialogue creates the danger of analysis that merely reproduces native categories, and hence the need for methodological care in setting up the relation_ between theory and phenomena. As author I can only frame this problem. The reader will have to decide whether I have taken advantage of the opportunity and avoided the danger. Finally, of course, there is a kind of dialogue between me and my text, and between me and the reader (the dialogue between reader and text is out of my hands). Accordingly, let me add a few notes about my presentation and analysis of data. I am convinced that semiotics and phenomenology are complementary ways to think about culture and that both can be applied to linguistic or narrative data. I reject the textualist bias of some semiotics that would ask, "How can you say you are writing about experience when all your data are in the form of language?" This position presumes an unbridgeable gulf between language and experience, and is predicated on the notion that language can only be about itself-doubtless a hyper-Foucauldian exaggeration. On the contrary, language is not only a form of observable behavior, but a medium of intersubjectivity, so that it is fair to say that language gives us authentic access to experience. In Heidegger's terms, it not only represents but "discloses." In addition to giving a flavor of Charismatic language and presentation of self, this disclosure is what I am after in making extensive use of "texts" from interviews and recorded rituals. I believe I have taken care to distinguish when I am discussing such texts from the standpoint of textuality and when from embodiment, when with a semiotic point in mind and when with a phenomenological one. Nevertheless, because texts can be tricky I must state that these texts are edited in order to eliminate redundancy; depending on the degree to which the meaning of an interview depends on the development of a dialogue, my own questions are sometimes included, sometimes excluded. I must also make two brief points about my compositional technique. First, I have made liberal use of italics to indicate that I grant technical or theoretical status to a term, and ofquotation marks to indicate Charismatic terms and brief verbatim remarks of informants. The quotation marks are not meant as signs of disrespect or to indicate a tongue-intextual-cheek, but to distinguish my own use of words from that of Charismatics while preserving the flow of the argument. I have attempted to keep other uses of quotation marks to a minimum, except

PREFACE

XUl

where a citation from the literature is indicated. Second, I have generally used the plural pronoun to carry the authorial voice, in an unabashed rhetorical attempt to implicate the reader in a collaborative effort. Where I lapse into the first person, it is either to assert authorial direction or because I am entering conceptual terrain upon which I am less comfortable asking the reader to tread. As useful as the notion of overlapping dialogues might be, a book nevertheless has a linear organization, so I will briefly sketch the trajectory of our argument from chapter to chapter. Chapter 1 introduces the problem of understanding religious healing from an anthropological perspective and identifies the need for greater experiential specificity in our accounts of therapeutic process. We then elaborate the theoretical pole of our dialogical argument, sketching out a working concept of self and self processes grounded in embodiment. Finally, we elaborate the empirical pole of the argument, describing the development of the Charismatic Renewal, its ritual system, and its articulation with the North American psychocultural themes of spontaneity, control, and intimacy. Chapter 2 describes the Charismatic system of ritual healing with respect to the performative structure of event, genre, and act. We discuss public and private healing sessions, with special attention to profiles of healers and supplicants. We show how the principal genres of ritual healing articulate the Charismatic concept of the person as a tripartite composite of body-mind-spirit, and how particular performative acts are discrete moments of empowerment. Chapter 3 raises the issue of efficacy in ritual healing, eschewing the evocation of global "black-box" mechanisms such as suggestion, catharsis, and placebo effect in favor of phenomenological specificity. With particular emphasis on healing of physical problems, we introduce the concepts of postural model, somatic modes of attention, and the margin of disability in order to understand the modulations of self achieved in "typical" healings. We conclude by formulating a model of therapeutic process to guide our subsequent discussion. The next three chapters examine the Charismatic elaboration of imagination as an embodied self process in ritual healing. Chapter 4 examines the repertoire of revelatory imagery based on specific experiences reported by healers. Following an examination of some of the theoretical issues underlying the study of imagination, we formulate an analytic framework combining a semiotic approach to the image-as-sign and a phenomenological approach to the image-in-consciousness. We apply

xiv

PREFACE

this framework to a body of data consisting of actual revelatory images collected from the healers. In chapter 5 we turn to the experience of patients in the ritual genre of "healing of memories." After discussing the relation between memory and imagination, we introduce the concept of imaginal performance to describe the autobiographical self processes that take place. We apply this concept in a close analysis of three cases of healing, making use of data from healing sessions and experiential commentaries of patients in those sessions. This innovation in method allows us a degree of specificity in analyzing therapeutic process that is usually unavailable in studies of ritual healing. Chapter 6 reconsiders these cases with respect to the role of revelation, trauma, and internal object relations. In addition, we show how the healing process develops the psychocultural themes of spontaneity, intimacy, and control. Once again, we fmd the grounds of therapeutic efficacy in bodily experience. The next two chapters address the Charismatic demonology and the practice of "deliverance" from evil spirits. Our first task in chapter 7 is to examine the cultural dynamic implicit in the domestication of deliverance prayer over the past twenty-five years. We then examine the structure of the demonology as a collective representation of the person in North American culture. In chapter 8 we use our method of performative analysis and experiential commentary to examine emotional self process in five quite different cases of encounter with evil in Charismatic healing. The chapter concludes with a phenomenology of control in deliverance, contrasting the consequences for the self with those of exorcism in a very different tradition of religious healing in Sri Lanka. Chapter 9 juxtaposes two striking bodily experiences characterized by the patient falling to the ground. In "resting in the Spirit" we examine the modulati~ns of self in the experiences of falling and of lying on the ground in a sacred swoon as well as the implications of Charismatics' own debate about the "authenticity" of the phenomenon. In what we call the demonic crisis, we examine a series of narrative vignettes that describe a deeply disturbing alienation of self. Once again we see the enactment ofour three key psychocultural themes, but in the contrasting existential modes of healing and raging. We conclude the chapter with a reflection on the potential implications of these experiences for contemporary North American culture. Finally, chapter 10 includes a recapitulation of our argument about the self and a comment about the theoretical implications of the discussion.

PREFACE

xv

This book is the product of research conducted from 1986 to 1989 under the support of National Institute of Mental Health research grant R01 MH-40473-04. During that period and throughout the years in which I have been acquainted with members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, one thing has remained consistent, and that is the good will, curiosity, and cooperation of nearly all Charismatics that I have encountered. While there have been a few that have been especially "zealous for my soul," I have been profoundly impressed by the lack of pressured proselytization I have experienced as an anthropologist who presented himself as never more than an agnostic. That most Charismatics were willing to leave whatever change would take place in me to a higher power (that would probably act in "hung around long enough") speaks highly of the strength of their conviction. For my part, I have tried to respect the integrity and coherence of their world; for their part, they were willing to grant that healing included a "human" element that could be examined by anthropology. I am grateful to all of them, especially to those supplicants who bravely shared the depths of their distress with me. Specific thanks are due to Reverend Kenneth Metz for his continuing support of my work, and to David Thorp for smoothing the way for my entree into the Charismatic community in New England. Too many Charismatics experienced in conducting healing prayer shared their insights with me to mention by name, but I would like to register the warm memory of two who were especially generous and who have since died, Father John Lazansky and Sister Cecilia Cote. Among those to whom lowe intellectual debts I count Erika Bourguignon, who first introduced me to ethnopsychiatry and the problem of understanding religious healing, John Messenger, who introduced me to the anthropology of religion and psychological anthropology, and Ojo Arewa, who gave me my first taste of phenomenology. James Boon sensitized me to the relation between ethnographic description and interpretation, and to the methodological problem of bridging the "natives' point of view" and the anthropologist's. Charles Long instilled a vivid sense that the question at the heart of the study of religion was what it means to be human. Arthur Kleinman's invitation to Harvard and his commitment to the development of an experiential approach in medical anthropology provided both a physical and an intellectual home for my work at a critical stage, and his almost single-handed revitalization of transcultural psychiatry created the conditions for the kind of theorizing about therapeutic process in religious healing represented in this book. Byron Good's pioneering of interpretive theory

xvi

PREFACE

in medical anthropology made the way easier for myself and others committed to bringing the field to the center of the discipline, and his boundless energy for intellectual engagement lent an additional vitality to the milieu at Harvard. Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good's creative synthesis of anthropology and sociology, her tireless generation and execution of new ideas for research, and her consummate skill as an interviewer sensitive to the nuances of language and experience were a constant example and inspiration. Along with these three, Amelie Rorty, Janis Jenkins, Marina Roseman, Peter Guarnaccia, Pablo Farias, Linda Garro, and other participants in the Harvard Friday Morning Seminar in medical anthropology created an intellectual environment that made every moment of this research rewarding. A version of chapter 4 was presented to the Program in Clinically Relevant Medical Anthropology at Harvard University. Several of the cases discussed in chapters 5, 6, and 8 were presented to the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and at the 1991 meetings of the Society for Cultural Anthropology. A version of chapter 9 was presented to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and to the Department of Anthropology at the University ofMontreal. A lecture to the Department of Anthropology at UCLA afforded me the opportunity to reflect on the question of what is specifically religious about religious healing, and about the nature of psychocultural processes in healing. A lecture to the Department of Humanities and Social Studies in Medicine at McGill University provided the occasion to examine the relation between psychiatric and religious formulations of emotional affliction. I am grateful for the insightful comments of the colleagues who participated in those events, as well as to Richard Shweder, Elizabeth Behnke, and Paul Connerton for vital comments on my formulations about embodiment as a methodological standpoint. Particular and heartfelt thanks are due to Janis Jenkins, whose requests for clarification over the course of many discussions undoubtedly enhanced the lucidity of my argument. Thanks are also due to Nancy Wood, who was an able research assistant in the large scale survey of participants in Charismatic healing services, and to Allison Earle and Amy Cohen, whose expertise in quantitative data management and analysis was invaluable. Finally, I am grateful for the commitment to this work by members of the University of California Press, including Stanley Holwitz, Rebecca Frazier, Eran Fraenke~ and Diane Feinberg, and for the helpful reviews by Erika Bourguignon and an anonymous reader.

1 Introduction

How does religious healing work, if indeed it does? What is the nature of its therapeutic efficacy? What is actually being healed by the performances of the shaman, the medicine man, or the faith healer? What is particularly religious about them in the first place? These questions have preoccupied anthropologists for a long while, and there have been two broad types of answer offered. Many early studies were primarily concerned with whether healers or shamans were themselves mentally ill, typically with schiwphrenia or epilepsy. Whatever healing occurred was thought as likely to benefit the healer as it would those who came to him or her for help. Later, the question of whether healers were like mental patients was superseded by that of how they were like psychotherapists. This theme, present as early as Leighton and Leighton's (1941) discussion of Navajo healing and Messing's (1958) analysis of the Ethiopian zar cult, was given impetus in the 1960s and 1970s by the seminal works ofJerome Frank (1973, Frank and Frank 1991). For some, the efficacy of religious healing came to be assumed on the basis of what we may call the psychotherapy analogy: religious healing works because it is like psychotherapy, which also works. This is hardly a satisfactory place to leave the issue, and not only because psychotherapy itself is a healing form whose efficacy cannot be taken for granted. Insofar as every culture must contend with emotional distress and mental illness, each is likely to develop its own forms of psychotherapy, some of which we can identify as religious healing. Likewise, most religions develop some stance toward human suffering, and 1

2

INTRODUCTION

may go a step further and develop explicit systems of healing practice (cf. Numbers and Amundsen 1986, L. Sullivan 1989). It has become commonplace to observe that efficacy is contingent on the nature of problems addressed by different forms of healing, how those problems are defined in cultural practice, and what counts in cultural terms as their successful resolution. Given this set of issues, it has been argued on the one hand that ritual healing is invariably and necessarily effective due to the manner in which it defines its goals (Kleinman and Sung 1979), and on the other that it necessarily fails insofar as it is a treatment more oflifestyle than of symptoms (Pattison, Lapins, and Doerr 1973). Between these positions we are left with a disturbing lack of analytic specificity and a repertoire of hypotheses about how healing works. Let us briefly summarize. The structural hypothesis posits an inherent power ofcorrespondence or homology between symbolic acts and objects, metaphors, or cosmological structure on the one hand, and the thoughts, emotions, behavior, or diseases of those treated on the other. Research in this tradition, of which the paradigmatic example is Levi-Strauss's (1966) discussion of a Cuna Indian birth ritual, are often successful at demonstrating the existence of a homology, but not in establishing why or whether the homology has an effect. The clinical hypothesis is based most strictly on the analogy between the religious healer and a doctor treating an individual patient with a specific procedure in expectation of a defmitive outcome, as in Prince's (1964) paradigmatic discussion of indigenous Yoruba psychiatry. However, not only is it difficult to demonstrate defmitive outcomes in religious healing, but a clinical approach tends to downplay the explicitly religious elements of such healing that give it its distinctive character. The social support hypothesis, best characterized by V. Turner's (1964) analysis of Ndembu healing and Crapanzano's (1973) discussion of the Moroccan Hamadsha brotherhoods, holds that the principal therapeutic effects of healing lie in enhancing community solidarity, resolving interpersonal tensions, providing an emotionally safe environment for suffering individuals, or providing the security of identity with a group defined by its healing practices. While these effects may in fact occur, studies that emphasize social support often go no further toward defining efficacy, remaining satisfied with a generalized functionalist understanding of healing. Finally, the persUIISive hypothesis owes much to 1. Frank's (1973) formulations about the cultivation of expectant faith through the personal influence of a healer and the rhetorical devices that bring about a shift in the

INfRODUCfION

3

patient's "asswnptive world." Healing ritual is understood not as liturgical repetition, but as intentional social action directed toward the quality and content of experience. However, while it thus takes account of meaning, it is less attuned to clinicaUssues such as the kind of emotional disorder addressed by healing. 1 These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. To be sure, although they represent different descriptions of how therapeutic efficacy is evoked, they tend to share a common understanding of how that efficacy is actually comtituted by a limited repertoire of global mechanisms. These mechanisms include trance, catharsis, placebo effect, and suggestion. With few exceptions (e.g., Scheff 1979), accounts of healing under the hypotheses sketched above are based on inference from procedures carried out by healers to a nonspecific efficacy preswned to be inherent in one or more of these mechanisms. The mechanism itself remains unelaborated, a kind of biocultural "black box"-perhaps the patient goes into trance, but what it is that makes the trance therapeutic remains essentially ambiguous. The reason for the lack of specificity is astoundingly simple: although anthropologists have produced volwnes of descriptions of healing rituals, they have virtually never systematically examined the experience of supplicants in healing. The Navajo Chanter sings for nine nights, and we have a transcription of the songs; he creates an elaborate sandpainting, and we have a detailed description of it. Where experience comes into question, it is usually that of the healer. But what is happening for the Navajo supplicant who is repeating line for line after the chanter and who is made to sit upon the sandpainting? We may learn the nature of the supplicant's complaint and whether there is any apparent effect of the ritual, but that is about all. We will learn nothing about the imagery processes which, as I discovered when it occurred to me to ask, may occur during the ceremony. Of course, if we neglect to ask, we will conclude that the efficacy of healing is nonspecific. 2 A premise of this book is that there is an experiential specificity of effect in religious healing-that transformative meaning dwells, to borrow a phrase from the poet William Blake, in the "minute particulars" ofhwnan existence taken up in the healing process. 3 To approach that specificity, we must identify the locus of efficacy, and this requires taking a step back toward generality before making a leap forward. My argwnent is that the locus of efficacy is not symptoms, psychiatric disorders, symbolic meaning, or social relationships, but the self in which all of these are encompassed. Our task is then to formulate a

4

INrRODUcnON

theory of the self that will allow us to specity the transformative effects of healing. What is more, we require an idea of self that will be valid for comparative studies of healing forms ranging from conventional psychotherapy to the more exotic forms of shamanism and spirit possession ·cure. Finally, we require a theory of self that will allow for the experience of the sacred as an element of therapeutic process, indeed an element that constitutes one kind of the specificity that we seek. Our discussion, in short, must be an account of the cultural constitution of a sacred self. Let me say a few things about my orientation to the problems of "self" and "sacred." I have become convinced that a tum to phenomenology may go a long way toward answering the need we have just seen for a concept of self sensitive to experiential specificity. As M. Singer (1984:53) observes, the phenomenological approach to self has never been thoroughly developed, and in the 1960s was overshadowed by understandings of both culture and self as systems of symbols and meanings. Singer's observation is certainly correct, and I think it can be accounted for by the fact that we have not discovered the most useful variant of phenomenology for our purposes. At one end of the continuum, Husserl's work is dense enough that by the time an anthropologist made readers familiar enough with its terminological subdeties, the cultural substance of any account would be obscured in a whirl of methodology. Perhaps Hallowell (1955) sensed this when he went only so far as to acknowledge a phenomenological attitude in his important works on the self. At the other end of the continuum, the phenomenology of Schutz is perhaps the most formalist variant, such that Geertz's (1973) attempt to use it on Balinese material remains suspended between being a true phenomenological description and an exercise in applying analytic categories. If I were to claim a contribution for the present argument, therefore, it would be the grounding of culture and self in the phenomenology of the body-"embodiment"-a variant of phenomenology more identified with the work of Merleau-Ponty. Yet my intent is not to offer a strict alternative to the semiotic approach, but to bring phenomenology out of the shadow referred to by Singer. In other words, I understand cultural phenomenology as a counterweight and complement to interpretive anthropology'S emphasis on sign and symbo1. 4 The problem of the sacred also falls within a cultural phenomenology of self. Phenomenologists of religion have defmed their understanding of the sacred as a kind of modulation of orientation in or engagement with the world. Eliade (1958) defmed the sacred as a mode of attending

INTRODUCTION

5

to the world, and van der Leeuw (1938) observed that the object of religion is a "highly exceptional and extremely impressive Other." The tenor of anthropological discussion, however, when not preoccupied with debate about the rationality or irrationality of religious "belief," has again been predominantly semiotic. Every anthropologist is familiar with Geertz's (1973) defmition of religion as a system of symbols, and most would unhesitatingly add that these symbols are articulated in a system of social relationships. For a cultural phenomenology, the second, more obscure part of Geertz's defmition must be given equal weight-that religion acts to establish long-standing moods and motivations. I submit that the method to get at these moods and motivations is to be found in the phenomenologists' notion of Otherness. The sacred is an existential encounter with Otherness that is a touchstone of our humanity. It is a touchstone because it defines us by what we are not-by what is beyond our limits, or what touches us precisely at our limits. In addition, and of primary importance for the coherence of our argument, we will discover that this sense of otherness itself is phenomenologically grounded in our embodiment. We can now restate the theses advanced in the preface, specifYing that this book is a cultural phenomenology of healing that seeks the locus of therapeutic efficacy in the self. The next step before introducing our empirical case is to elaborate our phenomenological approach to self and the specificity of self processes in cultural context.

The Self: Embodiment, World, and Situation Let us begin by venturing a working concept of self, and then spend the rest of this section unpacking its theoretical meaning and methodological consequences. 5 Self is neither substance nor entity, but an indeterminate capacity to engage or become oriented in the world, characterized by effort and reflexivity. In this sense self occurs as a conjunction of prereflective bodily experience, culturally constituted world or milieu, and situational specificity or habitus. Self processes are orientational processes in which aspects of the world are thematized, with the result that the self is objectified, most often as a "person" with a cultural identity or set of identities. Hallowell (1955) was the first anthropologist to propose a protophenomenological theory of the self based on "orientation" with respect

6

INfRODUCTION

to self, objects, space and time, motivation, and norms, and this is a good starting point for what I mean by orientation in the world. 6 To understand how this orientation comes about, we must identify two concepts implicit in Hallowell's argument. Perception is the key concept implicit in his defmition of the self as self-awareness, the recognition of oneself as an "object in a world of objects." Hallowell saw self-awareness as both necessary to the functioning of society and as a generic aspect of human personality structure. However, in defming the self as the product of a reflexive mood, he cast his analysis at the leyel of the already-objectified self. As we shall see in a moment, a fully phenomenological account would recognize that whereas we are capable of becoming objects to ourselves, in daily life this seldom occurs. Hallowell's implicit concern with what in more contemporary terms we would call practice (cf. Ortner 1984) is summarized in the term "behavioral environment," borrowed from the gestalt psychology of Koftka. Hallowell's protophenomenological approach accounts for an essential feature of the behavioral environment, namely that it includes not only natural objects but "culturally reified objects," especially supernatural beings and the practices associated with them. Understood in terms ofperception and practice, Hallowell's concept of self thus did more than place the individual in culture. It linked behavior to the objective world, but defmed objective in terms of cultural specificity. It linked perceptual processes with social constraints and cultural meanings, but added selfawareness and reflexivity. Here we reach a critical point for our argument. For if perception and practice are central to the self as a capacity for orientation, we can identify the locus of the self as identical with the locus of perception and practice. For help we turn directly, as Hallowell could not, to the phenomenological thinkers. The philosopher Zaner, drawing on the phenomenological work of Hans Jonas, Erwin Straus, and Aaron Gurwitsch, suggests an answer: My embodying organism is thus constiruted as my orientational locus in the world, "my place," complexly articulated and membered by means of its ("my") sensorium. In the diversity of my sense I am oriented to the Other [in this case the other person] as one and the same, and the Other is positioned and oriented by (referenced to) my bodily placement (body attitudes, stances, place, movements, etc.). Hence the arrangement of the environing milieu of things is functionally correlated with my organism: the latter is the organizational, sensorial center for the actional and sensible display of surrounding objects. (1981:38, emphasis in original)

INTRODUCTION

7

The critical point, and one which Hallowell missed in his discussion of orientation, is the grounding of the self in embodiment, our essential existential condition. And here is our answer: the specificity we are looking for can be found in the way self processes grounded in embodiment take up or engage fundamental psychocultural issues in the experience of ritual healing. The processes of orientation are the same as those which move experience from indeterminacy to what Hallowell referred to as "culturally reified objects." Yet it is essential to note that Hallowell did not place the self outside the list of elements with respect to which it is oriented. Again implicitly, he recognized that the self is always already in the cultural world. However, for some reason he excluded the presence of other selves from his outline, and we will have to reinsert them. We will take up the issue of other selves along with that of objectification, to which we have already alluded. For this, we turn to the contributions of Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu. Merleau-Ponty (1962) can help understand embodiment with respect to perception and objectification. Bourdieu (1977,1984) situates embodiment in an anthropological discourse of practice, and interaction with other selves. For Merleau-Ponty, the body is a "setting in relation to the world" (1962:303), and consciousness is the body projecting itself into the world. For Boutdieu, the socially informed body is the "principle generating and unifying all practices" (1977: 124), and consciousness is a form of strategic calculation fused with a system of objective potentialities. I shall briefly elaborate these views as summarized in Merleau-Ponty's concept of the preobjective and Bourdieu's concept of the habitus? Merleau-Ponty objects to the empiricist position that the object we perceive is a kind of stimulus and that perception is an intellectual act in response to that stimulus. This is because the object of perception conceived as an intellectual act would have to be either possible or necessary, when in fact it is real. That is, "it is given as the infinite sum of an indefinite series of perspectival views in each of which the object is given but in none of which it is given exhaustively" (1964b: 15). The critical "but" in this analysis requires the perceptual synthesis of the object to be accomplished by the subject, which is the body as a field of perception and practice (ibid.: 16). Stated another way, MerleauPonty wants our starting point to be the experience of perceiving in all its richness and indeterminacy, because in fact we do not have any phenomenologically real objects prior to perception. To the contrary, "our perception ends in objects" (1962:67). This is to say that objects

8

INTRODUCTION

are a secondary product of reflective thinking. On the level of perception we "have" no objects, we are simply "in the world." But if perception ends in objects, where does it begin? Merleau-Ponty's answer is, in the body. In other words, he suggests that we step backward from the objective and start with the body in the world. However, since the subject-object distinction is a product of analysis, and since objects themselves are end results of perception rather than being given empirically to perception, we need a concept to allow us to study the embodied process of perception from beginning to end (instead of in reverse as would the empiricists). For this purpose Merleau-Ponty offers the concept of the "preobjective" or "prereflective." His project is to "coincide with the act of perception and break with the critical attitude" (1962:238-239), for the latter mistakenly begins with objects. Phenomenology is a descriptive science of existential beginnings, not of already-constituted cultural products. If we can capture those existential beginnings in healing, we will be well on our way toward understanding its experiential specificity. Our goal is to capture that moment of transcendence in which perception and objectification begin, constituting and being constituted by culture. It may be objected that a concept of the preobjective implies that embodied existence is outside or prior to culture. This objection would miss what Merleau-Ponty means by the body as "a certain setting in relation to the world" (ibid.:303) or a "general power of inhabiting all the environments which the world contains" (ibid.:311). In fact, the body is in the world from the beginning: Consciousness projects itself into a physical world and has a body, as it projects itself into a cultural world and has habits: because it cannot be consciousness without playing upon significances given either in the absolute past of nature or in its own personal past, and because any form of lived experience tends toward a certain generality whether that of our habits or that of our bodily functions. It is as false to place ourselves in society as an object among other objects, as it is to place society within ourselves as an object of thought, and in both cases the mistake lies in treating the social as an object. We must return to the social with which we are in contact by the mere fact of existing, and which we carry about inseparably with us before any objectification. (1962:137,362)

By beginning with the preobjective, then, we are not positing a precultural, but a preabstract. The concept offers to cultural analysis the openended human process of taking up and inhabiting the cultural world

INTRODUCflON

9

in which our existence transcends but remains grounded in de facto situations. In effect, Merleau-Ponty's existential analysis collapses the subjectobject duality in order to more precisely pose the question of how the reflective processes of the intellect constitute the various domains of culture. If we begin with the lived world of perceptual phenomena, our bodies are not objects to us. Quite the contrary, they are an integral part of the perceiving subject. This has a very important methodological consequence. That is, on the level of perception it is thus not legitimate to distinguish mind and body. Instead, beginning from perceptual reality it becomes relevant to ask how our bodies may become objectified through processes of reflection. Merleau-Ponty felt that it was necessary to return to this level of real, primordial experience in which the object is present and living, as a starting point for the analysis of language, knowledge, society, and religion. We have not yet arrived at other selves, however, and this is becoming urgent as we recognize that isolated reflection does not account either for the emergence of objects or for the way we become objects to ourselves. Others playa prominent role in objectifying us. In order to begin to grasp this issue, we must elaborate the idea of practice alongside that of perception. We have just seen that Merleau-Ponty's goal is to move the study of perception from objects to the process of objectification. Bourdieu's parallel goal for a theory of practice is to move beyond analysis of the social fact as opus operatum, to analysis of the modus operandi of social life. He fmds this modus operandi in the concept of habitus, defmed as a system of perduring dispositions. 8 This system constitutes the unconscious, collectively inculcated principle for the generation and structuring of both practices and representations (1977: 72). His defmition holds promise because it highlights the lived, acted content of the behavioral environment. We could in fact say that the notion of habitus synthesizes behavior and environment in a single term. In Bourdieu's work, this synthesis is possible for the same reason that allows him to state that the habitus does not generate practices unsystematically or at random. This reason is his recognition that there is a principle generating and unifying all practices, the system of inseparably cognitive and evaluative structures which organizes the vision of the world in accordance with the objective structures of a determinate state of the social world: this principle is nothing other than the socially informed body, with its tastes and distastes, its compulsions and repulsions, with, in a word, all its senses, that is to say, not only the traditional five senses-which never escape the structuring

10

INTRODUCTION

action of social determinisms-but also the sense of necessity and the sense of duty, the sense of direction and the sense of reality, the sense of balance and the sense of beauty, common sense and the sense of the sacred, tactical sense and the sense of responsibility, business sense and the sense of propriety, the sense of humor and the sense of absurdity, moral sense and the sense of practicality, and so on. (ibid.:124)

For our purposes, the principal point is that behavioral dispositions are collectively synchronized and attuned to one another through the medium of the body. Bourdieu maintains this groundedness in the body even in discussion of the "sense of taste" as the cultural operator in his social analysis of aesthetics, insisting that it is "inseparable from taste in the sense of the capacity to discern the flavors of foods which implies a preference for some of them" (1984:99). The cultural locus of Bourdieu's habitus is the conjunction between the objective conditions of life and the totality of aspirations and practices completely compatible with those conditions. To be consistent with what we have learned from Merleau-Ponty, we must recall that what Bourdieu refers to as objective conditions must already be the product of perceptual consciousness. This fact is implicit in Bourdieu's recognition that objective conditions do not cause practices and neither do practices determine objective conditions: The habitus is the universalizing mediation that causes an individual agent's practices, without either explicit reason or signifying intent, to be none the less "sensible" and "reasonable." That part of practices which remains obscure in the eyes of their own producers is the aspect by which they are objectively adjusted to other practices and to the structures of which the principle of their production is itself a product. (1977: 79)

In other words, as a universalizing mediation the habitus has a dual function. In its relation to objective structures it is the principle of generation of practices (ibid.: 77), whereas in its relation to a total repertoire of social practices it is their unifying principle (ibid.:83). With this concept Bourdieu offers a social analysis of practice as "necessity made into a virtue" (ibid.:77), and his image of human activity is Leibniz's magnetic needle that appears actually to enjoy turning northwards (1984:175). Our methodological "step backward" has now led us to the core of a theory of self grounded in embodiment. The question about therapeutic efficacy as an operation on the self now appears continuous with the question of how orientation takes place upon the ground of embodied

INTRODUCfION

11

existence. One consequence of this formulation is to recognize a continuity among normal experience, emotional distress, and psychiatric illness. 9 The self processes of orientation and engagement are the same in all cases, and what we are concerned with is the redirection of those processes, taking embodiment as our starting point. Here we must elaborate another theme in our definition, namely that the self is an indeterminate capacity of orientation. Above all, it is not a question here of biocultural nonspecificity, but of experiential indeterminacy. To consolidate this idea let us follow Merleau-Ponty as he argues that existence is indeterminate in so far as it is the very process by which the hitherto meaningless takes on meaning, whereby what had merely a [for example] sexual significance assumes a more general one, chance is transformed into reason; in so far as it is the act of taking up a de facto situation. We shall give the name "transcendence" to this act in which existence takes up, to its own account, and transforms such a situation. Precisely because it is transcendence, existence never urterly outruns anything, for in that case the tension which is essential to it [between objective world and existential meaning] would disappear. It never abandons itself. What it is never remains external and accidental to it, since this is always taken up and integrated into it. (1962: 169) This transcendence described by Merleau-Ponty is not mystical, but is grounded in the world, such that existential indeterminacy becomes the basis for an inalienable human freedom (1962, part 3, chapter 3). For Bourdieu, as for Merleau-Ponty, the synthesis of practical domains in a unitary habitus is predicated on indeterminacy, but this variant of indeterminacy does not lead to transcendence as it does for Merleau-Ponty. Instead of an existential indeterminacy, Bourdieu's is a logical indeterminacy, which never explicitly or systematically limits itself to anyone aspect of the terms it links, but takes each one, each time, as a whole, exploiting to the full the fact that two "data" are never entirely alike in all respects but are always alike in some respect. [Ritual practice works by] bringing the same symbol into different relations through different aspects or bringing different aspects of the same referent into the same relation of opposition. (1977:111, 112) Logical indeterminacy is the basis for transposition of different schemes into different practical domains, forming the basis for the polysemy and ambiguity that allows for improvisation in everyday life. 10 Although a shared paradigm of embodiment thus leads both theorists

12

INTRODUCI10N

to a principle of indeterminacy, there remains a critical difference insofar as Bourdieu's logical principle becomes the condition for semiotic improvisation whereas Merleau-Ponty's existential principle becomes the condition for phenomenological transcendence. l l In sum, MerleauPonty sees in the indeterminacy of perception a transcendence which does not outrun its embodied situation, but which always "asserts more things than it grasps: when I say that I see the ash-tray over there, I suppose as completed an unfolding of experience which could go on ad infinitum, and I commit a whole perceptual future" (1962:361). Bourdieu sees in the indeterminacy of practice that, since no person has conscious mastery of the modus operandi which integrates symbolic schemes and practices, the unfolding of his works and actions "always outruns his conscious intentions" (1977: 79). Whereas they are both predicated on the centrality of embodiment, there is an important difference between these two notions ofindeterminacy, a difference that is relevant for how we construe orientation among selves or within a collectivity. The locus of these differences is Bourdieu's rejection of the concepts of lived experience, intentionality, and the distinction between consciousness in itself and for itself. Although we need not elaborate each of these notions, we must observe the methodological consequence of this wholesale rejection of fundamental phenomenological concepts. In effect, it requires Bourdieu to ground the conditions for the intelligibility of social life entirely on homogenization of the habitus within groups or classes (1977:80), and to explain individual variation in terms of homology among individuals. The result is that individuals' systems of dispositions are structural variants of the group habitus, or deviations in relation to a style (1977:86). Merleau-Ponty, in contrast, insists on the a priori necessity of intersubjectivity, pointing out that any actor's adoption of a position presupposes being situated in an intersubjective world, and that science itself is upheld by this basic doxa. This is perhaps the methodological moment at which semiotics and phenomenology diverge, but it is by the same token the moment where they meet, and we will have occasion to return to this moment at various points in our argument. For the present I will argue for preserving the notion of intersubjectivity, and speak for the reconcilability of the two positions. Again I do so following Merleau-Ponty, for whom intersubjectivity is not an interpenetration of isolated intentionalities, but an interweaving of familiar patterns of behavior:

INrRODUCfION

13

I perceive the other as a piece of behavior, for example, I perceive the grief or the anger of the other in his conduct, in his face or his hands, without recourse to any "inner" experience of suffering or anger, and because grief and anger are variations of belonging to the world, undivided between the body and consciousness, and equally applicable to the other's conduct, visible in his phenomenal body, as in my own conduct as it is presented to me. (1962:356)12

In short, because body and consciousness are one, intersubjectivity is also a copresence. 13 Another's emotion is immediate because it is grasped preobjectively, ¥ld familiar insofar as we share the same habitus. To paraphrase Merleau-Ponty, another person is perceived as "another mysel£" that tears itself away from being simply a phenomenon in my perceptual field, appropriating my phenomena and conferring on them the dimension of intersubjective being, and so offering "the task of a true communication" (Merleau-Ponty 1964b:18). Just as we do not perceive our own bodies as objects, other persons can become objects for us only secondarily, as the result of reflection. The conditions under which selves become objectified can only be identified empirically, as we are about to do in our cultural phenomenology of the self in religious healing. Finally, this noti~n of intersubjectivity offers an insight into the relation between self and sacred. That is, the preobjective character of another person as "another mysel£" is a major part of what distinguishes our experience of the social other from our experience of the sacred other, for the latter is in a radical sense "not myself.,,14 We can consolidate this understanding of self as the indeterminate capacity for orientation by comparing our notion of indeterminacy with Fernandez's concept of the inchoate. For Fernandez the inchoate is "the underlying (psychophysiological) and overlying (sociocultural) sense of entity (entirety of being or wholeness) which we reach for to express (by predication) and act out (by performance) but can never grasp" (1982: 39). As a first approximation we could say that whereas a concept of the inchoate is essentially concerned with the problem of form out of formlessness, a concept of indeterminacy is concerned with that of specificity out of flux. Likewise, as a matter of emphasis we could suggest that the inchoate is a starting point for examination of affect and identity, whereas indeterminacy leads us to issues of perception and practice. At a deeper level, the difference is in Fernandez's emphasis on the sense of entity that we reach for but can never grasp. The notion of indeterminacy accounts precisely for why we cannot grasp it-"it" being the self itself-because there is in fact no "entity" as such to be grasped. .

14

INfRODUCfION

This is not to say, however, that the self as indeterminate capacity for orientation and engagement has no characteristics, and this brings us back to the inclusion in our definition of reflexivity and effort, which Zaner (1981) refers to as "fundamental moments of self." The selfreferentiality of the whole that is composed of bodily experience, habitus, and world is a kind of "inwardness" that results in the awakening of the senses of presence in the world and of copresence with others. This situated reflexivity is accompanied by an effort which is precisely the effort to become oriented in the face of the vertigo of essential indeterminacy encountered in this awakening. Reflexivity and effort are necessary characteristics of self. One advantage of identifying them the way we have is that it allows us a better feel both for the proper place of self-awareness and objectification in our understanding of self. It shows why we eschewed self-awareness as a starting point in our consideration of Hallowell, and the already-constituted world of objects as a starting point through our reading ofMerleau-Ponty. A second advantage is that is recognizes self-awareness and objectification (i.e., the creation of culture) as inevitable-there can be no other consequence of reflexivity and effort. Yet, and this is its final advantage, insofar as reflexivity and effort are respectively grounded in the indeterminacy of perception and practice, the orientation process is never complete. Zaner summerizes this point with a term borrowed from Gabriel Marcel, suggesting that the self is constantly "en route." Having identified reflexivity and effort, we are prepared for the last element of our definition, that self processes achieve the self-objectification of persons. We turn again for contrast to Fernandez, for whom the inchoate is the ground of emotional meaning, moral imagination, identity, and self-objectification, all of which are characteristics of persons. The person already objectified is a culturally constituted representa.tion of self. The preobjective self, however, is a culturally constituted mode of being in the world. In the constitution of persons, Fernandez's functions of predication and performance are parallel to the domains of perception and practice that we have identified as loci for the constitution of self. To be precise, with predication we recognize that perceiving is perceiving tIS, and with performance that practice is practice tIS if. With predication reflexivity becomes self-awareness, and precisely because it is based on predication it is necessarily self-awareness of a specific cultural kind (cf. Shweder and Bourne 1982). With performance effort becomes agency, but again, because it is based in the efficacy of perfor-

INTRODUCTION

15

mance, it is not necessarily the agency of a solitary ego often presupposed in our own culture. Recognizing the inchoate as the existential ground of the person means emphasizing that there is always some form in which the self is objectified. Acknowledging indeterminacy as the ground of self means emphasizing that form itself is indeterminate. On both analytic levels one must admit, along with Fernandez, the critical importance of metaphor as the epitome of what Merleau-Ponty referred to as our human "genius for ambiguity" (1962:189). For present purposes we need not elaborate the notion of metaphor other than to observe how it relates differentially to person and sel£ 15 Because the person is a kind of representation, however, the feature of metaphor likely to be stressed is a textual one, namely its richness of meaning. Because the self is a mode of being in the world, the feature that must be stressed is a feature of embodiment, namely the instability of attention directed toward any one dimension of a metaphor's meaning. To observe self processes, or processes of self-objectification, in perception and practice is then not only to observe a striving for a sense of entity through predication and performance, but to examine a series of shifting construals of relationship among bodily experience, world, and habitus.

The Sacred Self in a Charismatic World No matter how much conceptual sense our defmition of the self makes, it remains empty theorizing unless it is capable of dialogue with concrete phenomena. We must then work out our insights in the empirical thickness of healers' and supplicants' experience, specifying the transformation of suffering16 and distress as the transformation of self. This will require phenomenological description of particular culturally elaborated self processes as they are addressed to situationally relevant psychocultural themes. Yet it was important that we present it first, before our description of the Charismatic Renewal as an "object" of analysis. To do otherwise would have been disingenuous, presupposing that we could somehow describe the movement in terms devoid of theory before then subjecting it to analysis. Since all description is implicitly theoretical-the result of objectification-our dialogue has necessarily already begun. Accordingly, our introduction to the movement in this fmal section of the chapter already bares the conceptual

16

INfRODUCTION

scaffolding on which it is constructed. As an introduction, however, it is the first step toward grounding our argument in Blake's "minute particulars" of existence. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is a movement within the Roman Catholic Church which incorporates Pentecostal practices into Catholicism. Contemporary Pentecostalism began around the turn of the present century, and until the 1950s was a predominantly working-class religion practiced in denominations such as the Assemblies of God (Bloch-Hoell 1964, Hollenweger 1972, Synan 1975). Through the influence of these "classical" Pentecostals, Catholics and "mainline" denominational Protestants occasionally underwent the spiritual experience of being "baptized in the Holy Spirit." These neophytes would typically leave their churches and join Pentecostal ones. Beginning with the Episcopalians in the 1950s and culminating with the Catholics in 1967, however, many of those who underwent the Pentecostal experience decided that it was not incompatible with their faith. They began to join together in "neo-Pentecostal" groups, originating "charismatic renewal" movements within their denominations. The moment in which the Roman Catholic movement originated coincided with the beginning of the "post-Tridentine" epoch of church history. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) marked the end of a regime of doctrine and practice that had lasted four hundred years since the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Changes instituted in the wake of Vatican II created the conditions of possibility for the Charismatic Renewal in several respects. The Council's position on the theoretical possibility of "charisms" or "spiritual gifts" opened the way for the adoption of the Pentecostal phenomena in their already-developed ritual forms. Reinterpretation of the sacraments, wherein penance or confession became the sacrament of reconciliation (rather than of guilt) and extreme unction, or the last anointing, became the sacrament of the sick (rather than of the dying) opened the way for Charismatic faithhealing. Changes in liturgical form such as turning the altar to face the congregation and adopting vernacular language in place of Latin opened the way for paraliturgical innovation such as the Charismatic prayer meeting. The new biblicism has been taken up wholeheartedly by Charismatics, sometimes to the point of fundamentalism, and the movement is a stronghold of lay initiative and ecumenism. These changes within Catholicism also coincided with the culmination of the post-World War II era in the cultural ferment of the 1960s. Its racial strife, the morally devastating Indochinese war, and mass col-

INTRODUcnON

17

lege enrollments of the "baby boom" generation spawned movements of black power, feminism, and eventually the "new age." Catholics had a variety of options ranging among the Christian Family movement, marriage encounter, the Cursillo, the Christian Worker movement, the "underground church," discussion and encounter groups, home masses with avant garde liturgies, and the political thought of liberation theology. Many of these were characterized by motives of community and renewal. Pentecostalism was a catalyst that added a totalizing enthusiasm and experience of the sacred, precipitating a new movement out of postwar, post-Vatican II Catholicism. The movement attracted a strong following among relatively welleducated, middle-class, suburban Catholics (Mawn 1975, Fichter 1975, McGuire 1982, Neitz 1987). Since its inception it has spread throughout the world wherever there are Catholics. 17 The Church hierarchy has cautiously but consistently recognized the movement's legitimacy, apparently tolerating its theological radicalism for the sake of encouraging its increasing political conservatism. Although it has been predominantly a movement of the laity, substantial proportions of nuns and priests have participated, including several bishops and one cardinal. From 1967 to 1970 the movement was a collection of small, personalistic groups emphasizing spontaneity in prayer and interpersonal relations, and loosely organized via networks of personal contacts. From 1970 to 1975 it underwent rapid institutionalization and consolidation of a lifestyle including collective living, distinctive forms of ritual, and a specialized language of religious experience. From 1975 to the end of the decade the movement entered an apocalyptic phase based on prophetic revelation that "hard times" were imminent for Christians. The turn of the decade brought recognition by the movement that its growth had virtually ceased, and marked an increasingly clear divergence between Charismatics gathered into tightly structured intentional communities who wanted to preserve the earlier sense of apocalyptic mission and those who remained active in less overtly communitarian parochial prayer groups. By the end of the eighties some among the former considered themselves a distinct movement. Among the latter, boundaries between Charismatics and conventional Catholics became somewhat ambiguous, as many who no longer attended regular prayer meetings remained active in their parishes, while many Catholics with no other movement involvement became attracted to large public healing services conducted by Charismatics. Over the course of its twenty-five-year history the movement has

18

INTRODUcrrON

also undergone a demographic transition. Not only have Charismatics themselves aged, but they have attracted increasingly older members such that the modal age of participants is at present in the fIfties. The Charismatic Renewal is no longer the vanguard movement it conceived itself to be in its fIrst phases. It has a stable bureaucratic organization, and by the late 1980s had become one among other conservative movements in contemporary Catholicism. What constitutes an identity as a Catholic Charismatic? The fIrst element is cultivation of a particular style of relationship to divinity. The Charismatics claim to offer a unique spiritual experience to individuals, and promise a dramatic renewal of Church life based on a spirituality of "personal relationship" with Jesus and direct access to divine power and inspiration through a series of "spiritual gifts" or "charisms." Directly relevant to the issue of a sacred self, the notion of a relationship to the deity is a template for orientation in the world, and the exercise of spiritual gifts is a template for self processes that bring about that orientation. Despite the currency of the notion of being "born again," Charismatics are more likely to say that religious experience allows them to discover their "real self' than to claim that they have been given a "new self.,,18 Identity is expressed as a sense of coming to know "who I am in Christ." This sense of orientation and of self process does not exist in a cultural vacuum, however. The Charismatic sacred self is elaborated with respect to psychocultural themes already salient in the North American milieu. These are themes in the sense introduced by Opler (1945) to describe global preoccupations of a culture. In a phenomenological sense they are also issues thematized or made salient in the orienting processes of self-objectifIcation. The themes of spontaneity and control were already identifIed by Clow (1976) as central to traditional Pentecostalism, and have been preserved and elaborated in the Catholic movement. In addition, the theme of intimacy is vivid both in the notion of a personal relationship with the deity and in the emphasis placed on a sense of community in Charismatic groups. Let us briefly elaborate these three psychocultural themes and their relevance to Charismatics. 19 Participants experienced the Charismatic Renewal as an opportunity to achieve that spontaneity sought after in American culture both as a personal trait and as a feature of interpersonal relations. The notion that mental health is related to the "spontaneity of the self' is found in some versions of professional psychological theory (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983:200). The kind of American who initiates or at least

INTRODUCTION

19

participates in "impromptu gatherings" or events is valued, and middleclass Americans often lament not having the kind of personal relations where friends feel free to "drop over anytime" (cf. Varenne 1986).20 One may even see the desire for spontaneity in the current popularity of comedy clubs where patrons seek to be startled~pr shocked into laughter. Charismatics, also reacting to the ritualistic Catholicism in which many were raised, are highly motivated by the ideal of spontaneity in spiritual experience as well as interpersonal interaction. Indeed, in the early 1970s when I began fieldwork among them, Charismatics would react negatively if I referred to an interest in their "ritual" life, associating the term with formalism and lack of spontaneity or freedom. Some movement participants would reject being labeled as such because it violated their sense of spontaneity, saying that they could not be Charismatics because it was "not an organization but a movement of the Spirit." The theme of control is likewise prominent in the cultural psychology of Americans. Crawford (1984), for example, has analyzed the American concept of health as a symbol that condenses metaphors of selfcontrol and release from pressures. It is consistent that the popular imagination has been captivated by an illness like anorexia nervosa, in which "the main theme is a struggle for control, for a sense of identity, competence, and effectiveness" (Hilde Bruch, quoted in Bell 1985 : 17). Gaines (1992) has identified control as a prominent cultural theme in formal psychiatric diagnosis, and Lutz (1990) shows that the language of control pervades everyday emotional discourse. A common complaint by middle-class Americans when their affairs are not going well or they feel under stress is that "my life is out of control." My impression is that Americans are less bothered by the breach of decorum in losing control of their own behavior than they are in not being able to control their situation: one may indeed "fly off the handle" ifit appears impossible to "do something" that is causing frustration. 21 Charismatics thematize both positive and negative aspects of control. On the one hand, they learn not only that they should "surrender" themselves to the will of God, but that overwhelming situations can be "given to the Lord." On the other hand, the influence of evil spirits is suspected precisely when negative behaviors or emotions are out of control. Finally, intimacy is a prominent American psychocultural theme. It is vivid in the ideal for relations between spouses, summarized in the notions of romantic love and close communication (Bellah et al. 1985, Levine 1991). When an American refers to a group of friends or co-

20

INTRODUCTION

workers as "like a family," the connotation is more likely to be that members are intimate and so close that one can "tell them anything" than that they are loyal solely because an obligatory social relationship exists. This contrasts with Japanese culture, for example, in which intimacy is cultivated among peers of the same age group but not typically between spouses, and where in general the values of continuing nurturance and harmony often "take precedence over the actualization of intimacy in relationships" (Devos 1985: 163, 165, 167). Although intimacy is not an exclusively "Western" cultural characteristic, it has been described, especially among Americans, as the "most precious commodity in life" (Hsu 1985: 36). Charismatic self processes of intimacy are found in their motive toward community, in the body technique of laying on hands, in the form of an intimate relationship (cultivated by means of a private "prayer life") with a divinity conceived explicitly as a "personal God," and in the genre of ritual language known as "sharing" the intimacy of one's life experiences and thoughts. Westley (1977) has shown that speaking in tongues is not a necessary and sufficient criterion of being Charismatic. In her study, "individual members saw the moment that they began sharing as the moment of their rebirth," and members stated that until they began sharing their prayer group was not a Charismatic one (ibid.:929). Charismatics are not unique among Americans who address their preoccupation with such self-related psychocultural themes through ritual healing. Meredith McGuire (1982, 1988), who has studied a wide spectrum of middle-class American healing groups including that of Catholic Pentecostals, points out that for many of them " 'health' is an idealization of a kind of self, and 'healing' is part of the process by which growth toward that ideal is achieved" (1988:244). She suggests that Christian healing is relatively distinct in that it cultivates a self in a subordinate relationship to a transcendent deity and in conformity to group norms, while many other forms of contemporary religious healing cultivate a flexible self freed from learned constraints and open to new possibilities and potentials (ibid.:238). Nevertheless, for McGuire the general condition for this concern with self is that contemporary society has approached the "limits of rationalization" of the body, emotional experience, and styles of moral evaluation and legitimation, limits at which there is change in "the very practices by which self is symbolized, shaped and expressed" (ibid.:251-252). Her argument suggests that these limits are not being retreated from, surpassed, or abolished, but that internal social system tensions occurring at those limits generate

INTRODUCTION

21

a basic reorientation. Whether or not one accepts the hypothesis about limits of rationalization, McGuire's observations reinforce our premise that therapeutic specificity can be identified in orientational self processes addressed to psychocultural themes such as spontaneity, control, and intimacy in ritual healing. Among Charismatics, the self processes addressed to these three themes become operative within a coherent ritual system. Catholic Charismatic ritual performance is characterized by a marked linguisticality, in that most of what goes on is verbal. In this sense it is a religion of "the word." Bound by the mortar of oral performance, ritual events become the building blocks of Catholic Charismatic life in a manner distinct from societies typically encountered in the anthropological literature. Anthropological accounts of traditional societies customarily treat ritual as a window on the nature of society, as events that throw light on underlying cultural and structural patterns: society creates ritual as a self-affirmation. In a movement like Catholic Pentecostalism, this relation between society and ritual is inverted. Ritual events like prayer meetings are both historically and structurally prior to the generation of distinctive patterns of thought, behavior, and social organization. The events provide the earliest models for the organization of community life: ritual creates society ar a self-affirmation. Prayer meetings, initiation ceremonies, and healing services are the three main classes of ritual event. The prayer meeting is the central collective event for Catholic Charismatics, and indeed the organization of prayer groups and communities evolved directly from the organization of prayer meetings. A small casual prayer group is likely to gather around a lighted candle in the living room of a private home. A large group may meet in a gymnasium, with several instrumentalists to accompany group singing, a public address system for the speakers, and control by leaders over which participants will be allowed to "prophesy" or "share." Initiation to the Pentecostal experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit is intimately tied to initiation into the Charismatic group. Initiation typically occurs in a series of seven weekly "Life in the Spirit" seminars. The first four weeks explain the "basic Christian message of salvation" and the meaning of baptism in the Spirit, the fifth week is devoted to prayer with laying on of hands for the baptism, and the fmal two weeks are "oriented towards further growth in the life of the Spirit." Healing may take place in large public services or in private, oneon-one sessions. In the former, each supplicant is typically prayed for

22

INfRODUCflON

briefly with the laying on of hands. The latter are similar to sessions of psychotherapy, although of a form that alternates periods of counseling with periods of prayer. Healers tend to specialize in one of several forms of healing, including healing from physical illness, "inner" or emotional healing, and "deliverance" from the influence of evil spirits. Ritual language within any of these classes of events is constituted by a system of four major genres. These genres are named, formalized speech varieties used with regularity in ritual settings, and frequently regarded as verbal manifestations of the sacred. They include prophecy, teaching, prayer, and sharing. Prophecy is a first-person pronouncement in which the "I" is God; the human speaker is merely the divinity's mouthpiece. For Catholic Charismatics prophecy is a kind of divine revelation, a means of access to the mind of God. Teaching is understood as ritual utterance that clarifies some spiritual truth, and thus enables its hearers to lead better Christian lives. Teachings are often detailed elaborations of key terms and concepts that recur in less elaborated form in the other ritual genres. Prayer includes four basic types: worship (with subcategories of adoration, praise, and thanksgiving); petition or intercession on behalf of another for a special purpose such as healing; "seeking the Lord," or prayer for divine guidance; and "taking authority," or praying in the form of a command for evil to depart from a person or situation. Finally, sharing is similar in form to ordinary conversation except that its contents must have some spiritual value or edifying effect. These contents may be experiences, events, problems, or thoughts that have some significance for a religious understanding of daily life. Whereas performance of ritual genres can be understood as a rhetorical means of ordering experience and directing attention, the concrete character of the Charismatic world can be found in the movement's specialized vocabulary of motives (Mills 1940). The motives are words with specialized religious meaning which are constantly circulated in the genres of ritual language. They playa role in orientational self processes insofar as their use both anticipates the situational consequences of participants' actions and implies strategies for action. The motives of Charismatic ritual language name and identify the following features of Charismatic life: (1) forms of relationship among individuals or between individuals and God; (2) forms of collectivity or collective identity; (3) qualities or properties of individuals or relationships; (4) activities or forms of action essential to life within the movement; (5) negativities or countermotives that refer to threats to the Charismatic ideal. 22

INTRODUCTION

23

The Charismatic ritual system is embedded in a behavioral environment that includes several types of culturally objectified persons. We have already briefly mentioned the sense in which the person can be understood as a cultural representation, specifically as an objectification ofself. Parallel to the way in which the self extends beyond the biological individual to encompass relations among body, habitus, and world, the person as representation extends beyond human beings to playa major role in the semiotic constitution of the behavioral environment. Hallowell (1960) showed that among the Ojibwa persons are many phenomenologically real beings that inhabit the cultural world, and with which human beings presumably may come into interaction. Among Charismatics, the domain of person includes not only human beings, both adult and child, but first of all God. The Charismatic deity is really three persons, each with a character corresponding to one of the three parts of the tripartite human person. Thus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit correspond with mind, body, and spirit, and implicitly each divine person is most congenial with its matched subfield within the human person. 23 Also considered persons in this sense are deceased human spirits, and at the opposite end of the life course, human embryos and fetuses. Relative to societies in which they are actively propitiated, ancestral spirits are largely neglected, except insofar as they are occasionally the cause of some affiiction (see chapter 2). Unborn spirits are, however, a cause celebre that lead Charismatics to intense political involvement in the North American cultural debate about abortion. Evil spirits or demons also populate the Charismatic behavioral environment, though Charismatics would doubtless prefer not to grant them the "dignity" of being persons, and instead use a term like "intelligent entities." One healer was on such disrespectfully familiar terms with her adversary (ultimately Satan, despite the multiplicity of individual demons under his dominion) that she referred to him as "the old boy" and "the creep." Other spiritual persons are of decreasing salience for interaction with humans. The importance of the Virgin Mary is proportionally less in "ecumenical" groups where Catholic devotees demur out of politeness to their Protestant fellows, whose traditional culture excludes defining Mary as a person who interacts with humans. Saints are not prominent actors even in predominantly Catholic groups, in this case not out of deference to Protestants, but largely because they become relatively superfluous as intermediaries in a religion that cultivates direct "person-to-person" interaction with the deity. Michael the Archangel is invoked as a protector against evil spirits or as a reinforce-

24

INfRODUCTION

ment in episodes of "spiritual warfare" against them, but angels as a class of spiritual person are conspicuously absent from the Charismatic world, appearing but rarely in healing or prophetic imagery. Our search for specificity of therapeutic process in Charismatic healing can only succeed by taking into account the features of the Charismatic world that we have sketched out in these too-brief paragraphs. In the following chapters we will identify culturally elaborated self processes of imagination, memory, emotion, and language. We will examine how, in the conjunction of these self processes and the three psychocultural themes with respect to which they are oriented, the indeterminate self is objectified and represented as a particular kind of person with a specific identity. This self is sacred insofar as it is oriented in the world and defmes what it means to be human in terms of the wholly "other" than human (van der Leeuw 1938, Eliade 1958, Otto 1958). The sense of the divine other is cultivated by participation in a coherent ritual system. This ritual system is embedded in, and helps to continually create, a behavioral environment in which participants embody a coherent set of dispositions or habitus. These are the elements that constitute the webs of significance-or of embodied existence-within which the sacred self comes into being. To be healed is to inhabit the Charismatic world as a sacred self.

2 Ritual Healing: Aftliction and Transformation

Among Catholic Charismatics, the practice of "praying over" people with the laying on of hands was first used for "baptizing in the Spirit." It soon came also to be used to consecrate prayer-group leaders and for informal healing prayer. For the first several years ritual healing had a relatively low profile in the movement. People learned by doing, discovering how others responded to their ministry and what kind of prayer appeared to be most effective. Sometimes they consulted books on healing by Protestant authors. Starting in 1974 with thenDominican priest Francis MacNutt, Catholic Charismatics began publishing books describing their own experience as healers. In a very short span of years a profusion of books, cassette tapes, and workshops for healers became available. Virtually every Catholic Charismatic healer is familiar with writings by MacNutt, the Jesuit brothers Dennis and Matthew Linn, and Barbara Shlemon, to name only a few. The result has been a fairly uniform diffusion of practices throughout the movement and the evolution of a remarkably consistent and distinctly Catholic system of ritual healing. Charismatics do not hesitate to ask for divine healing, for they are convinced that God wants them to be happy. They participate in the late-twentieth-century shift away from embracing suffering and selfmortification as an imitation of Christ's passion, and toward the relief of suffering through divine healing as practiced by Jesus in the gospels (Favazza 1982). Yet healing is not only the relief of illness and distress, and not only a "sign to unbelievers" of divine power, but an instrument 25

26

RITUAL HEALING

for molding the sacred self for both healers and patients. This ideal self is inherently healthy, both for its own sake and for its capacity to contribute to the divinely appointed collective mission of bringing about the "kingdom of God." Our goal is to grasp the self processes mobilized to constitute the sacred self. Charismatic ritual healing presumes two closely interrelated capacities of self: the capacity to be "wounded" or "broken" and subsequently healed by divine power in a way that roughly corresponds to the professional medical system's notion of cure; and the capacity to achieve spiritual "growth" and "maturity" in a way that roughly corresponds to the aspirations of contemporary holistic and New Age healing. The Charismatic sacred self is, in McGuire's (1982) phrase, both ''whole and holy." In order to remove obstacles to spiritual growth everyone requires healing whether or not they are diagnosably ill in medical or psychological terms. The idea behind this is that everyone suffers from the weaknesses of the "flesh" and the spiritual residue of Adam and Eve's "original sin." In contrast to religions in which incorporation into a phenomenological world may be a condition for relief of affliction, as in the "symbiotic cure" of the Moroccan Hamadsha (Crapanzano 1973), Charismatic healing's motive of growth makes creation of a sacred self programmatic from the outset. In this chapter we will first offer an ethnographic proftle of Charismatic healers and patients. We then describe Charismatic healing as a system of ritual performance constituted by types of healing event, genres or forms of healing prayer, and ritual acts of empowerment. It is these events, genres, and acts that mobilize and organize the self processes. We conclude the chapter with a phenomenological analysis of self processes experienced by healers in two types of ritual acts.

Healers To formulate a profile of Charismatic healing ministers I will call on data from my interviews in the late 1980s with eightyseven experienced healers in New England. A veritable hierarchy of renown exists among healing ministers within the movement. Some "Charismatic stars" bear international reputations, others are known nationally or regionally, some among the prayer groups of a particular city, some only within a particular prayer group. The reputations of

RITUAL HEALING

27

Table 2.1 Professional Training Among 87 Catholic Charismatic Healers. Ph.D.

psychology ministry (pastoral counseling psychology) (3 priests and 1 ex-priest) M.D. psychiatry internal medicine Masters counseling psychology social work Nursing degrees Other training (spiritual direction, clinical pastoral education, pastoral counseling) Total

2 4 1 1 6 3 6 3 26

the healers I interviewed spanned the entire hierarchy of renown. 1 Most were in their forties or fifties. Whereas many had been involved in the Charismatic Renewal for ten or more years, all but a few had participated for at least a year prior to becoming healers. The eighty-seven healing ministers included eighteen priests, seven nuns, seventeen laymen, and forty-five laywomen. Of the lay healers all but four women were married. The majority, or fifty-three (60 percent) of the healers, practiced in the setting of a prayer group or covenant community, and of these only ten served people outside the membership of their group. 2 A second group of twenty-one healers, independent of any group affiliation, served a broader clientele. 3 Finally, another group of thirteen healing ministers were affiliated with counseling centers. Of the eighty-seven healers interviewed, twenty-six (30 percent) had some form of professional training in health or mental-health care, though not all of these integrated healing into their professional work (table 2.1). On the other hand, of fourteen interviewees who worked professionally as healers (that is, were paid for their services), not all had professional training. Finally, seven healers, generally at higher levels in the hierarchy of renown, devoted full time to their "ministries" without receiving professional compensation. Several of the healers belonged to the Association of Christian Therapists, an organization founded in 1975 and composed largely of Catholic Charismatic health-care professionals. Based on their sense of compatibility between religion and science, such professionals integrate healing prayer into their therapeutic repertoires, while at the same time some healers are inspired to pursue professional training. Even among strictly religious healers referral networks include not only more experi-

28

RITUAL HEALING

enced Charismatic healers, but also mental health professionals and physicians. Some healers admit learning to make mental-health referrals from unsuccessful and even unintentionally harmful attempts to help severely disturbed persons. Healers typically are unable to articulate clear criteria for when to make such a referral, but report attending to behavioral and interactional cues as well as to unresponsiveness or lack of engagement in the healing prayer. A referral does not preclude continuation of healing prayer, especially if the referral is to a psychiatrist, regarded primarily as a source of medication. 4 How does one become a Charismatic healing minister? The answer to this question is critical because of what it may tell us about the dynamics of the healing system in relation to other such systems documented in the anthropological literature. One of the most common patterns in the literature is the initiatory illness, signifying that the afflicted is to become a healer. It does happen that Charismatics enter the "healing ministry" by being healed of a problem or illness themselves. Thereupon they may discover a special gift in praying for the healing of others similarly afflicted. Such an initiatory illness is by no means required, however. Strictly speaking, it is the healing that is taken as a sign rather than the illness itself (e.g., alcoholism or the trauma of sexual abuse), and in fact its importance to their adopting the role of healer was cited by only six of our healers. Nevertheless, as "spiritually mature" individuals who have lived the "life of the Spirit" for a number of years, virtually all Charismatic healing ministers can narrate incidents in which they have been healed, and may regard such experiences as increasing their ability to pray sensitively with others. With regard to other initiatory patterns commonly documented cross-culturally, only two healers began their ministry because of the spontaneous 1Jlanifestation of a divine gift of revelation (two others stated that they were encouraged by such manifestations after they tried healing prayer with others). Only two reported beginning in response to a vision (in one case her own vision, in another a vision by another prayer-group member). Only one reported actually "asking for" the gift of healing from God, and three others expressed having had an "interest in" ritual healing prior to having the opportunity to practice it. Only five healers reported having been in any kind of formal or semiformal "apprenticeship" to a moreexperienced Charismatic healer. The majority of Charismatic healers begin their ministry in one of several less-dramatic ways. First, they may gravitate toward healing be-

RITUAL HEALING

29

cause of a preexisting role. Based on a scriptural injunction that community "elders" should pray for the sick among their faithful, group leaders (n = 8) may fmd themselves "naturally" beginning to pray with others for healing. A priest (n = 9) by virtue of the additional access to divine power conferred by his ordination and his accustomed role of ministering to others (including performance of the Sacrament of the Sick), and a health-care professional (n = 12) by virtue of training and interest, may also be expected to playa role in healing. An even more common pattern of becoming a healer is to be invited to do so by others (n = 25). This may begin with informal requests for prayer and growing recognition of a healer's giftedness by word of mouth, or by formal invitation to join a healing team based on recognition of "spiritual maturity" and other personal qualities by community leaders. Others, knowing that they should be involved in some "service to the community," search about among several possible "ministries" until, often guided by the recommendation of others, they fmd that prayer for healing suits them. Still others reported that during the course of their involvement in the movement the practice of praying together with and for people "naturally" evolved into healing prayer. Some groups maintain the original emphasis by insisting that theirs be called simply a "prayer ministry" instead of a "healing ministry." Individuals may report the naturalness of their earliest experience in statements like, ''When people needed prayer I'd just pray," or, "that was very natural for me because I'd been a member of ALANON,"s or again, "all along in my life people would come to me and talk to me about their problems." A combination of these patterns may appear in the account of a single healer, such as one woman who became involved because she was healed herself, but who also was someone "others always came to with problems," who was a trained psychotherapist, and who was asked by others to formulate teachings about healing prayer. Perhaps more than anything else, these patterns of selection and recognition reinforce a conception that, insofar as the "gift" to heal others is a capacity of the sacred self, it is so in its aspect of the collective self. This self-in-creation is best conceived not with respect either to its egocentric "boundedness" or sociocentric "permeability," but in terms of its disposition within a whole-part relationship between person and community. One does not only pray for others because one is gifted; one can receive the gift because one prays for others.

30

RITUAL HEALING

Patients

Let us turn from healers to patients in Charismatic healing, drawing on data from our 1987 survey of 587 participants in 5 Catholic Charismatic healing services. The socioeconomic status of participants (table 2.2) is unremarkable, showing relatively even distribution across educational and occupational categories. However, one demographic feature is relevant to defining the structure of the healing system and its historical development. That is, not all who attend large public healing services can be considered "Charismatics." This conforms to the pattern of many religious healing systems described by anthropologists, which are typically exoteric in the sense that they are available to any member of the society who wishes to consult them (Janzen 1978, Kapferer 1983, Kleinman 1980). Even those systems associated with relatively exclusive sects or movements are seldom restricted only to members. Studying Mexican spiritualists, Finkler (1985) observed a distinction between those who were devotees and those who made casual or periodic use of ritual healing, and Crapanzano (1973) noted a similar distinction between Moroccan Hamadsha participants who

Table 2.2 Socioeconomic Status by Occupation and Education of Participants in Catholic Charismatic Healing Services. Years of Education Total

6-8

9-12

13-16

17+

N %

N %

N %

N %

N %

4 .79 4 .79 6 1.18 6 1.18 7 1.38 27 5.31

43 8.46 63 12.40 42 8.27 54 10.63 50 9.84 252 49.61

8.66 43 8.46 16 3.15 38 7.48 35 6.89 176 34.65

24 4.72 7 1.38 7 1.38 12 2.36 3 .59 53 10.43

115 22.64 117 23.03 71 13.98 110 21.65 95 18.70 508 100.0

Occupation Category

Professional Skilled Semi-skilled Housewife Student, Retired, Unemployed Total Frequency missing

= 79.

44

RITUAL HEALING

31

experienced a "symbiotic" cure by being absorbed into the brotherhood and others who received a "one-shot" exorcistic cure. Whereas Catholic Charismatics began praying for healing only with one another, over the past two decades ritual healing has become more accessible to those with only a marginal exposure to the movement. Public healing services are invariably run by Charismatics, but in some of them the use of charisms such as speaking in tongues and prophecy is intentionally muted, out of concern that participants may be frightened or alienated by such unfamiliar practices. Among respondents to our questionnaire, while 30.6 percent of healing-service participants can be considered fully active Charismatics, another 34.8 percent have virtually no involvement in the movement. 6 Furthermore, because healing services take place in different settings, the proportion of active charismatics in the five services observed ranged from a low of 17 percent to a high of 56 percent. The five settings represent a typical range, including one at a large suburban shrine center, one at a large urban shrine center, one sponsored by a well-established prayer group but that was not widely publicized, one by another established group that was publicized and focused on healing of "emotional problems," and one at a small city parish featuring a healer nationally renowned for the healing of "physical illness." Overall, active Charismatics differed from non-Charismatics in two important demographic features: Charismatics were more likely to be married (62 percent as opposed to 47 percent), and were more likely to have some degree of education beyond high school (53 percent as opposed to 44 percent). Perhaps the most impressive difference wa.... that whereas 86 percent of active Charismatics reported having experienced divine healing at some time in their lives, only 59 percent of non-Charismatics did so? The relatively high percentage among non-Charismatics reflects the fact that on the one hand they do not represent the general population, but that on the other hand they are not fully integrated into a Charismatic world in which healing is expected as part of spiritual growth in a Christian life. Women accounted for 77 percent of participants whereas 23 percent were men, a proportion similar to that observable in most Charismatic prayer groups, excluding "covenant communities. "8 In general, the preponderance of women appears to be the rule in devotional religions. It has also been documented that in our society women report having "religious experiences" more often than men (Valla and Prince 1989), and that across cultures women participate to a greater extent in reli-

32

RITUAL HEALING

gions involving possession by spirits or deities (Lewis 1971, Bourguignon 1976b, 198~).9 We will not enter this difficult debate, but will instead add some data relevant to it. What draws our attention is that, despite the high ratio of women to men, the proportions of participants of both genders appear to be remarkably similar across several critical dimensions of experience and practice. First, the frequency with which the respondent speaks in tongues (daily or weekly, from once a month to once a year, or never) were virtually identical among men and women. The proportional frequency of attending Charismatic prayer meetings varied only a bit: 44.4 percent of women and 38.9 percent of men attended weekly, 31.6 percent of women and 35.9 percent of men less than weekly, 16.2 percent of women and 12.2 percent of men never attended. 10 When these two variables were combined to determine Charismatic identity as described above, there was virtually no statistical difference between genders (p = .812). The number of times a person reported having had prayer for healing (none, 1-5 times, more than 5 times) was again virtually identical between genders. Moreover, 67.9 percent of women and 63.8 percent of men reported having at one time or another been healed at a healing service. Perhaps most interesting in relation to the anthropological literature on trance and altered states of consciousness are the reported frequencies of "resting in the Spirit," the sacred swoon in which one is overwhelmed by divine power and falls in a state of motor dissociation (see chapter 9). A total of23.8 percent of women and a slightly higher 30.5 percent of men reported never having had the experience. 61 percent of women and 54 percent of men reported having had the experience at some time. However, this moderate discrepancy in proportions across genders becomes even less when the number of times a person has undergone the experience is taken into account: 30 percent of women and 26 percent of men had rested in the Spirit 1-5 times, whereas 31.3 percent of women and 28.2 percent of men had done so 6 or more times. 11 The point in question is the Charismatic notion, grounded squarely in the North American ethnopsychology of gender, that women are more "open" to the spiritual and hence more easily "overwhelmed." One informant, a leader of a covenant community, confidently stated that in any service 90 percent of women as compared with 40 percent of men would rest in the Spirit. This does not conform with our results. Finally, we consider the kinds of problems brought for healing by men and women. For purposes of analysis, we collapsed the responses to

RITUAL HEALING

33

our questionnaire into categories that correspond with the Charismatic division of the person into body (physicaVmedical problems), mind (emotionaVrelationship problems), and spiritual renewal. 12 Among respondents who reported only one problem, or problems from only one of these categories, the proportions of men and women were virtually identical. Only among the 18 percent of respondents who reported problems from two or all three of the categories did women predominate, suggesting that they either had a slight tendency to bring multiple problems or conceived of their problems more broadly. None of these data controvert the insight of recent feminist theory that "religious experience is the experience of men and women, and in no known society is this experience the same" (Bynum 1986:2). Neither do they controvert the importance of the overall preponderance of women in healing events. They suggest only an absence of gendered difference in the frequency of certain practices and experiences among men and women who do undergo them. Let us take a closer look at the kinds of problems participants bring to healing services. First we must note that whereas most participants are in search of healing for themselves, some come to request divine intervention for a friend or loved one-they become supplicants in a "healing by proxy" of the absent and perhaps even unknowing beneficiary. Our interest, however, is in the overall range of problems submitted. A total of 24 percent of respondents reported no specific problem that led them to the healing service, but among the remainder the three categories proved relatively distinct. For those whose problems fell only into one of the three principal categories, 24 percent sought only physical healing, 22 percent sought only emotionaVrelationship healing, and 12 percent sought only spiritual renewal. As noted above, only 18 percent of respondents reported problems from more than one category. Of those who reported no specific reason or the nonspecific "spiritual renewal," active Charismatics and non-Charismatics were represented in equal proportions. Non-Charismatics accounted for higher proportions of those who sought healing for physical problems (40 percent as opposed to 24 percent) and for emotionaVrelationship problems (34 percent as opposed to 26 percent). In contrast, of those who combined categories, active Charismatics accounted for 30 percent, whereas nonCharismatics accounted for only 23.4 percent. The most frequently mentioned category for non-Charismatics was physical problems, whereas active Charismatics most frequently reported no specific problems. These results suggest a greater specificity and problem-oriented

34

RITUAL HEALING

attitude on the part of non-Charismatics toward healing services, and on the part of active Charismatics a relatively more global attitude toward the role of healing, combined with generalized interest in the religious milieu. The appeal of Catholic Charismatic healing beyond the ranks of movement participants does not negate the fact that, like other forms of healing, it appears adapted to address the needs of a particular population (Kakar 1982). Those who enter Charismatic healing enter a performance setting defined in religious terms so that, especially if they have not been associated with the movement, its formulations must make sense on some a priori grounds ofshared culture. For example, problems common to this population such as depression, weak self-image, and marital difficulties may be linked by healers to "anger with God." This formulation can only roughly be glossed in terms of the common ''why me?" question, or generalized resentment over state in life. What the healer is identifying in such a situation is that some individuals quite literally blame the deity for misfortunes, and quite literally argue with or shout at him. Again, Charismatic Christians have elaborated a concern with the religious significance of sex and reproduction, and emphasize the need for healing emotional consequences of abortion, or from the habit of masturbation. 13 Feelings of "unworthiness" and "scrupulosity" are endemic in the generation of Catholics prominent among Charismatic participants. In addition, hyperreligiosity is a not-uncommon consequence of being "born again" or "baptized in the Spirit." Healers themselves recognize this problem in exaggerated devotionalism and unhealthy abdication of life responsibilities to divine providence. Mainstream Catholic Charismatic teaching is that ritual healing is compatible with conventional health care. Healers sometimes encourage supplicants to abandon their wheelchairs or crutches and walk, but they are just as likely to sense or even directly inquire about supplicants' fear of seeking medical care and encourage them to do so. It is sometimes the case that, adopting the older Protestant Pentecostal practice known as "claiming the healing," some people will abandon prescribed medication or cancel a planned surgery as an act of faith without any evidence that they have in fact been healed. However, they are more likely to pray that the results of conventional medical tests will be negative, that the adverse side effects of their medication will be muted, that an upcoming surgical procedure will have a positive outcome, or that a person who is terminally afIlicted will die peacefully. Table 2.3 shows the pro-

RITUAL HEALING

35

Table 2.3 Proportion of Supplicants in Catholic Charismatic Public Healing Services Reporting Use ofAlternate Healing Forms by Type ofProblem Submitted to Ritual Healing.

Type of Practitioner Family doctor or surgeon Psychiatrist or psychologist Counselor or priest Chiropractor Acupuncturist Fortune-teller Astrologist Other

Supplicants Reporting Physical/Medical Problems

Supplicants Reporting Emotional/Relationship Problems

79% 15% 17% 24% 5% 2% 2% 16%

49% 39% 38% 11% 2% 7% 5% 20%

portions of respondents who sought healing for physicaVmedical and emotionaVrelationship problems who had in addition consulted one of several other types of practitioners about that same problem. 14 Fully 79 percent of those with physicaVmedical problems had consulted a family doctor or surgeon, and 39 percent of those with emotionaV relationship problems had seen a psychiatrist or psychologist. Moreover, these mental-health professionals were equally as popular as counselors and priests. Finally, a minority reported consulting fortune-tellers or astrologers. This is significant insofar as, according to mainstream Charismatic teaching, such healers utilize "occult" or demonically inspired practices. They are regarded not only as incompatible with Christianity, but also as potential causes of affiiction or exposure to evil influences. This preliminary glimpse at healers and patients suggests that Charismatic ritual healing is an engagement with basic life problems defmed in a particular religious and cultural milieu, and that it interacts with psychotherapy and other forms of healing and medical care. We now turn to a description of Charismatic healing as a system of ritual performance comprised of specific ritual events, stylistic genres, and acts of empowerment. 15 As ritual event, the several types of healing sessions objectify the self in its capacities for growth and affliction, and provide a model for individual contact with the divinity and divine power. The different genres of healing articulate the dynamics of the tripartite person in its most intimate interpersonal relationships. Finally, acts of illocurion and predication in ritual healing constitute an explicit repertoire of empowerment.

36

RITUAL HEALING

Events of Ritual Healing Healing services were introduced to Catholic Charismatics in 1974, when Francis MacNutt presided over an efflorescence of healing that "broke out unexpectedly" in the Notre Dame football stadium among massed participants at the movement's annual conference. Within a few years the popularity of healing services on the older Protestant model began to increase. Such services are "Catholicized" in that they are typically (but not always) conducted by Charismatic priests, and especially in the less-ecumenical Northeast are often preceded by a mass. Conferences remain an occasion for large healing services, for workshops on different types of healing prayer, and for private healing encounters of all types. Conferences, retreats, and periodic "days of renewal" constitute spiritually charged atmospheres in which people may be inspired to pray with others for healing, or ask for healing prayer, at virtually any moment. Not unusual, for example, is the instance of a priest who left his room in a retreat house with the "sense" that he should go to a particular area of the house. He paused, returning to his room to retrieve a vial of holy water, just in case his "sense" meant that he was about to encounter the need for healing prayer. The careful priest was well prepared to augment his prayer with the added blessing obtained with the sprinkling of sacramental holy water. We can identify four relatively distinct types of Charismatic healing events: large public services with multiple patients, small services following prayer meetings, private services for the benefit of a single patient, and solitary healing prayer for oneself or absent others. In large public healing services the principal healing minister, unless he or she is traveling as a guest in an unfamiliar region or country, is typically assisted by a staff. Members ofthis staff serve as ushers for those coming forward to receive prayer, "catchers" for those who may be overwhelmed by divine power and fall in a sacred swoon (see chapter 9), musicians, and members of small prayer teams. Each patient receives at least a few moments of personal attention from either the principal healer or one of the prayer teams. Staffmembers ofseveral well-organized "ministries" are identified during services by a sash or jacket worn over their clothing, or by regular street clothing with a common color scheme. 16 In a typical scenario, the service begins with the leader walking up and down the aisles of the church, using a liturgical instrument known as an aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on the assembly and pausing periodically to

RITUAL HEALING

37

lay hands on a person's head or shoulder. Returning to the front of the assembly the leader delivers a sermon on divine healing, and a music ensemble composed of members of the staff leads the group in Charismatic songs. Several participants are solicited to share or ''witness to" previous healings they have experienced. The body of the service consists in each participant coming forward for a minute or two of private prayer, much as they come forward for the Eucharist in a mass. Each is anointed with sacramental oil and "prayed over" with laying on of hands. Some healers ask the person to name the problem to be prayed for, others do not and "leave the entire matter to God." Still others (apparently fewer) diagnose the problem by inspiration, learning through the results of an inspiration or "word of knowledge" that, for example, a supplicant is "angry and should forgive her husband." Services typically last three or four hours if preceded by a mass. Daylong or two-day healing retreats may include ''workshops'' on spiritual gifts prior to the mass and a healing service proper. In prayer groups healing prayers for self or others may occur in a segment of the weekly prayer meeting. Better-organized groups may have a selected team of "healing ministers" who, following the meeting, conduct prayer for individual supplicants in a separate "healing room." Several pairs of team members dispersed through the room each see one patient at a time. They listen, talk, lay on hands, and pray for healing. Other patients wait outside the prayer room and are admitted one by one by another healing team member who acts as gatekeeper. The post-prayer meeting healing-room session stands in contrast to the large service in its relative privacy, in the increased amount of time spent with each patient (10-20 minutes instead of 2-3), and in the greater likelihood of healers and supplicants having an ongoing relationship within the group. Based either on the recommendation of the healing-room prayer team, on the recommendation of another prayer-group member who senses that a person is troubled, or on one's own initiative, a person may arrange a private session with a more experienced healer or healing team, within or outside the group.17 Private healing sessions typically take place in a home or counseling center, but sometimes occur over the telephone or in hospital visits. Private sessions may last an hour or more and may be conducted by healers within the group or by those with broader reputations. Healers either stand over the seated supplicant with hands laid on head, shoulder, back, or chest; or they sit facing the supplicant, sometimes holding hands. Private sessions are informally

38

RITUAL HEALING

structured into alternating segments of talk or "counseling" and of actual "healing prayer," though some healers regard the entire session as prayer. Multiple sessions over time on the model of psychotherapy are performed by more "psychological" healers who hold that healing can be a divine augmentation of gradual, natural processes. Some more "fundamentalist" healers object that God's power or willingness to heal is slighted if lengthy multiple sessions are held. One such healer commented that so many people were in need of help that it was unfair to hold private sessions. Consistent with the conviction that it is better to reach as many as possible and leave the details of each person's problem to God, this priest confined his ministry to large public healing services. Finally, healing prayer for oneself or others may be practiced in the solitude of private devotion. To my knowledge there is no formal procedure to such prayer, and it can obviously not be observed directly. The possibility for ritual healing in the absence of a ritual healer has, however, been known since the time when healing was carried out by dream "incubation" in the ancient Greek temple of Aesclepius. This feature of healing should be kept in mind as a caution against overestimating the contribution to therapeutic efficacy of the therapeutic "relationship," a tendency derived from the pervasive scholarly analogy between psychotherapy and religious healing. Whatever efficacy inheres in solitary healing appears to be founded on the way in which ritual, with or without a healer, activates endogenous self processes (Prince 1980, Csordas 1983). Along with prophecy and speaking in tongues, healing is regarded by Charismatics as one of the "spiritual gifts" or "charisms." However, the structure of healing events as cultural performances is essentially different from that of the prayer meeting and its variants. This is because the gift of healing is understood as the mediation of divine power through specific individuals rather than as collective access to the divinity through worship and inspiration. Even though prophecy is also a mediation of divine power by an individual, and even though its message may be uniquely interpreted by each listener, anyone in a prayer meeting may be inspired with prophecy and everyone hears the same prophetic utterance. The asymmetrical relationship among participants in healing, constituted by one person "ministering to" others, persists even when there is a group of healers working in teams. Only rarely is divine power given a collective locus, with the leader instructing all participants to lay hands on each other. I8 Thus, although movement leaders exhort participants to "focus on the gift not the man," there is

RITUAL HEALING

39

nevertheless a perception that some healing ministers are more gifted than others, and those in attendance at public healing services often show a preference to be "prayed over" by the service leader instead of by one of the teams of assistants. Especially in healing regarded as spiritually dangerous or sensitive, such as casting out evil spirits, healers at any level of the hierarchy of renown may work in teams of up to half-a-dozen people. The principle behind team healing is that there is not one healing gift, but a series of complementary gifts, all of which not every healer necessarily possesses. These gifts include that of being able to verbalize the healing prayer itself, the gift to "discern" the presence of spirits, the ''word of knowledge" that reveals unspoken facts about the supplicant, or "prophecy" to encourage and exhort the patient, the gift of "authority" to command spirits to depart, and the gift of "love" by which the patient feels the intimacy and support of the team, and which keeps him or her from becoming frightened. One man, who often took responsibility as "doorkeeper" of his group's healing room, felt that his gift was the inspiration to direct each patient to the team of healers whose gifts would be most suited to the supplicant's as-yet-unspoken problem. The "spontaneous coordination" of these gifts in practice-a kind of team habitus-has become second nature in healing teams that have been together for as many as fifteen years.

Genres of Ritual Healing

Essential to the Charismatic healing system is a concept of the person as a tripartite composite of body, mind, and spirit. Conceptualization of a tripartite person creates a decisive cultural difference between Charismatic healing and conventional psychotherapy and medicine, insofar as the latter are predicated on a concept of the person as a dualistic composite of body and mind. For Charismatics the spiritual is, paradoxically, ineffable and empirical at the same time. Its ineffability was captured by an informant who said that the reason the spiritual could not easily be discussed was only because we have no language for it, and hence we are forced by default to describe it in the language of emotions. On the other hand, the spiritual is empirical in the sense that phenomena such as evil spirits, or the sense of divine presence, are

40

RITUAL HEALING

experienced as real in their own domain, just as are viruses in the somatic and emotional traumas in the mental domains. 19 Corresponding to each component of the tripartite person is a type of healing: physical healing of bodily illness, inner healing of emotional illness and distress, and deliverance from the adverse effects of evil spirits. Each genre includes distinctive concepts of aflliction and elements of technique. The genres tend to occur in different frequencies across events that range from large public services to private one-on-one encounters, and healing ministers tend to specialize in one genre. However, most Charismatic healers recognize a necessity at times to combine genres, insofar as the components of the tripartite person are holistically related in, as they say, a "pneumopsychosomatic" synthesis. In this way Charismatic healing participates in the broader cultural discourse in which one fmds popular notions of the "psychosomatic" and "holistic healing." Physical healing is the most widely known in American religious culture, and Catholic Charismatics are relatively more influenced by the model of Protestant healers such as Oral Roberts and Kathryn Kuhlman than by the models of miracles performed by saints and pilgrimage to healing shrines such as Lourdes. As was evident in our summary of problems presented by healing service participants, physical healing addresses a full range of medical complaints. Yet, as we have also mentioned, in comparison with some forms of Protestant faith healing, patients rarely feel required to abandon medical care as a sign of faith. The technique of physical healing typically consists in the simple laying on of hands accompanied by prayer that the condition be healed, though in cases such as the mending of broken bones and the reversal of cancer, patient and/or healer visualization of the healing process might be included. Inner healing was introduced to Catholics largely through the influence of the Episcopalian Charismatic Agnes Sanford, regarded by some as the "mother of the inner healing ministry." It is relevant for all kinds of emotional problems, and subsumes what Charismatics sometimes label the "healing of relationships." Inner healing is also often referred to as "healing of memories," a term that reflects its underlying theory of aflliction. This theory holds that emotional "woundedness" or "brokenness" is the result of traumatic life events. From this premise, a kind of popular religious psychodynamics is elaborated: since the origin of aflliction is attributed to interpersonal trauma, emotional and psychological problems are dealt with by searching for biographical causes

RITUAL HEALING

41

embedded in "memories." The typical technique is to pray for the suppllcant's entire life stage by stage, from the moment of conception to the present. Events or unreconciled relationships that emerge in this review of life history are given special attention in a period of prayer, and the supplicant is asked to forgive the offending person. The prayer may include an imagery process, either spontaneous or suggested by the healer. In this process the painful situation is reconstructed and the human form of Jesus is introduced as an actor who touches, heals, and reassures. In the words of one healer, inner healing is "praying the presence of Christ into the moments of their lives." Some conservative classical and nondenominational Pentecostals reject this form of healing, especially the use of imagery, as "practicing psychotherapy without a license," and as "nonbiblical," since the healings ofJesus included only physical healing and casting out evil spirits. 20 Deliverance was introduced to Catholics by the nondenominational neo-Pentecostal healers Donald Basham and Derek Prince as well as through writings by the Episcopalian Charismatic Michael Harper and the nondenominational Frank and Ida Mae Hammond. Charismatics distinguish between demonic possession, in which a demon takes total control of a person's faculties, and lesser forms of influence in which demons do not gain complete control, but are regarded as having a detrimental effect on the person's life and spiritual growth. The Catholic Church requires that full possession be dealt with only by a priest using the formal rite of exorcism, under the explicit permission of a bishop and following a lengthy inquiry that rules out alternatives to demonic activity, including mental illness. Thus, by addressing only what are defmed as lesser forms of demonic influence, deliverance prayer legitimates an engagement in "spiritual warfare" with the minions of Satan which would otherwise be restricted. Charismatics also distinguish their practice of deliverance from that of their Protestant brethren, attempting to moderate what they regard as relatively "violent" manifestations of demonic activity in the supplicant's behavior. The presence of evil spirits is identified or discerned either by the healer or supplicant through the uncontrollable persistence of sins or negative forms of thought, emotion, and behavior. The spirits are then commanded to depart in the name of Jesus. Charismatic ethnotheory holds that because divine authority is absolute, evil spirits cannot resist obeying this command, though in certain cases a spirit may create disruptive "manifestations" such as uttering verbal abuse through the mouth of its host, or physically upsetting the host.

42

RITUAL HEALING

That the genres of healing are related as a coherent system is evident not only in the way they are distinguished from related forms among Protestants. Just as a "pneumopsychosomatic" interrelation exists among the components of the tripartite person, so are the healing genres related because of possible interactions among their underlying etiologies of aftliction. Thus, whereas physical illness may be attributed to physical or biomedical causes, it may also originate in biographical trauma, such that inner healing becomes prerequisite to physical healing. This position would be maintained regardless of whether that physical healing was achieved through prayer, medical treatment, or a combination of the two. Again, a person affiicted by evil spirits is also often said to have become so as a result of a vulnerability created by a traumatic past event. For example, emotional scars from childhood sexual abuse may later provide a point of entree for the spirit Lust. Physical illness may provide entree for evil spirits, though in other cases evil spirits may be the principal cause of physical illness. In a finely wrought example of contemporary scholastic reasoning, one renowned healer explained that if a cancer originated in natural causes but was exacerbated by demons, deliverance by itself would be insufficient to effect a healing; however, one could be certain that the primary cause of the disease was demonic if deliverance prayer resulted in a cure. Others point out that arthritis, for example, may not only be a physical illness requiring prayer for physical healing, but the result of "resentment" over having been wronged. Therapeutic success would then require inner healing and forgiveness of the offender. Deliverance might also be deemed necessary insofar as the evil spirit Resentment could have a hold on the aftlicted person. Because of this "holism," although healing ministers tend to specialize in one or another genre, most recognize a necessity at times to use all three forms in varying combinations. The earliest formulation of the Catholic Charismatic healing system by Francis MacNutt (1974) included a fourth genre called "spiritual healing." This form never developed a technique of its own, but although it bears a peripheral relation to practice it plays a role in the religious rationale of healing. Unlike deliverance, it has no elaborated content with respect to the spiritual component of the tripartite person, but is residually concerned with the general well-being of the soul. One rhetorical function of this protogenre was to assure the recognition of sin as a possible cause of illness, a function largely appropriated by deliverance in the theory that habitual sin provides the occasion for the assertion of demonic control over the "area" of one's life affected by

RITUAL HEALING

43

the sinful behavior. Spiritual healing also provided an anchor for the healing system in conventional Catholic ritual practice, with the doxa that a primary source of spiritual healing should be the sacrament of reconciliation (confession). Perhaps most importantly, this healing form serves as a kind of "consolation prize" for those who receive no relief from performance of the principal genres. Thus it is said that if the allbenevolent Lord does not see fit to grant a physical healing, he will at least grant a spiritual healing constituted by a sense of peace and acceptance of the divine will. Spiritual healing is therefore an important hedge against the failure of healing prayer, sidestepping the thorny issues of theodicy in a religion that has largely abandoned a notion of redemptive suffering in favor of the notion that God desires everyone to be healed. If spiritual healing has remained an implicit residual genre in the healing system, a quite different significance has been borne by a genre added to the system well after it was established among Catholics. Alternatively called ancestral healing, intergenerational healing, or healing the family tree, it was introduced in the early 1980s by British Charismatic psychiatrist Kenneth McAll (1982). The integration of this new genre demonstrates both the coherence of the tripartite system undergirded by the tripartite person concept, and the possibilities/limitations for change/innovation within the system of healing practice. The theory of affliction in ancestral healing is that problems can be passed to successive generations through the "bloodline." Whereas in some societies the attribution of illness to ancestors is commonplace, in contemporary North America it is somewhat awkward and ambiguous. Thus among those who practice this genre of healing there is a persistent conceptual indeterminacy. Consensus is lacking as to whether the affliction is caused primarily by learned and transmitted behavior patterns, by the spiritually transmitted effects of emotional woundedness or sin, by the influence of evil spirits that prey upon successive generations of a family, or by the unrestful spirits of forebears themselves. The latter explanation is quite controversial, since the notion of earthbound spirits or ghosts does not square with conventional Catholic theology. For this reason, and based on the objection that affliction transmitted through the "bloodline" undermines the principle of divinely granted free will, healing of ancestry has not found unanimous acceptance among Charismatics. Rather than argue that the ambiguous place of this genre is the result of the absence of sufficient "logical space" within a tightly bound and conceptually coherent tripartite healing system, I will point out how

44

RITUAL HEALING

ancestral healing is in fact a hybrid of several ritual forms. First, it appears to be an elaboration of the traditional Catholic practice of praying for the repose ofsouls in Purgatory. It extends the underlying premise by praying for the actual healing of ancestral souls, understood to remain afflicted after death, as well as for healing of the living patient. This interpretation is supported by the fact that a key element in the technique of ancestral healing is performance of a mass, also a very common traditional way of "remembering the deceased." Second, it in effect extends the biographical scope of inner healing or healing of memories in a reverse temporal direction. That is, whereas inner healing typically begins its biographical review with conception and proceeds through culturally defmed stages of the life cycle to the present, ancestral healing begins with the patient's parents and proceeds backwards in time to earlier generations. This is borne out by another element of ritual technique, the construction by the supplicant of a genealogy or "family tree," the successive generations of which guide the stages of healing prayer. Third, the genre shares elements of deliverance, and sometimes is even thought of as a form of deliverance in which the influence of evil spirits is traced back through a "bloodline." However, it can also seen as a kind of "domestication" of deliverance insofar as the source of aftliction is shifted from unpredictable demonic spirits to more manageable human spirits. This interpretation is supported by a third principal element of ritual technique, the "cutting of bonds" between supplicant and afflicting ancestor. Sometimes performed in imagination with an imagined sword, it presumes that the relation between ancestor and atllicted, like the relationship between evil spirit and afflicted, is one of "bondage." The severing of bonds is of interest for a comparative reason as well. Aflliction by ancestors is commonly recorded as a cause of illness in the ethnomedical systems of diverse societies (Murdock 1970). By and large, however, the ancestors are thought to take action in response to having been offended or neglected by living descendants. Therapy often consists of reestablishing bonds by appeasing, meeting the demands of, or fulfilling obligations toward the ancestor. That Charismatic ancestral healing requires the severing of bonds is strikingly concordant with a North American ethnopsychology that objectifies the healthy self as a discrete, bounded, entity. Healers emphasize that it is only bondage and not relationship that is ritually severed, especially where the "ancestor" is a still-living parent. The sacred self is thus created by a performative act that powerfully enacts the cultural ideal of ego integrity and psycho-

RITUAL HEALING

45

logical differentiation, in vivid contrast to ritual healing in societies where boundaries between selves are not so defmitively drawn.

Acts of Empowerment and Transformation Within the ritual events and genres we have described, Charismatic healing includes a repertoire of discrete acts, like the severing of ancestral bonds, that can be understood as kinds of"performative acts." The notion of a performative speech act was developed by Austin (196211975) to refer to instances in which "saying something" is a way of "doing something." It is relevant to apply this formula in return to nonverbal acts, as for example shaking hands is a way of greeting someone, or of confirming a contract. In this sense the performative acts of Charismatic healing, both verbal and nonverbal, are ways of doing specific things essential to the healing process?l In table 2.4 I have summarized the repertoire of specific, named Charismatic performative acts of healing and have grouped them analytically according to what they "do"

Table 2.4 Performative Repertoire of Charismatic Healing.

Empowerment

Protection

{

Revelation

{

Deliverance

{

Sacramental grace { Emotional release

Anointing Laying on of hands Holy water, consecrated oil, blessed salt Tongues (glossalalia) Resting in the Spirit Soaking prayer Calling down the blood of the lamb Lifting someone up to the Lord Calling on St. Michael and the Virgin Mary Words of knowledge, wisdom Prophecy Vision (imagery) Discernment of spirits Binding of spirits Calling out spirits Prayer of command Cutting ancestral bonds Mass Eucharist (communion) Reconciliation (confession) Forgiveness

46

RITUAL HEALING

or contribute to healing. We will encounter many of them again in subsequent discussion, but here I will do little more than defme their place in the healing system. Under empowerment I include those acts in which divine power is experienced or brought to bear in a particular environment or on a particular individual. An anointing is typically a physical sensation-trembling, lightness, heaviness, heat-that indicates the activity of divine power. Laying on of hands is a physical touching of the supplicant that focuses prayer and channels divine power into the supplicant. Water, oil, and salt are the three substances known as "sacramentals" in traditional Catholicism. Holy water and salt may be sprinkled in a home or on a person and oil may be used to anoint a person's forehead. Not only substantial vehicles for divine power to heal, they could also be included under our category of protection, especially protection from evil spirits; blessed salt is in fact mostly used as a form of protection. Speaking in tongues is used as a more powerful mode of prayer for healing than vernacular language. However, healing ministers also acknowledge using glossolalia when they are unsure what to say, when they are opening themselves to divine revelation, and when they want to surrender control of the healing process directly to divine action; when the healer speaks in tongues she may be "getting out of the way so that God can work." Resting in the Spirit is a spontaneous experience (and thus from the emic standpoint not really an "act" at all) on the part of the patient in which she is overwhelmed by divine power and falls in a semiswoon to the floor, there lying in a state of "total peace and relaxation" with the sense of being in the divine presence. Finally, soaking prayer is intensive intercessory prayer lasting for hours or even days, with members of a prayer team alternating shifts. In soaking prayer language is virtually a ritual substance in which the supplicant is immersed. 22 Like several of the other performatives of healing, those of protection are accomplished not through physical actions but through either verbal or imaginal acts. Calling down the blood of the Lamb mobilizes the divine power inherent in the blood shed by Jesus. Like soaking prayer, it suggests immersion in a substantivized divine power, but that power is given explicit symbolic form as divine blood. But whereas in the use of sacramentals actual water, oil, or salt is applied, the person for whom one prays is only symbolically covered, drenched in a protective coating of divine blood. 23 The presence of St. Michael the Archangel and his band of militant angels and the Virgin Mary with her maternal vigilance

RITUAL HEALING

47

can· also be invoked. An elaborate prayer of protection for family and home may result in the entire house being covered by blood and surrounded by legions of angels. Finally, the symbolic act of lifting someone up to the Lord is a way of commending that person to divine providence, though in addition it is also a way to pray for a person or petition the deity on someone's behalf. The category of revelation includes several "spiritual gifts" that again from the emic point of view are not acts but spontaneous experiences of inspiration. Word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and prophecy are collectively known as ''word gifts." The first consists in "receiving," through divine inspiration, information about a person, situation, or problem that the healer had no "human" means of knowing. Word of wisdom is a gift of being able to say just the thing that a patient "needs to hear" at a particular point in the healing process. Again, the content is perceived by the healer as beyond his or her normal capacity to advise and counsel. It may be an apparently Solomonic statement that appears to come to mind "out of the blue," or something that appears wise only in retrospect, based on feedback by a grateful patient. Prophecy, one of the principal genres of ritual language discussed in chapter 1 (see also Csordas 1987) occurs somewhat infrequently in healing. One prominent healer's public service for a time included the feature of a brief prophecy to each supplicant by an assistant who followed behind the principal healer as he moved from person to person laying on hands. Where prophecy occurs in a private session for a single supplicant, it is most often uttered in an informal, conversational style. The overall rarity of prophecy is consistent with the prominence of the psychocultural theme of intimacy in ritual healing, both in the relation between healer and supplicant and between divinity and supplicant. Insofar as prophecy is a modality of divine authority, it is somewhat out of place when the ritual focus is on divine intimacy. Even where divine power is most immediately felt, in the experience of resting in the Spirit, it is the intimacy of divine presence that is emphasized in healing. Finally, among revelatory acts, vision or imagery may occur to either healer or supplicant. Despite their name, and as we will discuss in detail in chapter 4, any of these "word gifts" may be experienced as a nonverbal sensory image. A burning sensation in a healing minister's ear might indicate that someone in the assembly is being healed of an ear problem, or the visual image of a beating heart might indicate ~e healing of coronary disease. Patients "receive" imagery either spontaneously during prayer or in a guided imagery process. Such imagery is typically formulated

48

RITUAL HEALING

as "memories" of traumatic life events, the effects of which are then transformed through additional imagery processes in inner-healing prayer. Under deliverance are included those performative acts concerned with identifying, controlling, and dispatching evil spirits. Discernment is one of the "spiritual gifts" and allows its recipient to sense the presence and often the identity of a demon. Binding is a verbal technique (i.e., it is usually not acted out either physically or in imagination) that invokes divine power to constrain a demon from "manifestations" such as physical violence, screaming, or profanity. Calling out spirits is a practice in which the healer identifies the demon by name or commands the demon to name itself through the voice of the afflicted. The prayer of command is a performative act in the strict Austinian sense, an utterance in which a demon is, "in the name ofTesus," commanded to depart. In theory the "saying" is the "doing," since because demons are under the ultimate authority of the divinity they are unable to refuse the command. In practice, however, they are sometimes recalcitrant, especially when faced with a healing minister who is inexperienced or lacking in confidence. Finally, cutting ancestral bonds is a symbolic act, performed either verbally or through imagery, of severing ties of affliction within the "bloodline." As noted above, it is sometimes referred to as "deliverance" from the bond to a predecessor, but also more literally may be deliverance from a demon that afflicts successive generations within a family. As Catholics, Charismatics see traditional liturgy and sacrament as sources of divine power for healing. Mass and Eucharist are opportunities for exposure to the divine presence, whereas Reconciliation is an opportunity to remove the spiritually pathogenic effects of sin. Finally, forgiveness is an act by which supplicants unburden themselves of resentment or hatred against those who have wronged them. Presupposing an essentially merciful deity, the act of forgiveness is regarded by some healers as inherently efficacious in both a spiritual and psychological sense and an essential feature of healing process. In the chapters that follow, we will encounter a variety of these acts in the context of their use. At present I will elaborate the phenomenology of two of them: the anointing and the laying on of hands. The first is characteristically a spontaneous bodily experience, the second a gesture or technique of the body. Along with the discussion in chapter 4, these analyses will represent the healer's voice in the existential dialogue of ritual healing. From the healer's standpoint they will offer an

RITUAL HEALING

49

initial sense of the experiential specificity we require from a cultural phenomenology of therapeutic process.

Phenomenology of Performative Force For Charismatic healers, experience of an anointing is taken as a sign that a healing is occurring or is about to occur. This sign may be evident only to the healer as a sense or image, but in some circumstances may also be evident to a patient. For example, once a healer approached me at a service and laid his insistently vibrating hand on my shoulder as he prayed. I recognized the vibration as the manifestation of an anointing-in the Charismatic world, I had been directly exposed to divine power. What is the meaning of this? A simple functionalist account would be that the vibration, as a manifestation of divine power, enhances the "expectant faith" (J. Frank 1973) of both healer and supplicant. Although perhaps accurate, this account hardly approaches an ideal of specificity, so instead of stopping there I took the opportunity in subsequent interviews to recount my experience to other healers and solicit their response. I found them quite divided on whether the vibrating hand is an authentic, naive, misguided, theatrical, or even feigned sign of divine anointing. It also became dear that, to most, an anointing held more significance than a simple sense that something divine was happening. Here is a segment of my interview with a healer who was particularly articulate about the phenomenology of anointing, based on long experience conducting public healing sessions: Fr. P: Well, you pray for the anointing and then you become bold. You have to get from the natural to the supernatural because of your human condition, because we're trying [inaudible] our type, body, mind and spirit. So, I guess it's through hit and miss, you have to work yourself into it. So, you have to begin to walk on water, the way Peter walked on water. It is something that cannot be learned or taught. It's something that you have to kind of go through. TC: How can you tell when you get the anointing? For example, some people kind of feel a tingling in their fmgers? Fr. P: That happens sometimes. You have the tingling, you have the feeling. You just feel that, there might be a heaviness sometimes on you or a heaviness sort of stuns, comes on you. It's the anointing. It's the Spirit hovering over you, over the assembly; and if you are very sharp and

50

TC:

Fr. P:

TC: Fr. P:

RITUAL HEALING

discerning sometimes my, your sixth sense as it were, your spirit, it's very, very sensitive and when you get revelation knowledge, its intuitive, it's not so much up here, it's through the heart. And you kind of flow with that, you kind of flow with that. And there are other times, though you might be dead emotionally, and mentally just exhausted, and yet you still have the anointing. In other words you don't get locked into feelings as such because feelings are the language of the body. Thoughts are the language of the mind, concepts. Your conscience is telling you what God wants, but your heart on the deepest level, the real you, is where God lives within you. And He works in you on that level. He's Spirit. Spirit gives witness to spirit. So you are working on this deep, deep level. It seems that in order to tell if you have an anointing, your body, mind, and spirit would have to experience it somehow simultaneously. I mean, I'm trying to see the way you can tell. Sometimes, there's a tingling but not always. Then that happens in the hands. Or it happens elsewhere on the body? Well, you might feel lightness. Sometimes you feel different phenomena and sometimes you might feel like you're going to levitate too. As against the feeling of the heaviness? Sometimes when you feel heaviness, heaviness to me-and also on a feeling level, if I feel very empathetic towards you, a lot of compassion, sympathy, and I can pass you [inaudible word] and it's a sign to pray over you, but if you feel very indifferent or you're cold, distant, apathetic, I won't tell you that. To me, on that feeling level, it's not the time for you to get the healing. I'm not the person, or there are blocks or their hindrances, but I won't share that with you [i.e., I won't mention that I feel that way about you].

From only this much evidence we can state that although it may be analytically accurate to conclude that a healer under anointing is in a "state of trance," it is phenomenologically inadequate. Perhaps more satisfactory than trance would be Blacking's notion of protoritual, a "shared somatic state of the social body that generates special kinds of feelings and apparently spontaneous movements and interaction between bodies in space and time" (1977: 14). This concept allows us to make some sense out of the healer's description of the anointing as "the Spirit hovering over you, over the assembly," and appears to describe a state that is consistent with the capacity of a shared habitus to generate apparently spontaneous movements and interaction. Yet the goal of a cultural phenomenology is not merely to categorize and defme the healer's "state." Note first the way experience articulates the cultural concept of the person. The healer frames his response to a series of questions aimed at the phenomenology of the anointing explic-

RITUAL HEALING

51

itly in terms of the tripartite person. Emotions/feelings belong to the body, thoughts to the mind, but the "heart" is the seat of the spirit. Anointing calls into play a "sixth sense" of revelation and intuition that may operate despite emotional lassitude or physical exhaustion. Furthermore, we see the way the experience is constituted as an experience of the sacred. Here we uncover the existential primacy of the body, for the anointing is recognized both in physical sensations such as tingling, heaviness, or levitationallightness, and in those emotional feelings of empathy, compassion, or sympathy that indicate whether a person is receptive to divine intervention. Finally, the experience can contribute to therapeutic process by serving as a sign not only that healing will occur, but that healing will not occur for certain persons. The pragmatic implication is that in a large healing service the healer may invest less time in those whose time for healing has not arrived. Before making any general conclusion about performative acts, let us pass from anointing to that most characteristic act, the laying on of hands. Laying on of hands is more than a simple transfer ofdivine power from healer to supplicant. The act bears, in Victor Turner's (1974) term, the polysemic symbolic properties of touch. To understand the way these properties are actualized in practice, we must understand the laying on of hands as an act that lies midway between a gesture and a fully elaborated "technique of the body" (Mauss 1950b). 24 As a gesture, its performative efficacy is inseparably linked with the prayer to which it is an accompaniment. It implicitly enacts two important psychocultural themes upon the aftlicted person: it is a gesture of intimacy and protection as well as a gesture of control and the application of power. As a technique, the laying on of hands is variable, and these variations can be described as follows: a hand, or two, on top of the head; a hand on the forehead, sometimes touching with the fingertips only and sometimes such that a supplicant's face is virtually covered by the healer's palm; a single hand on the shoulder; a hand on the chest and one on the back, or on the forehead and behind the head such that a virtual axis of divine empowerment runs through the supplicant's body; or a hand laid directly over an afflicted body part. Aside from the specificity in the last of these notions and a proscription against touching areas of sexual privacy, for most healers the cultural meaning of these variations is only minimally elaborated, if at all. I would interpret this lack of meaningful elaboration as an implicit allowance for bodily spontaneity in contact between healer and patient. Leaving variations in touch to

52

RITUAL HEALING

the spontaneous coordination of the habitus thus bears the implicit significance of enacting another of our key psychocultural themes. There is another sense in which laying on of hands can become specified as technique, however, but only among the most highly specialized segment of Charismatic healers. Here there is an opportunity for a postmodern synthesis in which laying on of hands is juxtaposed to other forms of healing touch. As we relied on a particularly articulate healer for our hermeneutic of the anointing, so we now call on a Charismatic healer trained as a psychotherapist. This "cultural specialist" (M. Singer 1972) distinguishes among massage, laying on of hands, and therapeutic touch. For her, laying on of hands becomes technique insofar as it is systematically distinguished from other forms. "Massage" is characterized by touch plus moving the hands with physical pressure, "laying on of hands" by touch without movement or pressure, and "therapeutic touch" (a technique originating in the nursing profession) by moving the hands over the person's body without physical contact. Here is how laying on of hands becomes a therapeutic technique of the body in this healer's practice: H: When I don't use laying on of hands, I'll use therapeutic touch and just move away from the energy field of the person, and just move into a space where they're comfortable. To be with them without laying my hands directly on. [The difference is] the directness. My experience has been that in moving with therapeutic touch I can allow Jesus to be in touch and heal that person, wherever that negative energy is around them, in a similar fashion as with laying on of hands. So depending on how I move, [how I decide, or am inspired, to proceed] that's what I will do .... Do I move to directly touch that person? Is there an issue in their life that touch would inhibit inner healing? I think that's really something to be sensitive about. The therapeutic touch would not violate or be as confrontative. Especially in the area of sexual abuse, I'm talking now. . . . Instead of making contact with one's flesh with the body, one just expects healing energy to move through the body based on just certainly where your hands are, removing the negative energy away from that area, wherever that might be, and asking God to come in with positive energy. So, it's really not too much different, but it can be profoundly useful with people who are intimidated by touch. TC: Now what you've just described was the use of therapeutic touch? Now what does the actual laying on of hands ... I don't know what word to use ... accomplish? H: Well, I would imagine, at least I imagine that Jesus' energy is moving through my hands through their body, connecting them with their mind, connecting them with their heart and spirit. And I see that as just calling forth the power, just to be there to bring up the negative energy in the

RITUAL HEALING

TC: H: TC:

H:

TC: H: TC: H:

TC:

H:

TC: H:

TC:

H:

53

body, so that as love is put on the body, healing energy moves that negative energy or that negative mass up. And so it's a different way of accomplishing the same thing. And so then whatever comes up, whether it be an impulse toward anger or fear, whatever, would need to be healed. And the energy comes up, emerges from within their body? Emerges from within the person. Wouldn't want to just limit it to the body. Okay. And then the energy that's coming from Jesus through your hands ... Is the love. And love brings up anything unlike itself, is what I borrowed from a woman who wrote on healing. And so as I lay down my hands on that person, Jesus' love energy brings up what needs healing. And that's when we deal with healing of memories, healing the true self, validating the true sel£ So it brings it up in the sense of bringing to consciousness and bringing it into [what] you can talk about. Exactly. I see. Whereas, the therapeutic touch is your hands moving the energy that's within them ... And around them. And calling forth God's positive energy as you remove that, for the same purpose ... that the positive energy will then soak and penetrate that being and bring up to the surface. It's the same purpose. Well, therapeutic touch is not directly derived from the Christian tradition, is it? That's right. That's right. That's right. And you'll find that we C)O that with a lot of things. That we will take the best of what they have to offer and allow them to become our own. How about massage then? A third way of touching. Well, with massage, what's really important is the intention. So, for instance, we were doing a human sexuality group and we moved into allowing to look at the fear of intimacy through massage of their hands, their neck, so forth. And I see that as something you need to be very careful with in the way of intention. Cause what that can stimulate is a person can become overwhelmed by the energy that's set free . . . that negative energy that's set free. For instance, if I am moving with [using] massage with you, and my intention is to bring up, I need to watch out for the amount of stuff that we're bringing up. . . . I think I need to reverence the impact of touching another person's body, so that that brings up whatever needs to be healed so that they will not be overwhelmed by the amount of AFFECT that comes with it. When you use massage this way, is it for the same purpose of bringing things up so that they can be discussed? Sometimes. Not always. Not always. And it's not massage that you would get from massage therapists either. It's just the use of massage and touch, in healing touch. One of our therapists is moving more in the way of

54

RITUAL HEALING

massage from a more formal perspective, and I think that will be a marvelous breakthrough to have someone who is Christian.... I guess the difference would be that in laying on of hands, I usually keep my hands in one place. So massage welcomes me to move WITH the person in a different way.

In this passage the healer is discussing the performative act specifically within the genre of inner healing or healing of memories. Evident in her discourse is the biographical self process of healing, premised on the folk psychodynamic modd of bringing unconscious contents into awareness, and including overall concern with the "true self" or identity. Also evident is the ubiquitous psychocultural theme of intimacy. The elements of technique that distinguish the three forms of touch are relevant precisely to intimacy in the relation between healer and supplicant. Massage allows the healer to "move with" the supplicant, but the supplicant's fear of intimacy may be manifest in intimidation at being touched at all. Touch may evoke potentially harmful affective reaction along with releasing the hidden contents of memory, and the force of sexuality is never far from the surface of the healer's concern. Beyond these variations in technique, the performative force of all three forms of touch has to do with the evocation of "energy," an explicidy Christian formulation of an ethnopsychological notion shared with New Age healing. In this version the hands are more than an instrument for applying divine power, but a kind of energy interface where divine love enters and negative energy exits the person. The importance of this interface is suggested in T. Turner's ethnological observation that "the surface of the body seems everywhere to be treated, not only as the boundary of the individual as a biological and psychological entity but as the frontier of the social self as well" (1980: 112). In this respect one must also consider the family resemblance, to borrow Wittgenstein's phrase, between laying on of hands and the congratulatory pat on the back or sympathetic hand on the shoulder. Within the Christian tradition this family of gestures includes the healing touch of Jesus as portrayed in the Bible. In the European Middle Ages the gesture was enacted as the "royal touch," when monarchs laid hands on their subjects for the ritual healing of diseases such as scrofula (Bloch 1973). This practice ended in the eighteenth century, coincident with the beginnings of the Wesleyan tradition that eventually spawned Pentecostalism. Pentecostal laying on of hands can in a sense be understood as a Protestantization or democratization of the divine monarchs' healing touch. The historical continuity is evident in contemporary

RITUAL HEALING

55

Charismatics' emphasis on motives of kingship, lordship, authority, and submission, and on their role as builders of and subjects in the divine kingdom. As an enactment of intimacy, laying on of hands bears both historical and psychocultural connotations. It is fIrst a metonym of the solidarity of the Christian community, as the unity of bodies touching is the unity of the church as "mystical body of Christ" (O'Neill 1985:70-74). In this respect, laying on of hands also connotes shielding and protecting the distressed supplicant, Perhaps as much of the performative efficacy in the gesture comes from the appeal to totality enacted by physical contact as from the transfer of substantivized divine power from healer to supplicant. Phenomenologically, touch surpasses an interpersonal barrier, a barrier culturally constructed on the premise of the person as a discrete, independent entity, on the cultural notion of "privacy," and on the injunction "don't touch" in most North American social settings (Montagu 1978, Shweder and Bourne 1982). Laying on of hands is thus an instance in which the relative values of sociocentric and egocentric self are problematized. Montagu (1978) has argued that tactile stimulation in childhood is important to healthy development, demonstrating in cross-cultural perspective the relative lack of such stimulation for North American children. Such considerations suggest that laying on of hands may, in its rhetorical move toward a more sociocentric self, also help compensate for a developmental defIciency. The value of the egocentric self also comes to the fore in acknowledgments by some Charismatics as well as by some of those who have rejected Charismatic ministries that persons can at times feel smothered and coerced instead of loved and supported when hands are laid on them. This is especially the case when an uncertain or reluctant subject is surrounded by a group, all of whom are laying hands upon him or her and ardently praying for healing or baptism in the Spirit. A general conclusion can now be drawn from our discussion of the repertoire of performative acts in the Charismatic healing system. First, they can bear not only an illocutionary but a predicative force. In particular, acts of revelation, of discernment and calling out spirits, and of forgiveness specifIcally thematize autobiographical events, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. This will become increasingly evident in succeeding chapters. Second, as we have seen in our discussion of anointing and laying on of hands, these acts must be understood multidimensionally in terms of their place in ritual practice, their implicit cultural meaning, and their explicit experiential content. It will not do, as some have

56

RITUAL HEALING

proposed, to separate elements of religious experience from the essential process of therapeutic persuasion and gloss them as "therapeutic preludes," the purpose of which is primarily to establish a therapeutic relationship based on paradox (Dow 1986). It is certainly as a therapeutic prelude that Dow would classify the Charismatic anointing. This both overestimates the importance of the healer-patient relationship, especially in the relatively impersonal public healing services (cf. Finkler 1985), and underestimates the transformative importance of ritual performance. In terms of performance, the anointing not only confirms the healer's conviction of efficacy, but enhances phenomenological engagement in the process, consciousness of the sacred, disinhibition of cognitive barriers to apparently spontaneous inspiration, and insofar as the assembly participates in the protoritual state, a rhetorical hold on the audience. These are neither preludes nor side effects, but elements of specificity essential to cultural performance as therapeutic process.

3 Therapeutic Process and Experience

In the last chapter we became familiar with Charismatic healers and patients and with the manner in which Charismatic healing coheres as a system of ritual performance. In examining the self processes of healers performing two kinds of ritual act, we also got a preliminary glimpse at the kind of experiential specificity we are trying to identify. Having described the Charismatic healing system, we must now proceed to an understanding of how it works. In order to get started properly, we must first distinguish therapeutic process from therapeutic procedure and outcome. In brief, procedure is the organized application of techniques with a particular goal in mind, whereas outcome refers to the disposition of participants at a designated endpoint of treatment. Process is more complex and has been understood by anthropologists in a variety of ways: as the unfolding or performance of a specific treatment event or ritual; as experiential or intrapsychic transformation; as the progression or course of an illness episode defmed by a sequence of treatment decisions; and as a form of social, ideological, or political control. 1 It is the dimension ofexperiential transformation that is closest to our interest in self processes. Only by closely tracing this transformation can we approach the issue of efficacy that lies at the center of debate about religious healing practices. In this chapter we will present two accounts of specificity in therapeutic process, concentrating on the Charismatic genre of ritual healing for physical illness. We conclude by formulating four elements of therapeutic process that may be useful in future comparative studies. 57

58

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

Sacred Self, Postural Model, and Leg-lengthening

In a conversation with a prayer-group leader, I once asked if, in addition to his leadership responsibilities, he ever prayed with others for healing. He responded that he did so only occasionally and only "for easy things like leg-lengthening." Leg-lengthening is indeed one of the most common forms of physical healing for Pentecostals and Charismatics, and is understood as the spontaneous growth of a leg that is shorter than a person's other leg. My strategy in this section is to juxtapose three texts on leg-lengthening. The first is extracted from the description by a research assistant, a sociologist who had minimal familiarity with the Charismatic Renewal, of a healing service conducted by a Charismatic priest. The second is from an interview with a woman whose husband experienced a leg-lengthening in a similar service. The final text is from an interview I conducted with the healing priest himsel£ First, here is the description of a portion of the healing service, written in the genre of ethnographic prose: Father P asked that five people who had had pain Or trouble walking come forth for healing. A chair was placed in front of the altar [the service is in a church]. At this time, he beckoned me [the research assistant] to join him and his healing team, as four women came up to the altar [for prayer]. The healing team consisted of two men, one woman, Fr. P, and myself. Fr. P asked the congregation to pray for each person and to lift their arms in prayer toward the supplicant as the team performed its task. Each supplicant went through the experience separate from the others. The supplicant sat in the chair facing the congregation. Fr. P stood facing the supplicant. The woman stood to his left with one hand on his left arm and the other on the supplicant's right shoulder. The two men squatted behind the supplicant with their hands on her shoulders and upper back. I stood to the right of Fr. P with both hands on the supplicant's left shoulder. The congregation held out their arms toward the supplicant and prayed in tongues out loud. Fr. P asked one of the male team members ifhe could pray in English as Fr. P performed his task. The male healer prayed out loud in English. Fr. P asked the supplicant in a very low voice several rapid questions about troubles in primary relationships, particularly about husbands and fathers, kneeling before the person with his hands placed firmly on her, usually on the upper legs. Once the problem relationship was identified, he firmly grasped the supplicant's feet (shoes still on) and made a firm, determined tugging motion on the supplicant's outstretched legs. Keeping his eyes closed, he prayed in a

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

59

deep, commanding voice ordering any evil from the supplicant and asking God's grace in healing that person. Meanwhile, the woman and other male healer prayed in tongues out loud. During prayer for one of the four supplicants, Fr. P asked the woman team member for a discernment, which she rapidly gave, and he agreed with her assessment. After each healing, Fr. P asked the supplicant to walk as fast as she could down the church aisle. In two of the cases, he walked with the supplicant. In all four cases, the supplicant returned to the altar to attest to having been healed, at least partially, though Fr. P was seeking total healing. In cases where a full healing hadn't taken place, he said that that would be the request made when the supplicant's turn came to be anointed along with everyone else, during the last part of the service. By way of comment, the session with each supplicant was rapid and somewhat confused given Fr. P's interaction with the supplicant and the congregation's vociferous participation in the healing. Fr. P spoke to each person in a deep, unswaying, yet gentle tone-a voice filled with authority. He asked questions rapidly and fired another question, often a clarifying question, as soon as the supplicant responded. He looked intensely into the eyes of the supplicant while speaking to her, hardly blinking. The words in his prayers flowed rapidly, with a staccato style, and accompanied by commanding gestures (the leg tugging). Regardless of where he laid his hands, his grasp was very firm. There was a sense of his absolute presence with the supplicant and his unquestionable command of the situation. The congregation's vocal prayer in tongues, with hands outstretched toward the supplicant, undoubtedly added a powerful dimension to the drama of the situation. The combination of these factors evoked a sense of total encompassing, a sense that there was no exit from the moment. The moment was filled with drama.

Our familiarity with the structure of event, genre, and act in healing performance allows us to make immediate sense of this description. The segment can be placed within a sequence of periods of worship, instruction, healing, and postservice socializing (ritual event), within which we can identify the use of prayer, song, and "witnessing" (genres of ritual language), problem-focused healing of selected individuals and general healing of others (genres of ritual healing), laying on hands and anointing participants with oil (performative acts). The participating cultural specialists included the principal healer and his team, while the assembly at various points had roles as performers (praying for others or giving testimony to their own healing), audience, and patients. Let us make this analysis more precise. We note that all three principal healing genres are in evidence within the reported episode: each patient is worked on for physical healing of difficulties with walking that implicitly require leg-lengthening, for inner healing of biographical trauma and relationship difficulties identified in the healer's rapid questioning,

60

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

and for deliverance as the healer commands evil to depart from each supplicant. From the repertoire of performative acts we recognize ftrst the "anointing" as the principal healer intensely, dramatically, and unblinkingly engages each supplicant. It is worthy of mention that while psychologists typically regard absence of the blinking reflex as a sign of trance, the healer is also described as being commandingly in control of the performance. The rapidity of questions suggests that he is inspired with "words of knowledge" about each supplicant that he then conftrms by questioning. His female assistant participates in the diagnostidrevelatory process by exercising the gift of "discernment." Other performative acts that ftgure prominently in this segment are the "prayer of command" against evil spirits, prayer in tongues, and laying on of hands. The ethnographer perceives the production, through performance, of a sense of "total encompassing." Yet patients who exercise their healing by walking up and down the aisle do not necessarily claim to be totally healed. The totalizing experience of healing thus does not correspond to a total healing, but to a kind of incremental efficacy. This correspondence is enhanced when the healer makes it a point to mention the upcoming anointing portion of the service as an opportunity to .augment the effect ofleg-Iengthening. We will make more of this incremental efficacy below, but for now let us pass to our second text. This text is a narration from a ftfty-ftve-year-old Charismatic housewife about a healing experienced by her husband in a similar healing service. He had suffered an industrial accident and had undergone three surgical operations for his damaged back and shoulder. Following a spinal fusion, calcium deposits began to form on his vertebrae, pinching the sciatic nerve to his left leg and causing pain so bad that he "couldn't drive more than four miles without getting out and resting on the hood of the car." Sometimes, she said, he even cried from the pain. According to their doctor, the only remaining procedure was to cut the nerve. She told her husband she would take him to a healing service, and he responded positively-although not a Catholic, he "believed in miracles" and had accompanied his wife to Catholic shrines where he had gotten a "feeling." TJley attended services every month for a year, but he gradually became discouraged and began to remain in the pew as his wife and daughter approached the altar for prayer. Finally he again decided to go forward with them. In contrast to the ethnographic prose of our last text, his wife's narration of what transpired is in the speech genre of Charismatic ''witnessing'':

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

61

So he was prayed on and he "rested in the Spirit," like they say, and then he got up and he went to the seat. But he said that when they prayed on him, it was like a heat that was coming from above that went right through his body, that he had never felt anything like that before. He never felt it after. And he was there awhile and he came to the seat, and there's a woman that came, and she said, ''Would you come in front with me?" So he said, "Yeah, okay." So he went in front, and she sat him on a chair, and 1 saw him. She said, "Did you know you had a leg shorter than the other one?" And he said yeah, because he had gone to a doctor for compensation, and his leg was almost an inch to a quarter of an inch shorter. The doctor had said that his leg was getting atrophied-I didn't know what atrophied means, so 1 asked his doctor here, and he said the leg was shrinking because of the lack of using and whatever. So she put both heels in her hand and they were stretched, and she was praying, and he saw his leg stretch right in front of his own eyes to the same length as the other one. He came home and he said "I can't believe it, but it has to be so," and he would look at his legs, and he would put his feet on the chair in front of him and look. But then when he would get up and walk, 1 had to shorten his pants one shorter than the other and it was showing, the length. That day also he had pain like you wouldn't believe, and the next day, and then it subsided, subsided, and it went away. And now that man does everything.

Characteristic of witnessing as a genre of ritual language, the narrative concerns a chronic problem upon which the resources of professional medicine appear to have been exhausted as well as a history of disappointment with ritual healing such that the patient's "expectant faith" also appears to have been virtually exhausted. When he relents and approaches the altar for prayer, the supplicant experiences the empowerment of resting in the Spirit and an "anointing" of heat flowing through his body, and later undergoes the leg-lengthening technique. (Note that this reverses the sequence described in Fr. R's service, where supplicants approached the altar subsequent to the leg-lengthening.) The critical moment is when, incredulously, "he saw his leg stretch right in front of his own eyes." The narrator emphasizes the persistence of the change in recounting that she had to alter her husband's pants. His pain, however, did not vanish immediately, but remained intense for several days, only gradually subsiding and removing his disability. We can now triangulate the ethnographic description of ritual performance and the ritual narrative of healing with a native exegesis, to borrow Victor Turner's phrase, ofleg-Iengthening practice drawn from an interview I conducted with the healer Fr. R. The excerpt includes an impromptu demonstration ofleg-lengthening and related techniques on a woman who was present during the interview as well as a demonstration performed on me:

62

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

Fr. R: Usually what I do is pick up [receive a word of knowledge about] who they need to forgive and whisper it in the person's ear. Now, M will be there tonight and she'll do the whispering in the person's ear. Because she'll pick up. Because I pray on the legs in a special way, and it's hard for me to lean up to get the person's ear, because there are other people there [surrounding the person]. I generally like to keep it as quiet as possible and tell them who they need to forgive. TC: You said that you have a special way of praying over people's legs? Fr. R: Yeah, I'm in [I perform] leg adjustment. The Protestants call it the growing of legs. Basically, it's a chiropractic adjustment done through prayer. But much, much more powerful than chiropractic. We have a lot of people chiropractic can't do anything with, and we use this method, and [he snaps his fingers to indicate spontaneous healing, then calls to a woman in the next room]. You're willing to donate yourself to science? Woman: Yeah, you bet my body! Fr. R: Just sit up nice and straight. Hips back to the chair. No, the other way. Push your hips right back. So I can get a measurement on your legs. The nose is the center of the body, we draw an imaginary line. We get under the shoes, pushing up against the feet to get a good reading. Now, look at the deviation right in here, on the bottom of her heels. Can you see the bottom of this heel, what is that, almost three-quarters of an inch deviation. Which means her pelvic frame is seated, it's not flat, it's on an angle, and it's drawn up that leg. So what I'm going to do is command the pelvic frame, to [he snaps his fmgers] to go back into normal position. And as that comes down, those heels will equal, will equalize right up. Okay. So, now just like this, Jesus, command that pelvic frame to go into normal position. In Jesus' name, immediately, line up the muscles on the vertebrae. Pelvic frame [snaps] jumps right back into position. Now, that's from the waist down. Basically, again, this is the chiropractic adjustment, that's what a chiropractor does, measures your heels and we do it through prayer. TC to woman: Did you feel anything happen during the prayer? Woman: Sort of relaxing. Fr. R: Now we're going to do the upper frame. The nose is the center of the body, arms full length like that. Okay, now we bring them together and get a measurement. See, you can see, there's a bit of a deviation there. So let's just go ahead. We're pretty equal there. But I'll just command that, this gets the first cervical, which is a key, because all the nerves coming from the brain come through the first cervical area, and if that's out of whack, it impinges on the nerves. That's why chiropractors

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

TC: Fr. R:

Woman: Fr. R: Woman: Fr. R: Woman: Fr. R:

Woman: Fr. R: Woman: Fr. R: Woman:

63

claim they can do so much, because they straighten the cervical, and it takes the pressure off the nerves and sends the energy through the whole body. In Jesus' name, we just command that first cervical, muscles, vertebrae go back into normal position. Doesn't seem to be too much there. But I catch it. Stand up, and I'll do it, we call this the head adjustment. Fingers behind the neck, right on the nerves, going up and down the spine. The two middle fingers together. Yeah, in other words, the closer your hands are to the affected area, the more energy, spiritual energy you get. Thumbs in front of the ears, palms right on the jaws, which is a nerve area too. Okay, kid, I'm going to command the first cervical to go back in normal position. Head back. In Jesus' name, command that cervical to go back into normal position. Chin to left, chin to the right, rotate three times, in Jesus' name, command that cervical muscles vertebrae, line up. In Jesus' name. How do you feel right now? Relaxed. More relaxed than you did before? Vh huh. A lot more or just a little? Well, medium. Medium more. Yeah, as the frame straightens, it takes the pressure off the muscles. Oh, okay, there's one I didn't do called a hip, the hip adjustment. Just, this is rather interesting. Just put your toes together, and the side of hips here, put our hands, and command the pelvic frame. In Jesus' name, we command that pelvic frame to line up. Now, in Jesus' name ... do you feel yourself moving out? Can you feel yourself rotating? Just let it happen. It's okay, it's not you and it's not me, it's just happening. Don't be afraid. In Jesus' name, we command you to [his voice drops to a whisper]. Go ahead, just let yourself rotate. I'm behind you. Sometimes, it's like a Hawaiian hula when you see it. Don't ... just let it happen, let it happen. She didn't seem to need too much. [Pause.] How does that feel? Good. Good. Have you had any pains in your back at all? Lower back. You've had, your lower back was healed, all that was out. How's it feel right now? Test it, see how it feels. It seems to be a lot of improvement. But my equilibrium does go off on me sometimes. And ...

64

TIIERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

Fr. R: But this head adjusnnent is good for that. It gets you a lot better. TC to womtm: What kind of movement did you feel in your hips there? Woman: Sort of a ... you know ... secure, relaxing, kind of feeling. TC: Would you say a tugging, did you feel any kind of tugging? Fr. R: Why don't you sit down, Tom, and I'll do it on you and you'll be able to experience it. Okay, ... both feet. Okay, all right. Ail right. You've got some deviation right in there. You can't see that, can you? TC: Left one's a little big longer. Fr. R: The left one is longer, I'd say oh, half inch. Okay, in Jesus' name I command you.... In Jesus' name. Now, the left is shorter. In Jesus, I command the pelvic frame to rotate into normal position. There you are. You're equal. There. Arms full length. Arms full length. [He whispers] You're not too bad. I command the frame in Jesus' name to go into normal position. In Jesus' name ... [he whispers prayers] Let me do that head adjusnnent. Just stand up. In Jesus' name I command that cervical to go back into normal position. In the name of Jesus, in the name ofJesus, rotate three times, in the name of Jesus, name of ... the other way, three times, in Jesus' name. Let me put your toes together and do that head adjusnnent. Although you seem to be not too bad. In Jesus' name we command that pelvic frame to line up. In Jesus' name ... in Jesus' name. Can you feel the healing? TC: Sort of a little bit side to side. RD: Just let it move, it's rotating back into position. In Jesus' name, in Jesus' name.

In opening a discussion of this text we must note the forthright and empirical attitude expressed by Fr. R toward his practice, and his casual understanding of it as a spiritualized chiropractic. There is a distinct "ethnophysiology" in his conception of bodily alignment and skeletal pressure on muscles and nerves. This ethnophysiology is fully integrated with both a notion of spiritual energy (i.e., when pressure is taken off the nerves energy is free to flow through the body), and a notion of spiritual power by means of which the divinity grants control over biological nature (i.e., the skeletal adjustment is commanded in the name ofJesus). It is essential that we consider this text in relation to the other two, and not privilege Fr. R's account over the others as a more accurate statement of what is "really" going on. The excerpt opens with a mention of how he spiritually "picks up" information about whom suppli-

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

65

cants "need to forgive." Yet in comparison to the ethnographic account, the verbal and affective content of the healing interaction is downplayed in favor of the physical and neurological technique. The man in our second account quite likely attended only to the immediate effect of lengthening of his leg and the gradual decline in pain, whereas the healer attends to the postural adjustment of pelvis and spine. He expects an immediate and observable change in his demonstration, but neither subject is able to report anything deftnitive. Both in his focus on physical technique and his eagerness for empirical results, he expresses awareness that he is engaged with the anthropologist in a scientific pursuit. Taken together, there are several clues in this account that lead us to the analysis of leg-lengthening as a self process. One is the explicit reference in the second account of the man's leg spontaneously stretching (not growing). The other is an apparent contradiction between the first and third accounts. Whereas the research assistant described a firm tugging on supplicants' legs, in my own experience there was no tug at all-Fr. R simply held feet or arms together in his hand and prayed. What he anticipated was spontaneous rotationlalignmentlbalance of skeletonlnerves/muscle tension. To understand these clues, we introduce the concept of the postural model, originated by the psychologist Head and elaborated by Schilder (1950). The postural model refers to the gestalt sense of coherence and orientation of the body to its own parts and movements. It is thus related to our earlier discussion of the body as orientationallocus of the sensorium and as our setting in relation to the world. The postural model is a function of self precisely as a preobjective capacity for orientation in the world, and we must show how leg-lengthening is a cultural objectification in which that capacity is altered, and in which bodily self-awareness is framed as awareness of divine empowerment. Consider the following experiment described by Schilder that demonstrates the spontaneous coordination of the postural model based on a phenomenon he describes as persistence of tone: We order a subject to stretch his hands forward, so that one arm is parallel to the other. One arm is now raised in an angle of about 45 degrees above the horizontal. (One may also bring the arm 45 degrees below the horizontal plane.) Bring the arm of the subject passively to the inclined position or let the subject take this position in an active way. Either support the resting arm (R. arm) and the raised (or lowered) mobile arm (M. arm) or let the subject keep the position actively. The subject may have his eyes open or closed. After 25 seconds, the subject is ordered to close his eyes (if they were open) and to bring

66

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

his M. arm into the same position as the R. arm. When the M. arm is raised, the subject does not bring his arm into the same plane as the R. arm, but the M. arm remains several centimeters higher than the R. arm. When the M. arm is lowered, the M. arm is not brought back to the horizontal line, but remains several centimeters lower than the R. arm. The subject does not know that he has made a mistake and is of the opinion that both arms are at the same height. After a few seconds, the M. arm returns into the same position as the R. arm. The subjects generally do not know that they have changed the position. A registration with the kymograph shows that the disappearance of the difference does not decrease steadily, but by jerks which bring the arm back into the position of the: R. arm. The theoretical meaning of this phenomenon is that the normal position of the M. arm, after the tone has influenced it, is the position into which the tonepull would bring the arm; or the tone of the postural persistence influences the body-image in the sense that it is pulled into the direction of tone. The limb, therefore, is felt in a position which is opposite to the direction of the muscular pull. Or, in a more general formulation, the postural model of the body is dependent on the pull of the tone. This formulation has conSiderable general importance. The phenomenon of postural persistence is a phenomenon all over the body. It is also present for every single posture of the body. We are dealing therefore with a phenomenon of general significance. (1950:75,77)

I would suggest that the extension of the limbs in the religious practice and the elevation of limbs in the experiment are both based on this persistence of tone, which is a phenomenon "all over the body" and "for every single posture."2 This conclusion is reinforced by the apparent existence of both psychological and physiological (sympathetic and spinal) connections between symmetrical parts of the body (ibid.:19, 26, 291). In addition to persistence of tone, the influence of a second factor can be illustrated with respect to the man described in our second text. This factor is the habitual posture. Schilder refers to the persistence of tone as a motor factor, whereas the habitual posture is sensory. Specifically, it is the "persistence of a sensory impression" of one's own body, or a kind of"sensory aftereffect" (ibid.: 81-83). In our case the influence of the habitual posture on the injured man's postural model could account for the persistence of his pain f~r days following the readjustment of that model to a more normal tone. That leg-lengthening, an operation performed on the postural model, is a common form of Charismatic and Pentecostal healing is very much in line with an understanding of healing as a self process. Insofar as the body is the existential ground of self, it is critical that the postural model is fIrst a "product of the gestalt creative powers of our psyche" (ibid.: 21), but second that it is "in perpetual inner self-construction and self-

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

67

destruction" (ibid.: 15). Thus we see ritual efficacy as a kind of creativity and ritual transformation as an essentially indeterminate self process. The primary cultural objectification inheres in making the spontaneity of this process thematic as divine power. The new mode of orientation in the world-the appropriation of both spontaneity and of its results-is thus accurately described as a sacred self.

Somatic Modes of Attention

I will offer another example that is complementary to the preobjective transformation of postural model. Here it is a question of modulating what I will call an explicit somatic mode ofattention (Csordas 1993). Alfred Schutz, the premier methodologist of phenomenological social science, understood attention as the "full alertness and the sharpness of apperception connected with consciously turning toward an object, combined with further considerations and anticipations of its characteristics and uses" (1970:316). Therapeutic process in Charismatic physical healing can be an alteration of the mode of attention-a capacity for orientation in the world and hence an aspect of self-toward one's own body in a way that is vigilant, but that sharply contrasts with the vigilance of hypochondria. The following two cases, drawn from our follow-up of public healing-service participants, show the role of a somatic mode of attention in the phenomenological definition of what it means to be "partially healed" of a physical problem. The first is a fifty-six-year-old married man, a Ph.D. biologist and active Charismatic, partially healed of periodic backache approximately three years prior to the interview. The backaches were not seriously debilitating, only "painful and a nuisance." They required no more care than his wife shining a heat lamp on him. They would typically occur after yardwork or house repairs, especially if he would twist his torso-he remarked that his occupation is quite sedentary. His wife reported that he could still "do things," but that his movements would be very constrained and cautious. She never had to drive him anywhere, he always came to the table for meals, and he was never bedridden, although he would sometimes lay down for a couple of hours. He had never consulted a doctor about the backaches. This was not, he said, because of reliance on faith healing, but because he is "a kind of person

68

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

that doesn't go to a doctor that much," and it did not seem to him like the kind of problem a doctor could take care of: It was primarily the upper back and would get debilitating enough that it would take me a week and sometimes two weeks to get over it, and I would have difficulty sleeping from rolling over, this kind of thing. And it was even painful in a chair. It was extremely difficult to drive with it. They were becoming fairly frequent [over the course of ten years], I was probably at the point where I was getting a half-a-dozen a year.

The man felt that the healing occurred in one session and not over the course of several sessions, but he reported no sensations in his back. He recalled only a "purely spiritual" experience at the healing session, including resting in the Spirit. He did not realize he was healed of backaches till he 'had passed a month and a half without getting one, when it "became pretty clear" that he had in fact been healed: I ceased to get backaches with very rare exceptions, and even those I got have been unlike the others. Every once in a while I would feel a backache just barely starting, and I would thank God for having cured it, and usually it goes away. I'll just feel the start of a tightness of the muscles, of a spasm, and all I'll do is say to God, '"Thank you for curing my backaches." And then it will go away, and may do the same thing once or twice more during the day and so I say the same thing and it never develops into anything, with very few exceptions .... On two occasions I could feel a burning nerve sensation in my back:, I thought it was a nerve that was inflamed. I felt burning. That happened a couple of times, but I never felt any stiffuess or soreness at all. I could just feel the inflamed nerve [not painful]. I was just keenly aware of it. And it didn't last long, and I felt-I'm not a medical doctor, but I felt I probably would have had a heck of a backache if I had not gone to the healing service. It was almost as if I could feel the origin of the problem but without the symptoms or the spasms.

Although he is not always successful in preventing backaches, those that do occur are qualitatively different than prior to his healing and require no heating pad or heat lamp treatment. Of two such incidents, he described one as follows: Amazingly enough I could even shovel snow with it. Even though it was quite sore, as soon as I would do anything it didn't impede me at all. It was not as sore as prior to the healing, but it was significantly sore.

When he felt the burning that indicated potential relapse, and prayed his thanks for healing, the sensations would subside ''very quick, about half hour or less." For the two instances that were actual sore backs,

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

69

contrary to their typical duration of one to two weeks, the problem only lasted one to two days. Because he had not had any problem in the past year he reported seldom thinking about it at all: "So I doubt very much that it's a psychologically induced thing. Because I've got too many other problems right now to be catering to something like this." In this last statement the man is anticipating the judgment that his problem is "psychosomatic," a judgment that would help us just as little as concluding that his healing was effected by "suggestion." Instead, consideration of his reflections allows us to observe a somatic mode of attention in which the man recognizes incipient backache as a tightness, spasm, or burning sensation. It is clear that he remains prone to the problem, but now has a preventive consciousness attuned to signs of onset and even, in his words, to "the origin of the problem" in a particular inflamed nerve. His mode of attention includes active response with a prayer that is also an affirmation of his healing. This is not an unusual technique among Charismatics, and what is ostensibly a reminder to the deity that he has granted a healing is pragmatically a self-reminder to monitor one's physical state. In this case, although the patient is unaware of moving and walking differently or adopting different typical positions, what is in question is doubtless the state of his postural model. Our second case is that of a fifty-six-year-old married woman, a teacher and active Charismatic partially healed of a chronic susceptibility to flu two years prior to the interview. She reported a lifelong problem in which a third of her winter months were spent in sore-throat, cold and flu misery, causing her to miss a lot of school days as a youth and considerable work time as an adult. She decided to attend a healing service following a flu during which nasal irritation resulted in a nosebleed that could not be stopped, and led her to consult a physician for cauterization. During the service she rested in the Spirit, but did not perceive any immediate result: 1 just felt very peaceful, and nothing spectacular happened at all. 1 felt that things were well between me and the Lord, there was nothing dramatic, nothing special. 1 didn't really know [I was healed] until I started passing through the times-usually November is flu month, the worst. I really had to pass through these times of year before I would get much due. Otherwise I felt absolutely nothing special, and I no idea of being healed, I just kind offelt, "Well, I hope 1 am." Every winter since, perhaps six to eight times I would feel the onset of a cold or flu. And then maybe for a day or two I would take it very, very easily, and take some antihistamine just so I could get through. But then I would take it very easily so as not to run my own self down. Then maybe after two days

70

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

or so these symptoms would disappear and they never did get very bad. On one occasion I felt that I was being more threatened with it, and I did decide to take the week off and take it very, very easy. So I took it easy but I didn't have the total debilitating body weakness that I had previous times. I was able to at least creep around.

Quite like the man in the previous example, this woman experiences periodic near onsets of her problem, and even an instance that she defmed as enough of a threat to take a week off from work. She understood this one as less debilitating than other episodes, though she was still reduced to "creeping around." Her interpretation of these posthealing episodes is that "the Lord is reminding her he did something." Whereas this may sound like a divinity insisting on gratitude, it is reminiscent of the technique of thanking God cited by the man in our preceding example. The significant observation is not that the woman has reinterpreted the persistence of her symptoms, but that she has adopted a preventive consciousness of those symptoms, a self-reminder not only to behave "as if' she were healed, but a somatic mode of attention constructed to preempt those symptoms. She states that although the healing can be traced to a specific event, she experienced a ''very gradual recognition" that it had taken place. I suggest we understand this as a therapeutic process that may be initiated in a healing service, but transcends the event and continues as an everyday self process. The recognition of healing is a modulation of orientation in the world, so that one monitors one's symptoms and responds to them by modifying one's activities. This reorientation not only preserves but actually constitutes the healing. Interestingly, this woman had wondered whether her conviction of being healed made her guilty of "indulging in superstition." Neither theology nor motivation is primary to our account, however, for the critical factor is a specific self process, the modulation of somatic attention.

Meaning and Self Process Students of religious healing have for some time suggested that its most common effect is not to remove a disease and its symptoms, but to transform the meaning' of the illness (Bourguignon 1976a). This transformative power is such that it has been argued that ritual healing both precludes its own failure (Kleinman and Sung 1979),

THERAPEUfIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

71

and is positively creative (Kleinman 1980, Comaroff 1983). Yet an understanding of meaning only in the semiotic sense would likely lead us right back to construing therapeutic efficacy as the global result of a nonspecific mechanism. It was only by grounding our accounts in the phenomenological notions of postural model and somatic mode of attention, that is, on concepts originating with the preobjective body in the world, that we were able to identify the specific efficacy of the practice and understand it as a subtle modulation of the self. It follows that anthropological description of therapeutic efficacy as "transformation of meaning" can bear greater methodological productivity when the notion of "meaning" is granted greater existential weight (MerleauPonty 1962:146); greater, that is, than when transformation of meaning is understood only in semiotic instead of phenomenological terms, or only as the substitution of representations instead of as a modulation of being in the world, or again only as a different standard of judgment instead of a different sensibility about oneself as a culturally defmed person. We will press the relation between phenomenology and semiotics in the next chapter. For now we can apply our discussion of the persistence of tone, habitual posture, and the somatic modes of attention to a general account of therapeutic process in Charismatic healing. First, ritual healing appears to operate on a mat;gin of disability that is present in many conditions. It is well known, for example, that some people who become "legally blind" are able to engage in a wide range of activities, whereas others retreat to a posture of near total disability and inactivity. Likewise, persons with chronic pain in a limb may be physically able to move that limb, but refrain from doing so for lack of sufficient motivation to make the risk of pain worthwhile. Disability is thus constituted as a habitual mode of engaging the world. 3 The process of healing is an existential process of exploring the margin of disability, motivated by the conviction ofdivine power and the committed participant's desire to demonstrate it in himself as well as by the support of the assembly and its acclamation for a supplicant's testimony of healing. To be convinced of this interpretation one need only consider the hesitant, faltering steps of the supplicant who at the healer's request rises from her wheelchair and shuffles slowly up and down a church aisle, or again the slowly unclenching fist of the sufferer from chronic arthritis whose hand is curled by affliction into a permanent fist. Healing allows this by challenging the sensory commitment to a habitual posture, by removing

72

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

inhibitions on the motor tendency toward normal postural tone, and by modulating the somatic mode of attention. Second, the methodological focus on specificity in therapeutic process shows that ritual healing is probably best characterized by an incremental eJfictu;y. We exclude the occasional claim that miracles of spontaneous and total healing occur. Far more common, and with greater significance for the self processes with which we are concerned, are the "partial" and "everyday" healings that sustain the ritual system. In such instances a person's exploration of the margin of disability is not completed, but only initiated, by the event of ritual healing. As we have already observed (cf. also Csordas 1988), ritual process transcends the ritual event, and each "reminder" in the incipient onset of an illness episode continues the performance of healing. It is reasonable to assume that the degree to which a supplicant is existentially engaged in the process is critical to this incremental efficacy. Neu (1977) has pointed out the importance of the degree to which different forms of therapy engage participants' thought processes, but one must understand the importance of engagement to include emotional and other self processes as well. Because of the fundamental indeterminacy of the self, there is no guarantee that the creative products of ritual performance will be permanently integrated into a person's life. To the extent that the incremental efficacy of an open-ended process is common across forms of healing in different cultural traditions, we may understand why some require the totalistic personal transformation and involvement in a religious community described by Crapanzano (1973) as a "symbiotic" cure. Perhaps, in fact, anthropological analyses should not be aimed at identifying defmitive therapeutic outcomes, but at specifying the incremental efficacy of therapeutic process. Such a goal requires an interpretive approach sensitive to the kind of subtle modulations of meaning and experience we have begun to identify in the examples we have examined. I would suggest that such accounts include at least the following four components. First is the disposition of supplicants, both in the psychological sense of their prevailing mood or tendency for engagement in ritual performance, and in the social sense of how they are disposed vis-a-vis the interactive networks and symbolic resources of the religious community. Second is the experience of the sacred, taking into account not only the religious formulation of the human condition in relation to the divine and the repertoire of ritual elements that constitute legitimate manifestations of divine power, but also variations in

THERAPEUTIC PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE

73

individual capacities for experience of the sacred that may influence the course of therapeutic process. Third is the elaboration of alternatives or possibilities that exist within the "assumptive world" (J. Frank 1973) of the afflicted. Healing systems may formulate these alternatives in terms of a variety of metaphors (new pathways, becoming unstuck, overcoming obstacles, getting out of trouble, expelling demons, healing emotional wounds), and may use ritual or pragmatic means that encourage either activity or passivity, but the possibilities must be perceived as real and realistic. Finally, what counts as change as well as the degree to which that change is regarded as significant by participants cannot be taken for granted in comparative studies of therapeutic process. The actualization ofchange is all the more problematic where efficacy is incremental and there is no defmitive outcome. We offer these four elements of therapeutic process as a general framework for comparative studies and hope to demonstrate their usefulness as they guide our search for specificity in subsequent chapters. 4

4 Embodied Imagery and Divine Revelation

Clifford Geertz once described the study of religious change and its persuasive force as the "social history of the imagination" ( 1968: 19). In this large sense, imagination is the general capacity of human creativity, including the reflexive capacity to transform one's orientation in the world. In a more restricted sense, imagination itself can be a mode of orientation in the world where by imagination we now refer to the concrete experience of "imagery." Our concern in this and the next chapter is not only to discuss the occurrence of imagery among Charismatics, but to show that it is a culturally constituted imaginal self process in two senses. First is that imagery is cultivated as a mode of orientation in the world in a variety of domains (prayer, prophecy, healing). Second is the more complex sense that in ritual healing imagery assumes a specific efficacy in transforming other orientations, particularly those associated with illness and distress. Thus, imagery can be considered as imaginal self process both in that it becomes a general capacity of the self, and insofar as discrete occurrences of imagery are endowed with the valence of performative force brought to bear on the sel£ Stated otherwise, imagination is both a disposition and a tool. This attention to imagery is perhaps the principal feature that distinguishes the Charismatic sacred self from that of the surrounding North American culture. Charismatic imagery may in theory occur at any time, and some may experience it regularly during prayer. Imagery is also closely associated with the inspiration of prophetic utterance (see chapter 1 and Csordas 74

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

75

1987a). One long-time prophet described this experience as a ''word picture.... In other words, I get it [the prophecy] in an image. And as I see the image, then words will come." The phenomenological relation between word and image in this experience is subtle, apparently involving a double inspiration compounded of visual image and spontaneous verbalization. In other cases it is conceivable that the words may be more or less a description of the visual image, and in yet others the words themselves may be appresented as visual images, that is, as if they were written in the visual imagination to be read as a divine text. As unelaborated as this example may be, it exhibits what Casey (1976, 1987) calls the "multiplicity of the mental," and gives us a first intimation that for our purposes imagination must be considered as much more than "pictures in the mind." In the various modes of ritual healing, imagery may be either revelatory or therapeutic. Images may be revelatory in two senses: they may serve as a sign that divine power is active, or may reveal the content of therapeutic issues. When experienced by healers, revelatory imagery is invariably spontaneous. It is an example of the "word of knowledge," part of a class of inspired ''word gifts" that includes speaking in tongues, prophecy, and the word of wisdom. Therapeutic imagery occurs not to the healer but to the patient and constitutes the experiential resolution of a problem. Therapeutic imagery is typically evoked during moments in a healing session devoted to prayer and "openness" to divine inspiration, but not during periods of discussion and "counseling." It may also be induced by the healer in the form of guided imagery, active imagination, or meditation, similar in form but different in content from techniques used in image-oriented psychotherapies. Given that among Charismatics both healers and supplicants experience forms of imagery, it is of interest to observe that the (somewhat limited) anthropological literature on healing imagery (Noll 1985, Tedlock 1987, Herdt and Stephen 1989) treats almost exclusively imagery experienced by healers, whereas the (voluminous) psychological literature on imagery in psychotherapy (Sheikh 1984, Sheikh and Jordan 1983, J. Singer 1981, Shorr et al. 1979) is with few exceptions preoccupied with imagery experienced by patients. Among anthropologists the shaman's imagery is shown to be either diagnostiddivinatory or the vehicle of therapeutic efficacy. Among psychotherapists the patient's imagery can be analyzed diagnostically or used as a therapeutic tool. It would be convenient to conclude that this difference in the literature marked an important empirical difference between healing in those soci-

76

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

eties traditionally studied by anthropologists and in our own. We would be able to conclude that Charismatic ritual is a postmodem synthesis of imaginal processes in healing. Unfortunately, our conclusion must be more methodological than empirical: anthropologists work predominandy with healers in the systems they study, psychologists work predominandy with patients in studying psychotherapy.l In the present discussion we are fortunate to have access to the imagery of both Charismatic healers and patients. For the remainder of this chapter we will concentrate on the imagery of healers.

The Shoe Test Let us enter the Charismatic imaginal process with an example that shows both its inculcation as a generalized, self process and its particular performative efficacy. Our text is a healer's discussion of her technique for introducing imagination to audiences in healing servlces: I give a "shoe test" to help people to visualize, to show them what I mean by visualization. I just tell them close your eyes .... "Now, with your eyes closed I want you to picture a shoe.... Okay, open your eyes." Now, I ask questions. Is it a man's shoe? Is it a woman's shoe? Does the shoe have buckles, laces, a slip-on? Is it the left shoe or the right shoe? [Etc.] And now this is where the audience calls out, right? I'll go like this and they call out "black," "brown," "white," "red," "pink," nyab, nyab, nyab. And then I'll say, ''Okay, how many saw a tennis shoe, a sneaker, or jogging shoes, a wooden shoe, a glass slipper, a baby's shoe, a tap shoe, a toe shoe, a leprechaun's shoe, an Arabian shoe, a boot, a slipper, a doctor's shoe, a nurse's shoe, a surgical shoe, seventeenthcentury French cavalier boots, the Pope's shoe, a horseshoe, a policeman's shoe, a military shoe, combat boots?" And the hands are going up. When they're all finished I say [to] those that don't see, "You need a healing of your imagination." And I tell them why, because their creativity and their spontaneity were stifled as children. So we take Jesus back in their lives, and ask Jesus to heal all that hurt and trauma so they can visualize. "Now you people that saw a shoe, you too need a healing. You need to forgive the person whose shoe you saw." Ha! Ha! And this is where the audience goes, "Oh!" I'll say, "How many saw their own shoe?" Half the audience! I say, "You have to forgive yourself." Now the first time I did this the woman saw a wooden shoe. And she came to me afterwards and she said, ''What does it mean?" I said, "I don't know." I said, "This is only a test." I said, "I didn't give it to you. God gave it to you. The Holy Spirit gave it to you. Go take it to Him. Ask Him what it means." Well, before I left the house that night, she said, "I know what that shoe is."

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

77

I said, ''What is it?" She said, "When I was a little girl" (this was a woman about sixty) "my mother got very, very sick." I'm of Italian descent and a lot of these people were Italians I was working with and you've got to be Italian to understand Italians. They fall apart in a crisis. We're loud, we're noisy. Everybody talks at one time. So here's this little girl's mother sick in bed and all the aunts and uncles are there, moaning and groaning, crying and perhaps saying the rosary. The little girl couldn't go into the bedroom. An aunt wouldn't let her. And she was devastated. Because her mother was dying. I don't think the mother was dying, but the way they acted she was. And the woman said to me, "And you know what, that aunt had a wooden lift on her shoe. She had one leg shorter than the other." So now when I get a wooden shoe I always ask the people, "Can I see you afterwards." And I ask them, "Do you know anybody that had a wooden lift on their shoe." And nine out often, it's that. Or, "Did you ever own a wooden shoe?" I've run into that. And needed a healing from something that happened with those wooden shoes. Or, there was an old lady that lived· in a shoe. Had so many children, didn't know what to do? "How many children in your family?" "Nine." "Seven." That's it! Lack of love! They've got, sometimes they see the wooden shoe and a man's shoe. So that means forgiving mother and father. For too many children. You know what the glass slipper is? I know what that is. And I've always been one hundred percent right. And I'll say to them, ''What do you ... " (See, I don't tell them what it means. I keep asking questions.) I'll say, ''When you think of a glass slipper, what do you think of?" They all say the same thing, "Cinderella." "Aha! What happened to Cinderella? The clock was striking midnight. What was she doing?" "Oh, she was running." "Uh huh, and what happened?" "She lost her slipper." "Uh huh, why was she running?" "Well, to get home." "Who was chasing her?" "Oh, the prince, who wanted to ..." "Right!" Now, I ask them the question, have you ever been chased by a man? Maybe you picked his flowers and he chased you out of the yard. I'm trying to do it very gently, alright? And it comes right out. And you know what it is? Sexual abuse. And when the man gets the glass slipper, that's when I take a deep breath. And I always talk to them, too. Asked one man, and I said, "Have you ever been sexually abused?" After I asked him all the [other] questions. He said, "No." And I said, "Oh, Okay." I said, ''Well, normally that's what it means, but ... okay, well thank you anyways." And I walked away. And about a half an hour later, he called me over to the corner, and he said, "I've got something to tell you." And his eyes filled up with tears. He must have been a man about thiny-five, thiny-six, alright? He said, "By my boy cousin." And another man, he saw combat boots, and he lost his sight in the South Pacific. A Japanese soldier threw a hand grenade in his face and he lost his eyesight. So it's really, it's a shoe test and the Lord is healing. And I keep saying, "Lord, it's not time for you. This is only a shoe test" [i.e., this is not supposed to be the healing part of the service, just an exercise on using the imagination]. But people are being healed.

This healer's "shoe test" is an innovation within Charismatic culture which has the explicit didactic intent of cultivating visual imagination.

78

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

Imagination is culturally defmed as an inherent human capacity that, if inoperative, can be healed by divine intervention. At the same time, discrete images are held to be efficacious for the self, insofar as they identify a state of affairs relevant to the well-being of the visualizer. The shoe is a synecdoche of a real person, and that person is understood to be in a relationship with the visualizer that requires healing through an act of forgiveness by the visualizer. It is critical that the healer intended her innovation only as didactic, but discovered "empirically" through practice-that is, through the anticipation on the part of her audience that imagery must have meaning-the deity's intention to use the technique for his own healing purposes. This is the significance of the characteristically familiar tone of the healer telling God that "It's not time for you," a humorously self-reproachful reminder that it is up to the deity to decide when and through what means to manifest power. Also in the empirical laboratory of ritual practice she discovered a highly elaborated psychocultural semiotic of shoes, where conventional connotations of wooden shoes, glass slippers, and combat boots are improvisationally extrapolated to the equally conventional repertoire of emotional distress. Thus the wooden shoe may refer not only to a person who owned such a shoe or a shoe with a wooden lift, but also to a situation such as growing up in a large family that is. regarded to have potentially negative emotional consequences. Here the shoe counts as a personal symbol based on deep motivation (Obeyesekere 1981), but unlike the matted hair ofObeyesekere's Hindu-Buddhist ecstatic, it is emergent in performance. Yet in this instance performance is not only a ritual or liturgical enactment, but also the function of an endogenous process. It is only incidentally relevant that the process is technically diagnostic rather than therapeutic. What allows it to become interpreted as diagnostic in the first place is both the ethnopsychological assumption that any spontaneous image is likely to reflect important unconscious content, and the sheer existential immediacy inherent in the spontaneous product of this endogenous process. We set ourselves a large task in examining the nature and consequences of this immediacy, especially since, as we have noted, imagination is a domain that has not received systematic treatment byanthropologists. For this reason we must step back for a moment from our exposition of Charismatic healing and elaborate the theoretical side of our dialogue between theory and phenomena. We will begin by distinguishing a phenomenological perspective on imagery from that of other

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

79

approaches. We will challenge the intellectualist presuppositions inherent in a concept of "mental imagery," offering in its place a conception of "embodied imagery" characterized by presentational immediacy and autonomy in consciousness. We will then elaborate a conceptual framework combining phenomenology and semiotics, which will allow us to grasp the experiential character and content of imagery experienced by healers and the peculiar light it throws on the relation between imagery and perception. Building on this analysis, we will fmally return to examine the sense in which embodied revelatory imagery is a self process for healers.

The Existence of the Image If imagination is a prominent modality of human creativity and a powerful self process, it is of note that it is virtually absent as a topic of anthropological interest. To be sure, anthropologists have long been interested in the relevance of dreams to psychoanalytic themes, as the source for the prophetic inspirations of charismatic figures, and for their widespread role in religion and healing (Kennedy and Langness 1981, Tedlock 1987). Yet with few exceptions (Roseman 1991), much of the dream literature is by methodological necessity limited to the interpretation of symbolic and affective content, stopping short of a phenomenology of image processes. Again, the importance of imagery is implicit in anthropological treatments of altered states of consciousness. This literature, however, has been for the most part formulated in terms of the nature of trance, possession, hallucination, conversion, and performance rather than with an interest in the cultural constitution and consequences of imagery processes. The work of L. Doob (1964) and D. Doob (1982) stands out as a milestone in the cross-cultural examination of vivid or eidetic imagery. 2 Aside from these works, only very recently have tentative steps been taken to open imagination as a category of anthropological study (Noll 1985, Price-Williams 1987, Stephen 1989, Lyon 1990). We will therefore take some time to solidity the theoretically spongy ground upon which we must tread in order to present a cultural phenomenology of imaginal self process in Charismatic ritual performance. Let us first briefly contrast an empiricist notion of the image with a phenomenological one. In brief, in the empiricist view the image is a

80

EMBODmD IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

kind of thing or mental object, a representation or copy of sensory perception. For phenomenology, it is a modality of consciousness, and since consciousness is inherendy intentional, a kind of act (Giorgi 1987, Casey 1976). The dominance of the objectifying empiricist view in psychological and philosophical studies of imagery has played a critical role in shaping the common tendency to think of imagery in quite narrow terms. Imagery becomes "mental imagery," and the sensory scope of mental imagery is reduced to ''visual imagery." This mentalistic bias is compatible with our culture's preference of the visual modality, and both are presupposed by the experimental model of research in a laboratory setting. 3 However, such "mentalism" and ''visualism'' are not necessarily compatible with an ethnographic model of research in a natural setting where images are not produced with technical neatness, but documented in their existential messiness. A phenomenological approach that insists on the inclusion of corporeality in a definition of consciousness and on the unifIed sensorium as the field of imaginative activity is, therefore, necessary to adequately encompass imagination as an empirical domain. Moreover, insofar as the problem of imagery bears directly on the nature of the "mind-body relationship" (Morris and Hampson 1983), such an approach is a necessary corollary to a theory of the body as existential ground of selfsuch as we have been developing. With respect to our empirical case, it is as a mode of embodied consciousness, and specifically as a somatic mode of attention that has become a disposition in the Charismatic habitus, that embodied imagery can be shown to constitute a self process in ritual healing. Whereas we can thus draw an epistemological contrast between empiricism and phenomenology, we can draw a methodological contrast between a semiotic and phenomenological approach to imagery. Let us contrast the phenomenological image we have just described with the semiotic image in its familiar form of the "literary image." The critical difference is that, whereas the former is essentially a function of our embodiment, the latter is essentially a function of textuality. However, unlike the epistemological relation between the empiricist image as object and the phenomenological image as mode of consciousness, the methodological relation between the image as a function of textuality or embodiment is not mutually exclusive. 4 Here it is a question not of competing definitions of the image in consciousness, but of the complementarity of the image in the orders of representation and being in the world. Whereas the literary image "exists" primarily as a feature of signrelations, it can also be taken up into experience as an image in con-

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

81

sciousness. However, the embodied image in consciousness, because it is invariably an image of something or about something, can be abstracted from consciousness and analyzed as a sign-function. The existential difference is that the embodied image is essentially present to and immediate in consciousness, whereas the literary image is only secondarily so. Conversely, the literary image is essentially embedded in the textual or symbolic order, whereas the embodied image is only secondarily derived from the symbolic order. Thus the images of shoes in our example of the shoe test are primarily embodied images, although the kind of shoes imagined have explicit cultural meaning. As a function of embodiment, they present an existential situation; as a function of textuality, they represent a potential narrative. 5 In this respect we must point to Ricoeur's (1977) analysis of the relation between psychological and literary theories of metaphor as well as his understanding of how imagination operates both in discourse and in action (1978). At stake is the enterprise of reconciling language and experience, representation and being in the world. The promise of such an enterprise is signaled in Murray's (1987) observation of the parallel but inverse movement of Ricoeur from the analysis of language to that of imagination, and of Heidegger from the analysis of imagination to that of language. In the same vein I recall the parallel between Peirce's acknowledgment of a phenomenological dimension within semiotics, and Merleau-Ponty's attempt to develop a theory of signs within phenomenology. Our working assumption must be that imagery is intelligible insofar as it inheres in the symbolic or semiotic order, and is efficacious as a self process insofar as it inheres in the existential order of being in the world. In addition to the epistemological issue of imagination's bodiliness and the methodological concern with presentational immediacy, there is an empirical issue that we must entertain. Here the contrast is between ordinary imagination and religious imagination, and the issue is the nature of imagination's autonomy as a mode of consciousness. We will consider two approaches to this issue, one by a philosopher and one by an anthropologist. Casey (1976), the philosopher, is concerned primarily with conscious imagining of an everyday sort. For Casey, conscious imagining is autonomous in four ways: 1. It is independent from other mental acts such as perception or memory. Casey makes this claim in the context of a long debate about whether imagination is a subordinate or derivative mental

82

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

act. The core of his argument is that perception or memory may condition, but cannot be said to cause, an act of imagination. 2. It is independent both of the context in which it occurs and of its content. It is independent of context both with respect to the actual setting in which the imaginer is imagining, and with respect to the imaginative setting in which an image obtrudes. It is independent in its content insofar as it "need not replicate or even resemble the content of any other experience" (ibid.: 194). 3. It exhibits a "characteristic indifference to the concrete concerns and particular projects of the life-world" (ibid.: 189), and is thus autonomous in that it is disengaged from "that pervasive 'care' (Sorge) that Heidegger claims is the fundamental and encompassing dimension of our being-in-the-world" (ibid.) and from "what Merleau-Ponty calls 'interinvolvement' with the natural and historical world of spatial beings, temporal becomings, and interpersonal complexities. The world of imagining is a thin world, a mini-world whose ephemerality precludes any engaged activity comparable to that required in the life-world" (ibid.: 190). 4. It is characterized by freedom of mind, "the facility with which we are able, within the mind alone and by means of the mind alone, to carry out a particular project which the psyche has proposed to itself' (ibid.: 196). Imaginative freedom of mind is identified by ease of access to imagery and the immediate success of efforts to imagine, but also at times by an "autogenous freedom of psychical appearing which arises separately from conscious intentions" (ibid.: 198). In addition, freedom of mind refers to imagination's apparently infmite variability, its indeterminacy, and its articulation of pure possibility that "enables the mind's free movement to traverse a terrain considerably more vast than the region occupied by perceived and remembered things alone" (ibid.: 199). Casey's analysis of ordinary imagination yields important results when juxtaposed with an analysis of religious imagination. Several characteristics of ordinary imagination-independence from other mental acts, from context and content, and the appearance of images "separately from conscious intentions"-are precisely those that under certain conditions can be construed as evidence of sacred "otherness." Whereas

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

83

ordinary imagining is described as essentially "disengaged" (though arguably so), the religious imagination, whether in prayer, prophecy, or healing, is defmed precisely by its existential care (Heidegger 1977) and interinvolvement (Merleau-Ponty 1964b). As our discussion proceeds, the space between imagination's apparent indifference and existential engagement will be critical to defining the specific mode of its efficacy in healing. As for freedom of mind, two qualifications must be added to Casey's analysis. First, insofar as the religious imagination is engaged with "pressing human concerns," those concerns will impinge on imaginative autonomy by imposing specific cultural form on its products. Second, there is probably among the general populace a far greater proportion of people who have difficulty imagining than Casey is prepared to acknowledge. The consequences of incapacity to imagine are especially salient in a behavioral environment that places a premium on imagination. In this connection we recall that in our opening example the healer declared that those who "fail" the shoe test need a "healing of the imagination." There is evidence that poor visualizers may on that account suffer in self-esteem, feeling unworthy or neglected by the deity who grants inspired imagining (cf. Csordas 1990b). Our second account of autonomous imagination is offered by Stephen (1989), who is specifically concerned with religious imagination, including shamanistic vision, hallucination, dreams, active imagination, hypnosis, possession, and other altered states of consciousness. Her approach is based on an information-processing model, within which imagination is autonomous primarily in that it is a mode of thought that takes place "outside conscious awareness," and hence has an inherently "self-alien quality" (ibid.:54). For Stephen, imaginative autonomy is thus not a feature of ordinary imagination as it is for Casey. Instead, the autonomous imagination stands in contrast to the ordinary imagination in that its products are ''vividly externalized," "compelling," and "have their own momentum" (ibid.:55-56). In addition, it exhibits "a much greater freedom and richness of imaginative inventiveness, and displays a different access to memory. Another important feature is its special responsiveness to external, cultural influence and direction. Furthermore, it exerts a special influence over mental and somatic processes" (ibid.:55). It is difficult to determine whether this difference and specialness are in fact ones of degree or kind from the autonomy of ordinary imagination described by Casey. In one sense it would appear that the form of autonomy described by Stephen is undermined by the subordination of imagination either to states such as dreaming,

84

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

hypnosis, and religious ecstasy, or to the underlying information-processing mechanism. Moreover, the information-processing model tends to presume that the real work of imagination is done within a kind of cognitive black box, and draws a distinction between process of imaginative thought and the products of imagination which "may arise spontaneously into awareness" (ibid.:54). This distinction would appear to lead us back to deflning the image in consciousness as a thing rather than as an act. Because the information-processing mechanism is by deflnition outside of consciousness, it remains ambiguous as to whether we are speaking of autonomy or automatism. The two accounts can perhaps be reconciled if the "special responsiveness" and "special influence" attributed by Stephen to autonomous imagination are linked with the existential engagement that, as I mentioned above, distinguishes religious imagination from the relatively indifferent imagination of ordinary life-although it might be argued that even ordinary imagination is more motivated and emotionally valent than Casey acknowledges. 6 Whether or not they can be reconciled in the abstract, the problem of continuity or discontinuity between ordinary and religious imagination, and the implications of different understandings of imaginative autonomy, are especially relevant to our ethnographic case. As was evident in our example of the shoe test, Charismatics indigenously describe their imaginative experiences under the explicit category of imagination, an ordinary capacity rendered religious. Moreover, they readily distinguish their everyday experience of divinely inspired "images" from less frequent but still possible ''visions'' and "apparitions,» and further distinguish all of these from either hallucination or ordinary perception. Only occasionally, during the experience of resting in the Spirit (cf. chapter 9), does imagery occur in an indisputably altered state ofconsciousness. These facts locate our discussion precisely on the boundary between ordinary and religious imagination and between the two forms of imaginative autonomy. It is this intermediate phenomenological position that on the one hand allows imagination to become elaborated as an efficacious and sacred self process, and on the other allows it to be accessible to existential analysis.

Semiotics and Phenomenology of Imagination Having introduced imagination's characteristics of embodiment, immediacy, and autonomy, we are prepared for the next step.

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

85

That is, in line with the discussion mounted above, to outline a method that incorporates the complementarity of semiotics and phenomenology. This complementarity allows us to recognize two aspects of the image, that of image-as-sign and that of image-in-consciousness. We can account for the first aspect with the assistance of Peirce's semiotics, and for the second with the assistance of Sartre's phenomenology of the image. We will construct our analytic framework by superimposing these formulations. Then we will be ready for the existential analysis of Charismatic revelatory imagery. For Peirce, the fundamental structure of the sign was a tripartite composite of the sign proper or representamen, the object, and the interpretant: "A Sign or Representamen, is a First which stands in such a genuine triadic relation to a Second, called its Object, as to be capable of determining a Third, called its Interpretant to assume the same triadic relation to its Object in which it stands itself to the same Object" (quoted in M. Singer 1984:45). The revelatory images of Charismatic healers are signs in that they have an explicit content that serves as representamen, an object which is the situation or problem indicated by the sign, and an interpretant constituted by an explanation of the situation, a course of action to be taken in resolution of the problem, or an outcome in the form of a goal to be achieved in the healing process. For Sartre, the image likewise has a tripartite structure, composed of an act, an analogical representative, and an object: "The image is an act which envisions an absent or non-existent object as a body, by means of a physical or mental content which is present only as an 'analogical representative' of the object envisioned" (1948:26). Among Charismatics the imaginative act can be identified by two features: the sensory modality in which it occurs, and its cultural form ("prophecy," ''word of knowledge," "discernment," "anointing," or an unnamed form that I will call imaginal performance). 7 The analogical representative is the immediate content of consciousness that corresponds to Peirce's representamen, and the object is the situation or problem that corresponds to what Peirce also calls the object. Thus, whereas the act phase is absent from Peirce's concept of sign, the interpretant is absent from Sartre's concept of image. The two formulations overlap, however, in the Sartre's analogical representative and object correspond to Peirce's representamen and object. The relation between these formulations, which we will apply to our data under the

86

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

labels of image-as-sign and image-in-consciousness, can be schematically represented as follows: act

signlrepresentamen' analogical representative

object object

interpretant

The top level portrays the structure of the sign in the order oftextuality or representation, while the overlapping bottom level portrays the structure of the image in the order of embodiment or being-in-theworld. The sign in itself has no act phase because, as a function of textuality, it is always already in the order of representation rather than of presentation, always primarily related to other signs and only secondarily to motives. Conversely, as a function of embodiment, the image in itself can have no definitive interpretant in the world, due to what Casey (1976) refers to as its "indifference" or lack of engagement, its enactment of "pure possibility," and its "self-contained" or contextindependent nature. These characteristics are doubdess related to Sartre's (1948) conclusion that imagination is fundamentally impoverished, and here we must reiterate that we are not dealing with decontextualized imagery produced in the laboratory, but with imagery produced in a fully engaged natural context. Insofar as the image can become engaged it must be able to take on an interpretant. Consequendy it must be able to become a function of textuality, and like other cultural phenomena be analyzed according to the "model of the text" (Ricoeur 1979). Conversely, in order for a sign to become engaged in the world it must be able to be acted or performed. When it is, it enters the domain of embodiment wherein lies the efficacy of the "performance of metaphor" (Fernandez 1986). Its inherence in the order of textuality guarantees the image-as-sign communicative value and potential rhetorical force, whereas its inherence in the order of embodiment guarantees the image-in-consciousness intentionality and presentational immediacy. 8 The essential integrity of this scheme is guaranteed by the identity of the object in both orders. At the same time, the analytic independence of the two orders is guaranteed by the different modes of presentation of the (semiotic) representamen and the (phenomenological) analogical representative. That is, the representamen is definitively a representation to perception. Thus the image-as-sign can fail to be perceived only if misrecognized, misattended to, or obscured by distraction. The analogical representative, however, is subject to variation in consciousness with respect to what Casey defmes as clarity, texture, and directness (1976:55-56), as well

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

87

as sustainability. Thus the image-in-consciousness can endure only as it is remembered as a sign or reimaged in consciousness. In the remainder of this chapter we will use this fourfold scheme to analyze the data on revelatory imagery gathered from the eighty-seven Charismatic healers interviewed in our study.9

Modalities of Revelation We begin with that element of our scheme we have designated the "act" phase, defmed by sensory modality and cultural form. We have already arrived at a sense of the cultural forms of revelation as performative act (chapter 3). Showing how sensory modalities are engaged in revelatory imagery places us squarely in the arena of embodiment, calling to issue the relation between imagination and perception. Unfortunately, to meet this issue head-on would take us far afield of our empirical concerns. It must suffice to observe, along with Casey (1976), first, that the history of philosophy and psychology includes both a tradition that holds imagination and perception to be continuous and a tradition that holds them to be discontinuous; and second, that it is possible to determine respects in which they are both continuous and discontinuous. My position is that it is not necessary to show that they engage sensory modalities in precisely the same way in order to argue that they engage the same sensory modalities-modalities that are essentially of the body. Let us examine the data presented in table 4.1. The eighty-seven healers were asked how they experienced the revelatory gifts of prophecy, word of knowledge, and discernment, and specifically about the sensory modalities in which they experienced these gifts. It is methodologically critical that for purposes of cultural intelligibility, I necessarily asked about visual images, and physical sematiom. 10 My decision was in response to the above-mentioned North American ethnopsychology of mind-body or mental-material relations that presumes all imagery to be "mental imagery." I anticipated, quite rightly, I think, that this ethnopsychology is so deeply inculcated that somatic images are quite likely not to be recognized as such, but to be both described and experienced as

sensatiom. We must, in fact, go as far back as the turn of the century to encounter a list of imagery modalities which comprehends the range we have por-

88

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DMNE REVELATION

Table 4.1 Modalities ofRevelRtory ImRlJery Reported by Charismatic Healers. Number of Healers

Percent of Healers (N = 87)

Visual HaptidKinesthetid Proprioceptive Heat Pain Other Intuitive

47

54

mental pictures

26 13 31 28

30 15 35 32

Auditory Olfactory

24 19

28 22

Affective Motor Dream

12 6 5

14 7 6

emanates from hands specific body part varies "sense" about person! situation inner words flowers = good sulphur = evil specific emotion impulse to speak/act dream relevant to supplicant problem

Imagery Modality

Character of Images

trayed in our table. Writing in 1898, W. Lay distinguished ''visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, olfactory, thermal, motor, pain, organic, and emotional, and claimed to have experienced all of them himself" (Giorgi 1987:5). If this categorization encompasses most of our analysis, we must go even farther into the Cartesian sediment to accept category six, intuition or "having a sense of' something, as compatible with the other modalities. Kant (1978), alongside the five "external" senses, included an "internal" sense for which there exist no discrete sense organs, and which therefore must be unitary in nature. No more cognitive and no less perceptual than the other senses, imagery as "a sense of"-or as "infused knowledge" in the paratheological term of one healer-epitomizes the embodied indeterminacy of being-in-the-world. Its amorphous character militates against clear distinction between image and percept, precisely as it leads thoughtful Charismatics to equivocate between attributing it to either human intuition or divine inspiration, and blurs the boundaries between persons in an intersubjective milieu. Each Charismatic healer was free to describe his or her imagery in any way, with probe questions limited to the five senses and dreaming-the emotion, sense/intuition, and impulse categories were emergent from the data. Although there was considerable range in the frequency and vividness of reported imagery, only five healers failed to report any

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

89

experience of revelation/manifestation. Visual imagery appears in the form of mental pictures, often of a person or situation, but sometimes of an afflicted body part, and occasionally as a number or word inscribed, as it were, on the tabula rasa of the mind. Given the expected North American cultural bias of the sensorium toward preference for the visual (Ong 1967, Feld 1982, Howes 1987), it comes as no surprise that visual imagery predominates among Charismatics. On the contrary, the same cultural bias would lead us to expect far fewer instances of imagery in other modalities than are actually reported. Images based on the sense of touch, under which I include all haptic, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive sensations, are second in frequency. Insofar as they are quite diverse, I have subdivided them into three categories, among which again each healer may have mentioned more than one. Heat is most often localized in the hands, and is the most common single image reported. l l Pain, however, may be localized in any part of the body. The residual category covers a wide range, including chills or coldness, electricity moving through the body, lightness or heaviness, burning, queasiness, trembling hands, energy blockage, feeling the person prayed with rising (quasi levitation), choking or suffocation, and feeling physically dirtied by the presence of sexual immorality. Here more than anywhere else in our data we traverse the ambiguous boundary between image and sensation. Some of these nonspecific feelings (e.g., lightness, heaviness, electricity) are doubtless akin to those reported by people practicing various relaxation techniques. Others bear such context-specific meaning (e.g., feeling "dirtied") that they appear bound to the moral imagination as sensory metaphors rather than sensations. Whereas an empiricist psychology might remain frustrated at the indeterminacy between categories of imagination and sensation, a cultural phenomenology must allow for the possibility that this indeterminacy is an essential one (cf. Csordas 1993). The way that Charismatics mine this essential ambiguity for significance may then be a key to the way that imaginal self process in revelation becomes, in Geertz's phrase, uniquely realistic. Continuing through the modalities in table 4.1, what I am calling intuitive imagery is a very common mode of experiencing the word of knowledge and discernment. Its character is perhaps the most difficult to specify, relying as it must on Kant's indeterminate "inner sense." In some cases it appears to carry more prestige, perhaps precisely because it is experienced as less embodied-hence, in North America's typically Cartesian idiom, more "spiritual"-than imagery in other modalities.

90

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

One healer insisted that her inspiration came through immediate "infused knowledge," and that she subsequently invented her own images in order to convey the content to the supplicant. Three others, all of whom had some degree of professional psychotherapeutic training, emphasized the continuity between human intuition and this mode of divinely inspired imagery. One of these observed that insistence on the exclusively divine origin of the gift, instead of understanding it as intuition augmented by grace, was evidence of a "magical" attitude in contrast to an "incarnational" theology. Some healers describe the revelatory image as an impression, as in ''when the Lord speaks he impresses a word on your spirit like on soft clay, he doesn't speak in your ear." The ambiguity of this notion of impression, used here along with the material metaphor of soft clay, is highlighted by another use of the word in a more literal physical sense to refer to demonic presence "almost like somebody's got their hand on my back or I feel I've got something pressing on me." Shadins oft' in the "humMl" di~~tion from the category of images reported as unmediated sense or impression are images in which the healer acknowledges that the inspiration comes explicitly in the process of picking up cues from the supplicant. Healers' descriptions of these revelations can be classed along a rough continuum defined by their use of psychological or spiritual language. Starting with the psychological pole, these descriptions range from subconscious processing, to seeing or listening to faces, eyes, pauses, or actions, reading into what people say, hearing more than what people say, and explicit distinction between spiritual and actual listening. Shading off in the "divine" direction from unmediated intuitive imagery, the revelatory inspiration becomes described as auditory imagery, our next major modality. Whether cast in the cultural form of prophecy or word of knowledge, this mode is by and large experienced in terms of an inner voice, and only rarely as an impersonal sound. 12 As might be expected, the experienced audibility of this voice may range from the virtual silence we assume when we speak of "inner dialogue" in everyday life, through varying degrees of vividness. Just as visual imagery is, not surprisingly, dominant in a North American cultural setting, so olfactory imagery is relatively impoverished. It is reported by fewer healers, is less frequent in occurrence among those who report it, and is more stereotyped in meaning. On the one hand, the scent of roses or other flowers is often reported, typically indicating the spiritual presence of the Virgin Mary and sometimes the deity. In

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

91

contrast to medieval stories of saints whose bodies exuded a floral odor, sometimes even after death, Charismatic floral imagery is generally reported to be spontaneous and unassociated with a particular place or person. 13 On the other hand, the image of burning sulphur or of something rotten invariably indicates a demonic presence and is a cue that prayer for deliverance is called for. In all the interviews only three examples of other kinds of olfactory images were reported, including two by supplicants that called their attention to specific issues requiring healing (the smell of tobacco by a woman in the process of healing from the emotional trauma of divorce from a man who smoked a pipe, and the smell of cookies which reminded a woman of a traumatic incident in her childhood), and one by a healer that indicated the presence of an evil spirit of lust in a house (the smell of semen). Given these constraints, we also note that the revelatory significance of olfactory imagery in healing per se may appear somewhat inflated in our tabulation, for in the case of floral images the specific examples elicited were sometimes drawn from devotional rather than healing settings. Nevertheless, in comparison to the olfactory, and to complete the inventory of sensory modalities, gustatory imagery was not once reported in our interviews. This must be attributed to lack of cultural elaboration rather than to unsuitability of this modality to imagery. In fact, we know that in cases of schizophrenia hallucinatory images occur in both olfactory and gustatory modalities. In our data, revelatory imagery in the affective modality included anger, unbelief, feeling the urge to flee the room, internal repulsion, frustration, confusion, happiness, sadness, fear, unworthiness, rejection, loneliness, and isolation. Whereas such emotional imagery is closely attuned to the intersubjective milieu of healing, it must be carefully distinguished from empathy. It is understood not as the sharing of a patient's emotional state, but as revelation of either a current transitory or chronic state, whether natural or demonically exacerbated, or as revelation of a past state. For example, a healer described "discerning" demonic anger or fear as an experience of those emotions, but "heavier than anger coming from myself, and more irrational." Another described feeling very deeply for a person with a family problem, "like it was all inside of me ... a heaviness, real heavy. Like almost the problem was mine, though I didn't lose sleep over it." Here the heaviness is not to be understood as a separate proprioceptive image, but as an emotional image the content of which is precisely what psychiatry calls a "vegetative sign" of depression. Charismatics are willing to entertain

92

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DNINE REVELATION

the idea that these feelings may be compassion or empathy as much as divine inspiration, but lack any indigenous notion of an "emotional image." In the latter example, the healer can indeed be said to have been empathetic, for she had once experienced abandonment by her husband as had the woman she was describing. Yet, as is also evident, healers clearly distinguish these feelings from their own emotions, being "more irrational" than one's own, or "like almost the problem was mine." This point is emphasized in situations where the emotional image is compounded by crying on the part of the healer. In the words of one woman: Sometimes when I'm praying, I will be with a person and begin to cry. Not cry as if they were my own tears, but as if the suffering of the other person or the joy-it can be either-were moving through me. Cleansing me maybe, or as if I were there representing Jesus and at that point taking on the pain. So I'll just be with them and I'll fmd tears moving down my eyes. I just know it's different than when I cry. But it's as if I'm a vessel for that. That's very powerful for me.

The first thing to note in this passage is the insistent "as if' used by this healer to approximate the preobjective experience of crying in the healing situation. Whereas on the one hand, the lack of a stereotypic cultural objectification enhances our confidence in the phenomenological report, and, on the other, the apparent "as-if-consciousness" (Husserl1964:141) affirms that we are dealing with an imaginal phenomenon, the principal point to which I would draw attention is the image's relation to the healer's self, combining the essential indifference and detachment of imagination with the existential commitment to the suffering patient. Another healer explicidy stated that "I cry a lot. But it's not from sadness." Neither, in her view, is it from empathy, but from "being moved" by "the intensity of God's presence." The phenomenological character of the affective image is most dear when it is contrasted with what Charismatics refer to as the "gift of tears" or the "gift of laughter." In these experiences one bursts into spontaneous and uncontrollable laughing or crying that is understood to be fully of the self, and which falls under the category of relatively simple and straightforward catharsis. What I have called motor images are, when cast in the cultural form of word of knowledge, experienced as impulses to act or speak. Specifically, the intentionality of the verbal act precedes the cognition of its meaning, such that it "comes to my mind after it comes to my mouth,"

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

93

or the "knowledge just comes out as I talk," or again the healer finds himself saying something apparently "out of the blue." In nonverbal examples one may be impelled to lay hands on a supplicant in a particular way or, as was reported by one healer, to get up and stand behind the seated supplicant, whereupon she discovered an old scar on his head that indicated an incident the emotional effects of which required healing.

Dreams and Revelation Dreams are largely excluded from the revelatory imagery of Charismatic healers. 14 Of the five included in table 4.1, one reported no longer dreaming in this way, one had experienced a revelatory dream only once, another only recently and only twice, and a fourth was a psychiatrist who reported 25 percent of her dreams were about her patients, but who in fact appeared more willing to describe this as making use of her own countertransference than as a revelatory spiritual gift. Only one healing minister unequivocally reported regularly receiving revelation for healing through dreams, and this is an exception that proves the rule. Whereas nearly all the healers were North Americans of French, Irish, or Italian heritage, this healer was an immigrant from Portugal who, in addition, was the only healer who reported waking experiences of literal visions and auditions of Jesus and Mary as opposed to images in the mind's eye and ear. IS Several other healers warned that to rely on dreams as sources of revelation could be dangerous, implying the possibility of being misled by one's unconscious or deceived by Satan. One female healer of Franco-American heritage reported being socialized out of dreaming altogether as a child, and a priest of IrishAmerican heritage stated that he prevents himself from dreaming in order to be more fully removed in sleep from the stresses of daily life. 16 Given the Charismatics' concern with revelation, and given the regularity with which the ethnographic literature reports dreams as a modality of revelation in other traditions, this exclusion needs accounting for. As it turns out, the relative exclusion of dreams from Charismatic revelatory imagery leads us to a critical point for our argument, with respect to both the criterion of the sacred in the phenomenology of the Charismatic world and to the intertwining of the sacred with the psychocultural themes prominent in that world. First, there is an eidetic characteristic of both waking and dream imagery that is thematized

94

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

precisely as the most convincing evidence that revelatory imagery is of divine origin; and that is spontaneity. Sartre (1948:18) regarded spontaneity as an essential characteristic of imaginative consciousness, and suggested that "in most cases, no doubt, the image springs up with a deep spontaneity which is independent of the will" (ibid.:24). It is Casey (1976:63-86), however, who develops a thorough phenomenological description of imaginative spontaneity. His analysis shows that not only when an image emerges unbidden, but also in instances when we consciously produce an image, it appears suddenly (in a manner that can surprise us), instantaneously (with no time lapse between our intention to produce it and its appearance), and effortlessly (it appears to unfold on its own initiative). Together these features describe an essential self-generativity. Imagination is not only self-generative, however, but may be self-starting or autogenous. The spontaneous image "resists being located in a well-ordered, causally concatenated series," and does not emerge "from a nexus of causally efficacious factors" (ibid.: 68). For this reason, at least prior to reflection, it appears exempt from causality. Here we can grasp both the apmess and the persuasiveness of imagination as a process of the sacred self, a process that impresses itself on Charismatics precisely because it often appears "out of the blue."17 It is at once profoundly of the self, but at the same time is experienced as profoundly other, in a way ripe for thematization as the sacred Other acting within the self. If, as we have argued, the body is the ground of self as a "setting in relation to the world," it is also critical that we have described this imaginal self process in terms of embodied imagery. The cultural elaboration of imagery is an engagement of the entire sensorium, and hence a concrete articulation of what Merleau-Ponty (1962) called the "bodily synthesis." Revelatory gifts institute a somatic mode of attention oriented to imaginal modulations of the body precisely in its role as the existential ground of self. The crowning touch in consolidating imagery as a definitive and efficacious experience of the sacred is that it is, as it were, prethematized by the centrality of spontaneity as a psychocultural concern. If the incarnate experience of the sacred is culturally defined as spontaneous, then the inherent spontaneity of imagination is readily embraced as a manifestation and criterion of the sacred. This does not yet account for the exclusion of dreams, which are equally spontaneous as waking imagery. Here again the decisive point is given in Casey's analysis. Quite unlike the spontaneity of dreaming,

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DNINE REVELATION

95

the spontaneity of ordinary imagination is essentially paired with the feature of controlledness. By controlledness is meant that we have the ability to initiate or self-induce imagery, to guide its contents along a particular trajectory, and to terminate an imaginal sequence. IS Spontaneity and controlledness cannot coexist at the same moment of the image-in-consciousness, but if imagery is not always actually controlled, it is always potentially controllable. These two characteristics complement and counterbalance one another not in a merely abstract way, for "the imaginer senses directly, without any supplementary act of inference or recourse to reasoning, that the controlled features of imagining complement its spontaneous features-the former seeming to compensate for what is missing in the latter, and vice versa" (Casey 1976:63). One may subsequently direct the development of an image that emerges spontaneously, just as a spontaneous turn can occur within an imagery sequence that is consciously guided. Moreover, even the element of surprise in spontaneous imagery is more muted than in dreams, for though surprised by the former, ''we are not swept away by it. We retain our basic composure because nothing has appeared that undermines or threatens ingrained beliefs concerning causal action or interaction; indeed, when we imagine, such beliefs are put out of play from the start" (ibid.:70). On the contrary, in dreaming we can be swept away because we are not always immediately aware that we are dreaming. Thus, once again, imagination is shown to be an apt constituting process of the Charismatic sacred self in that it conforms to a psychocultural theme, this time that of control. Corollary to control in this respect is the Charismatic preference for conscious rather than unconscious engagement with the deity. Here we fmally have a double rationale for the downplaying of dreams in favor of imagining in the domain of revelation. In a negative sense, if imagining is more controllable than dreaming, it's validity and meaning are also more readily "discerned" and less subject to personal distortion or "demonic deceit." In a positive sense, imagination not only conforms to two important themes, but exhibits the phenomenological complementarity between spontaneity and control as capacities of the sacred self.

Representation and Object A great deal more could be said about the revelatory image as act. I9 We have gone far enough with regard to our specific

96

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

interest in imaginal self process, however, so that we can move on to the other elements of our fourfold scheme. In this section we will outline the cultural repertoire of relations between representamen (or analogical representative) and object. Our data for this discussion are 287 examples of specific images reported by the healers. The vast majority of these were experienced by the healers themselves, during the kinds of healing events with which we have become familiar in the preceding chapters. Occasionally, however, a revelatory image or an image complementing that of the healer is reported as occurring to a patient. I know of no other instance in the ethnographic literature in which such a body of data is presented, and hence what follows is necessarily an experimental approach to the semiotic structure of a naturally occurring repertoire of revelatory imagery. Our first observation is that revelatory imagery falls under two principal categories, corresponding to Peirce's concept of symbolic sign on the one hand, and his concepts of indexical and iconic signs on the other. Whereas the symbolic sign requires a mental association, intellectual concept, or disposition to act as its interpretant, the relation of icons and indices to their object is direct: "If the sign signifies its object solely by virtue of being really connected with it, as in physical symptoms-for example meteorological signs and a pointing fmger-Peirce called such a sign an index. A sign that stands for something merely because it resembles it, Peirce called an icon" (M. Singer 1984:44). Indices are signs "of individual existence and interaction," whereas icons are signs "of structural form" in social life (ibid.: 30).20 Thus the interpretants of icons and indices are more likely to be restricted or standardized, and this is what we fmd in Charismatic revelatory imagery.21 Among the Charismatic healers in the present study, roughly half the images reported (N = 146) are symbolic signs of persons and situations, the interpretants of which are revelations about a patient's problem. The other half (N = 141) are indices or icons of a patient's state, the interpretants of which are revelations about the pragmatics of the ongoing healing event. Within the Charismatic cultural context, the latter are relatively self-evident in meaning and lack the condensation of meaning characteristic of symbols. We will consider this type first, dividing it into three subtypes: indexical icons, indexes proper, and icons proper. Indexical icons are indexical in that they manifest the existence of their object in the interaction among healer, supplicant, and divinity, whereas they are iconic in that the modality in which they occur is isomorphic with their object, defining the structural form of

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

97

that object as embodied. Indexical signs proper indicate their object across modalities-in other words, an image in one modality indexes the existence of an object in another modality. Finally, icons bear a resemblance to their object, but their meaning is nonspecific without additional information provided by the context. It is important to bear in mind that these are subtypes of representation, and that the repertoire of objects, that is, what is being imaged, remains constant across these three subtypes. The objects represented by these images include: divine power or presence; the occurrence of healing, or more vaguely "that something is happening"; positive emotional states described as inner peace, reconciliation, deepness or authenticity; and both spiritual and emotional negativities described as evil, bondage, rigidity, or blockage. IndexicalIcons. An emotional image, as defmed above, is perhaps the most clearcut case of the indexical icon, since in most cases it indicates the existence of an emotion in the supplicant and has the same form as that emotion. Most of the images that take the form of indexical icons are images of divine power, indexical because they manifest the existence of power and iconic in that they resemble the qualities of a culturally defined, substantivized divine power. In the proprioceptive modality, prominent representamens are heat, lightness or buoyancy, tears, peace, deeper breathing or shortness of breath, shaking or tingling, electricity or chills through the body; pain and coldness/iciness may be representamens with evil rather than divine power as their objects. In the auditory modality, the image may be cast in words such as "it's fmished," "they're healed," or "whatever you ask I'll give." In such auditory images, the iconic element comes from the inherent power attributed to the divine "word"; again, the auditory image of cruel laughter may be an indexical icon of evil rather than of divine power. In the visual modality, the representamen may occur either as pure light or as tongues of fire settling on the supplicant, where an iconic relationship exists between the energy of light or fire and divine power. Index. Insofar as their presence in consciousness is analogical, when we analyze images-as-sign it is not surprising to fmd that the analogies are based on conventional associations. The more analogical the relation between representamen and object, the less literally iconic are the healers' images. They come to rely increasingly on conventional metaphor, and synesthetically index one modality by another. Thus when one healer reports either the visual image of a "hard heart" or the proprioceptive image of a "tight heart" as signs of "emotional closure," the conventional metaphor of the heart as seat of emotions replaces the isomorph-

98

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DMNE REVELATION

ism of iconicity, and the visual or proprioceptive modalities become synesthetic indices of the emotional modality. Olfactory images are important examples here, where as an index of divine presences sweetness of smell is metaphorically associated with spiritual sweetness or holiness, and as an index of demonic presence foulness of smell is associated with moral corruption. There are, however, few images that are purely indexical in form. It is perhaps most accurate to identify a continuum 9f diminished iconicity in the relation between representamen and object. Take, for example, the following three images drawn from our data, in which the same representamen takes on relations to different objects. The representamen is the haptic image of physical warmth. In the first case, the healer interpreted this warmth as an indexical icon of divine power (warmth = energy). In the second, physical warmth was a metaphor of emotional intimacy (warmth = "warmth"). In the third, warmth localized in the feet and legs was taken as an indexical revelation of a circulatory problem (warmth = bodily location of problem). Again, this time focusing on the imaginal use of a specific body part, consider the following three examples. First, the experience of pain in the healer's ear was reported as the revelation of a patient's ear problem, constituting an indexical icon in that pain bears an iconic relationship to illness. Second, a snapping sound and a high-pitched whistle were both reported as indicating the healing of an ear problem, a sign in which the only iconic element is the bodily location. Finally, a healer's ear becoming red and flushed was a sign that "the Lord wants to speak." Here the emphasis was not on the heat of flushing as a manifestation of divine power, but as a means by which the healer's attention was directed toward the source of inspiration. This is a more purely indexical sign in which the proprioceptive representamen (heat) indicates the imminence of a divine-human communication, but even here there is a residual iconic or analogical element in the physical location of the heat in the organ of hearing. Icon. Revelatory images in which the relationship between representamen and object is more purely iconic are typically visual images. Their content may be explicidy religious, examples of which are the Eucharist, the face or hands of Jesus, or St. Michael; or nonreligious, examples of which are a tornado, sea sponges soaking up water, and a big stone wall. Especially with the nonreligious images, conventional associations are inadequate for specifying the objects, and healers must

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

99

rely almost entirely on context. This is the consequence of an essential characteristic of icons identified by Peirce: Now the object of an Icon is entirely indefmite, equivalent to "something." ... A pure picture without a legend only says "something is like this." ... To attach a legend to the picture makes a sentence ... analogous to a portrait of Leopardi with Leopardi written below it. It conveys its information to a person who knows who Leopardi was; and to anybody else it only says something called Leopardi looked like this. (quoted in M. Singer 1984:107)

It is only within the performative context of ritual events that the indefinite iconic images can acquire the "legends" that define their objects relevant to a patient's distress. It was in this way, returning to the examples cited above, that the tornado was understood as "uprooting the negative," the sea sponges as indicating that the patient was "being washed clean," and the stone wall as the presence of "blockage" or resistance to healing. To take another example, it is only by context that the image of Jesus running his fmger down the seam of a double golden door can be understood as the deity "sealing off' a traumatic incident from a supplicant's past. To paraphrase Peirce, the "sealing off' is a legend that conveys its information to a person who knows who Jesus was, and to anybody else it only says something called Jesus does things like this. Even in these relatively pure iconic images, the indexical function never disappears completely, for the image ultimately points to divine presence and power. However, what I would stress is not the element of indexicality, but the performative force brought to bear by attaching a legend to these icons. This is especially evident in the last example we gave, of Jesus sealing off the golden door of trauma. Here is not a static iconic image, but a kind of icon in motion, an imaginal performance by the deity. Additional examples include Jesus in a cloud massaginglhuggingltouchinglloving an atllicted body pan; the Virgin Mary placing her veil over an atllicted person; Jesus pouring some of his blood over the husband and son of a deceased woman, putting a drop of his blood into the circulatory system of a victim of cardiac illness, pulling out a thorn from a supplicant's hean, using a hair from his head to sew the hean of a supplicant with a lacuna in the coronary wall. Adopting Casey's terms, we can say that although the act phase of most revelatory images takes the form of "imaging" discrete objects or events in their separateness, these imaginal performances are characterized by "imagining-that" a particular state of affairs, situation, or nexus

100

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

Table 4.2 Representamens of Symbolic Signs in Revelatory Imagery Reported by Charismatic Realm. Type of Representamen

Number of Images

Imagery including people People alone God and people Imagery excluding people Objects Word, number, name, emotion, or impulse Verbal statement Total

60

15 39 22 10

146

of relationship pertains (1976:41). Although most imaginal performances are carried out by patients during their own healing, it is worthy of note that, insofar as the they can be carried out by the healer, they are the only instance in which Charismatic healing ministers perform a function analogous to that of traditional shamans, who achieve their results by travel to and action within the spirit world. However, in all these instances it is ostensibly Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and not the healer, who performs the critical actions. Neither is it entirely accurate to say that the divine beings are acting in a capacity analogous to the shaman's "spirit helper." Let us turn now to our second major category of revelatory images, those describable as symbolic signs. The modality of these images is predominantly visual. Given their greater elaboration of meaning in comparison to the predominantly tactile and proprioceptive images we have been examining, this observation supports the commonsense view that visualization has the greater potential for richness of content. This content, identifiable as the representamen or analogical representative of each image, is the basis for the categorization shown in table 4.2. Roughly half the images (N = 7~) include the presence of people, typically featuring the patient and her close relatives. The data include only one instance in which a human character from the Bible appears, and only fifteen in which a divine actor appears along with humans. In their manner of presentation-in-consciousness, these examples are distributed among simple images of people with no imaginal background, simple images of people in situations, and complex images of people engaged in action that portrays a problematic situation. The images composed of people alone are predominantly diagnostic,

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

101

whereas those in which the divinity appears tend to consist of imaginal performances with Jesus acting the part of healer or reconciler among people. The second category, comprising slightly less than half the data (N = 61), excludes human protagonists. The major part of its images are presented in the manner of simple objects associated with human life such as a dress, knife, dog, piano, shovel, mask, etc. A smaller subgroup includes an array of no-less simple words (e.g., "chromosomes," "love"); numerals (e.g., "33," "7," usually referring to a person's age); names (e.g., "Ed"); emotions (e.g., "rage"); or impulses (e.g., "stop the car and pray"). This subgroup is also more diverse in that its images appear not only in visual, but frequently in auditory, intuitive, affective, and motor modalities. Finally, a small residual category (N = 10) consists of verbal images in either auditory or intuitive modalities (e.g., "Be not afraid," ''Tell her if she believes she'll be healed," ''Tell that woman to . go home, she's needed," "You must forgive if you want to be healed," "Have you been to the doctor about this problem?"). This is the only subgroup in which images are likely to be found cast in the cultural form of prophecy. The critical point about these symbolic images in ritual performance is that, except when they occur to the patient herself, they require both the healer and patient to constitute the relation of representamen to object. This is because the representamen-object relation in the symbolic sign is by defmition arbitrary and conventional. It is accordingly not as accessible as in the iconic sign, where it is based on similarity, or the indexical sign, where it is based on contiguity. Thus, whereas the healer's symbolic image may constitute a scene, the patient must recognize that scene and constitute it as a situation relevant in her own experience. For example, the healer "receiving" the simple image of a shovel could not know that the object was an actual shovel. In performance, the object is constituted only when the triadic sign function is completed by the patient's provision of an interpretant. In this example, the shovel's interpretant is the traumatic effect of an incident in which the patient's brother buried her dead pet without compassion, and for which she had never been able to forgive him.22 Again, a healer's image ofJesus standing in a circle with two other men required the patient to identify those men as his brothers. The interpretant was a situation of estrangement and the possibility of reopening communication with those brothers. The observation that both healer and patient are required to complete the semiotic structure of the symbolic revelatory image is evidence

102

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

that revelation is grounded in the intersubjective milieu of ritual healing. We will consolidate our understanding of this grounding with a discussion of the ultimate component of our fourfold scheme, the interpretant.

The Final Interpretant and Meaning in Revelation

We have adopted the Peircean notion of the interpretant as a mental content or concept that stands in an identical relationship with the representation and with its object, thereby completing the meaning of the sign. Peirce went beyond a purely mentalistic definition of the interpretant, however. For him, language and experience were not so ontologically distinct as anthropologists appear often to presume, and he understood the self as an integration of feelings, actions, and thoughts into "bundles of habits" (M. Singer 1984: 159). Most relevant for our purposes is that Peirce's concept of habit is that of a self-analyzing and self-correcting disposition to act in a certain way under given circumstances and motivations. A habit is for him the ''final'' or "logical" interpretant of a sign and, as such, gives Peirce's theory of signs an essentially pragmatic dimension. The making and remaking of habits, subject to self-control through muscular effort and "acts ofimagination," constitute the chief means for the formation and growth of the self. (ibid., emphasis added)

When we look for the meaning of Charismatic revelatory imagery, we are led precisely to habits or dispositions to act that are subject to imaginative "remaking." In the Charismatic system of ritual healing these habits inhere in the situations identified by revelatory imagery. Let us first briefly consider the interpretants of that group of images composed of indexical icons, indexes, and icons (both static and icons in motion). The possible interpretants vary depending on whether or not the healer knows the nature of the patient's affliction. If she knows, then such an image indicates either that healing is taking place, or that the patient needs to submit herself to the availability of healing or to "claim" that healing. If she does not know, the image may specifically reveal a problem to be dealt with, may generally indicate that someone requires healing prayer, or again may indicate that a healing is under way. In any case, revelatory imagery is a concrete hierophany and in-

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DNINE REVELATION

103

stance of religious experience. It also appeals to habit and the possibility of its transformation by enhancing the patient's disposition to be healed. As we have seen (chapter 3), these are both critical elements of therapeutic process, and more than what Dow (1986) has called "therapeutic preludes" that enhance the confidence of healer and patient. The notion of habit also gives coherence to the repertoire of interpretants for revelatory images that take the form of symbolic signs. Table 4.3 summarizes the interpretants from our data according to content. 23 It is central to our argument about psychocu1tural themes in Charismatic healing that the largest group of interpretants has to do with intimacy. In these instances the interpretant can be defined as enduring or habitual consequences of the lack or failure of intimacy, subcategorized according to whether the originary situation (the semiotic object of the image) occurred in childhood or adulthood. These consequences are typically understood as kinds of emotional scars, woundedness, or brokenness. In the childhood group they may include feelings of abandonment, lack of parental love, or exposure to family discord. In the adult group they are often grounded in marital difficulties or bereavement of a spouse, but may include relationships with others, especially with members of one's Charismatic prayer group, as well as one's relationship with God. Although most of these instances of failed intimacy are highly generalized, in certain of our accounts the interpretant includes a degree of causal specificity, so that discrete emotions are identified as having led to dispositions such as weakened self-image, difficulties experiencing love or forming relationships, or vulnerability to feelings of abandonment. Symbolic images the interpretants of which are the enduring consequences of traumatic events can also be subcategorized in terms of childhood or adult originary situations. The interpretant as habitual state is implicit in defining the situation as traumatic; that is, like failures of intimacy, trauma is ethnopsychologically presupposed to have enduring consequences. In the childhood origin group, twelve of thirty-one, or fully 38 percent of images, identify the trauma as rape or sexual abuse, most often committed by the father or other close relative. Other traumatic situations included domestic violence and injury or illness, but also less apparently serious events such as having been temporarily "lost" in a public place, or having been refused permission to wear a favorite dress on a particular occasion. Here it must be emphasized on the one hand that the subjective experience of childhood trauma undoubtedly does not correlate directly with its subjective consequences, and on the

104

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

Table 4.3 Interpretants of Symbolic Signs in Revelatory Imagery Reported by Charismatic Healers. Type of Interpretant

Intimacy Childhood Adult Trauma Childhood Adult Physical illness Emotional difficulty Spiritual problem Life stress Sin Total

Number of Images

19 25 31 10 13 8 8

6 6 126

other that Charismatic culture implicitly recognizes as worthy of healing attention a range of traumas from the most brutal to the most mundane. Exposure to consistent verbal abuse and having been once unjustly scolded for breaking an aunt's washbasin may be objectively different, but both are culturally relevant. Finally, it is again the case that a generalized interpretant may be specified in ritual performance as habitual problems of self-image, relationships, behavior, or affect, a range of issues apparently continuous with those related to intimacy. This continuity should be no surprise to students of North American culture for, indeed, it is only a matter of emphasis as to whether bereavement is considered primarily a loss of intimacy or a traumatic event; and sexual abuse by one's father is not only an act of violent depravity, but a profound violation of intimacy. The next subcategory in table 4.3 includes any physical illness or condition. Contrary to what might be expected, it is not the case that interpretants classified as physical illness can be understood as "habits" only if those physical illnesses are chronic. Not only are acute problems in themselves disruptions of the habitual body or body image, but healers tend to look beyond the acute problem to more dispositional issues. This is different from saying that they are psychosomatic or spiritual in origin (which in some cases, excluded from this category, they are). Instead, for example, the image of a "root" with a supplicant preparing for a "root canal" dental surgery was interpreted as referring to the

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

105

"root" of the person's problem, which was a family history of alcoholism. Again, imagery associated with an episode of appendicitis in an elderly man was interpreted in terms of his lack of spiritual preparation for such a dangerous illness; an image promising healing for laryngitis was ultimately concerned with enhancing the person's religious faith; and an episode of pain was interpreted as a divine message calling attention to the person's disposition not to "take care of herself." Under the heading of emotional difficulty I have defmed a type of interpretant in which the problem is explicidy recognized by healers as habitual, but not necessarily as the product of either failures of intimacy or consequences of trauma. The examples in our data include fear, anxiety, guilt, despair, and anger. Under spiritual problems I include lack of religious faith and exposure to "occult" (demonic) influences. The category of life stress refers to the consequences of events as diverse as a woman's anticipation of a family move to a new city, a law-enforcement official's worry about testifying at an impending trial, or being generally "laden with burdens." Finally, sin refers to the enduring consequences of culturally defined transgressions such as having committed robbery, having an illegitimate child, homosexuality, adultery, or having an abortion. This repertoire of interpretants does not only identify individual habits, but is the product of a shared North American Charismatic habitus . .Just as the repertoire of representamens can be expected to vary crossculturally, one would not likely fmd the same repertoire of problems and preoccupations in another culture (Kakar 1982). Like all practices within a coherent habitus, however, revelatory imagery is characterized by the fluidity of regulated improvisation (Bourdieu 1977). No symbolic image requires a particular interpretant within the system of ritual performance. Neither is there any necessary correspondence between the categories of representamens described in table 4.2 and the categories of interpretants for the same images described in table 4.3. Our final task in this section is to account for what makes this improvisation regulated rather than random. There is both a phenomenological and a semiotic element in this regulation. The phenomenological element is provided by the habitus, which determines both the repertoire of possible representamens and the repertoire of possible interpretants that can be attached to particular situations or objects. For example, in our data an image of a fetus and an image of the word "abortion" on a blackboard both referred to situations of abortion, invariably defmed as problematic in the extremely

106

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

conservative culture of Charismatics. With the occurrence of such an image, the patient's contribution is to specify the situation as an abortion of one's sibling, the near abortion of one's self as an unwanted child, or an abortion one has had oneself. The healer's subsequent contribution is to introduce specificity by determining the interpretant that frames the image in appropriate religious terms. The healer construes the revelatory image of a fetus (representamen) and the patient's experience of an abortion (object) as either a trauma or a sin (interpretant). The participants' shared habitus defmes the modus operandi of improvisation within the intersubjective milieu. It gives rise to images and interpretants that, in a sense, converge on their objects (situations) in ritual performance, constituting a cultural meaning that, for them, is uniquely realistic. . The semiotic element of regulated improvisation is provided by the type ofsign in which a particular image is cast. To stay with our example, there is greater ambiguity possible with the relatively more iconic image of a fetus than with the symbolic inscription of "abortion" on an imaginal blackboard. Because it lacks a legend of the type described above in Peirce's discussion of the portrait of Leopardi, in principle the fetus image could refer not to an abortion at all, but for example to a trauma within a previous pregnancy carried to term. On the other hand, the word "abortion" on a blackboard rhetorically implies (and in our data was in fact construed as) a "sin" which could be "erased" by repentance and divine forgiveness in ritual healing, thus producing a spiritual "clean slate." In sum, the habitus regulates improvisation by defming the limits of reality, and semiosis regulates improvisation by defming the limits of specificity in revelatory imagery.

Embodied Imagery and Self Process We set out in this chapter to organize the data of Charismatic revelatory imagery according to the formula of act-representationobject-interpretant. Rather than analyzing images one by one, placing each in cultural and interactive context, we have attempted to contextualize revelatory practice and its repertoire of imagery as a cultural system, emphasizing the complementary analysis of the phenomenological image-in-consciousness and the semiotic image-as-sign. We can now

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

107

conclude by observing that the discussion of habit has brought us full circle back to the body as existential ground of self process, thus linking act and interpretant in our analytic scheme. Recall that we began our argument for a theory of embodied imagery with the act phase, pointing to what Merleau-Ponty called the bodily synthesis as the condition for revelatory imagery in multiple modalities. 24 As Merleau-Ponty notes, however, it is also the case that habit has its abode neither in thought nor in the objective body, but in the body as mediator of the world.... Although our body does not impose defmite instincts upon us from birth, as it does upon animals, it does at least give to our life the form ofgenerality, and develops our personal acts into stable dispositional tendencies. (1962:145, 146; emphasis added)

In our analysis of imagery, while the representamen and its object denote a concrete situation immediately recognizable because it is culturally typical, the fmal interpretant is generalized in the sense that it is distributed throughout the person's existence as a general capacity-or incapacity-of self. This generality gives us a due to the curious comment made sometimes by patients in Charismatic healing that "I don't know why I'm here." They sense about themselves the discomfort of a generalized "habit" that can be sensorially presented as an embodied image and which is a potential interpretant of revelation. Insofar as it may not be recognized as such by any patient, such a "habit" cannot be equated with "illness" or even "suffering," though it may be a preobjective constituent of either. At this preobjective level, it should be understood as an element of the habitus. Here we return to the observation with which we opened the chapter, that imagery is a Charismatic self process in a double sense. For if imagination as a generalized capacity of self, or characteristic somatic mode of attention, becomes part of the habitus generated among Charismatics, it is without doubt part of the same habitus that includes those generalized dispositions that make up the repertoire of interpretants for revelatory imagery. It is thus correct to say not only that the convergence of apt image and relevant interpretant upon an identifiable object or situation is grounded in the body, but that it is grounded in the mutually socially informed bodies of healer and patient. If it is existentially the case that our embodiment allows us to recognize another person as "another myself" (see chapter 1), it is culturally the case that a shared habitus is the ground of intuitive intersubjectivity in ritual healing. This is especially evident in the dose connection we have shown between the structure of Charis-

108

EMBODIED IMAGERY AND DIVINE REVELATION

matic imagery and prominent North American psychocultural themes. Spontaneity and control are deeply implicated in the experience of imagery as sacred and efficacious, whereas intimacy is a prominent interpretant of discrete revelations. If there is any sense in which revelation might be said to be perception instead of imagination, it is in the perception of an intersubjective milieu. It is no accident that Charismatic revelatory imagery can be experienced by both healer and supplicant, and that on occasion they will experience separate but complementary images. 25 Imagery not only emerges from the intersubjective milieu, but in the performative flow of a healing event elaborates that milieu by contributing to the critical elements of therapeutic process we have identified as disposition, experience of the sacred, and elaboration of alternatives. Images as indexical icons of divine power and as symbolic signs both reinforce the disposition to be healed, and are direct experiences of the sacred insofar as their occurrence is recognized by the patient as spontaneous and as immediately relevant to her situation. Finally, images as symbolic signs may initiate the elaboration of alternatives by directing the attention of the patient toward a particular aspect of her life experience that can be taken up into the therapeutic process of ritual healing. We must now pursue the problem of imagery in therapeutic process more closely from the patient's point of view.

5 Imaginal Performance and Healing of Memories

The discussion we begin in this chapter is continuous with those in both chapters 3 and 4. In chapter 3 we identified elements of experiential specificity in the Charismatic genre of "physical healing," and now we undertake a similar task with respect to the second of the three major healing genres, inner healing or healing or memories. In chapter 4 we identified imagination as an important self process in Charismatic healing, focusing on the revelatory imagery of healers and the relation between imagination and perception in the intersubjective milieu of ritual performance. In this chapter we begin to examine therapeutic imagery experienced by patients, with special attention to the relation between imagination and memory as intersubjective self processes in sequences of what we are calling imaginal performances. Throughout, a basic concern is the problem of efficacy, both therapeutic efficacy in the relief from illness and distress, and ritual efficacy in the creation of a sacred self. In reemphasizing this dual sense of efficacy, we recognize that, even in cases where patients can be determined to meet diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric disorder, the cultural constitution of the healing system challenges the boundaries of analytic integrity between the languages of ritual action and of therapeutic process. Stated another way, it is relevant to speak either of the self or of suffering as the objects either of ritual action or of therapeutic process, where the negative goal of removing suffering is strictly complementary to the positive one of creating the sacred self. It is consistent with Benedict's (1934) classic notion that there are 109

110

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

"patterns" in culture that a ritual genre called "healing of memories" would originate in contemporary North America. Whether it be due to the lasting influence of psychoanalysis or to some more deeply embedded notion of which psychoanalysis is itself a manifestation, 1 it can hardly be denied that both repressed and conscious memories are regarded as significant constituents of the "self" in North American ethnopsychology. First of all, memory is a powerful symbol of the self, such that access to memory is access to a privileged rone of communion with that "other who becomes myself." In that invocation of otherness any psychotherapeutic or religious technique that offers such access to memory can have overtones of the sacred. That in certain circumstances the valuation of the sacred can overwhelm the valuation of veridicality is made possible by the following datum of psychology. Although it has been shown that memories from childhood, including those retrieved under hypnosis, are not necessarily accurate (Brewer 1986:44, Stephen 1989:57), it is also the case that people tend to adhere to the veridicality of such memories (Brewer 1986:35). Thus, though there is a potential danger that "pseudomemory" could prove traumatic (Masson 1984, Csordas 1990b), the sacred technique lessens the import of disjunction between actual event and emotionally salient experience. 2 Because of the symbolic value of memory, in a sense it does not matter whether it is literally accurate. 3 Secondly, if memory is a symbol of the self, the array of specific memories invoked and reinvoked by techniques such as healing of memories constitutes a pastiche of the self. A brief review of formats in which healing of memories can be undergone by Charismatics will show what I mean. In chapter 2 we described the basic ritual procedure comprised of autobiographical review by stage of life, typically including an intrauterine period, infancy, childhood and school years, adulthood, marriage, retirement. Whatever emerges spontaneously during a period, either prompted by the healer's or patient's revelatory imagery, or immediately remembered by the patient, is focused on and "prayed into." Within this basic procedure, multiple variations are possible. It is sometimes the case in one-on-one healing over multiple sessions (analogous to weekly psychotherapy) that entire sessions will be devoted to a single life stage, or the healer may go through the entire life in each session. It is also possible to review one's life on numerous occasions in public healing services, such as those led by Father P. or the healer who developed the "shoe test." A patient may bring a particular memory to ritual healing; a healer may adopt the strategy of praying for ''whatever comes

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

HI

up" without focus on a particular life stage or problem; or prayer about a particular problem may through revelation uncover a memory presumed to lie at the biographical "bitter root" of that problem. Finally, the same memory can be gone over on more than one occasion, with incremental actualization of change. The spiritual career of any Charismatic is likely to include many such instances of healing, such that the sacred self can be understood as a pastiche of ritually transformed memories of varying degrees of autobiographical significance. Our strategy for defming the therapeutic specificity by means of which the healing of memories contributes to constituting a Charismatic sacred self will be to examine the experience of three patients. This material is drawn from data on sixty healing sessions with eighteen patients (thirteen female and five male) in varying degrees of distress. 4 Eight participating healers ranged from those who adhere to a strictly religious idiom in the setting of Charismatic prayer groups to trained psychotherapists who integrate ritual healing into their repertoire of therapeutic techniques in the setting of professional or clinical practice. Up to five consecutive sessions were observed and recorded for each patient in the study. After each session the patient identified the most significant event within that session and provided an experiential commentary. 5 For each case we include a brief introduction to the healer and her orientation as well as to the patient, and then describe a particular session. We will outline the episodic structure of these sessions, but will concentrate on an event of imaginal performance identified by the patient as highly significant. In each case we will integrate materials from session transcripts and postsession experiential commentaries with phenomenological description and cultural analysis. 6 Our evaluation of therapeutic process will be cast in the terms laid out in chapter 3, namely disposition, experience of the sacred, elaboration of alternatives, and actualization of change.

The Woman Whose Mother Went to Pieces The healer was a Catholic woman, aged thirty-nine, who integrates techniques of Charismatic healing and psychotherapy. Her training includes a masters degree in social work from a psychoanalytic perspective, and a doctorate in theology with a concentration in spirituality. She is also trained in the Ignatian method of spiritual direction

112

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

as well as in Catholic Charismatic methods of inner healing and deliverance. Although she avers the psychoanalytic importance of the unconscious and of the first years of life, she states that her subsequent professional development has led her to a more eclectic position. She has been especially influenced by the perspective ofJung on the role of imagery in tapping unconscious processes. She believes that the Jungian perspective offers a more positive view of the human person than does the Freudian, and is more in conformity with a Catholic "theological anthropology" that understands the basic forces of human being as growth, integration, and individuation. 7 In her sessions she and her client typically sit facing one another. She does not customarily use laying on of hands, but will occasionally hold a person's hand at an emotionally significant moment. The patient in the session was, in the healer-therapist's view, an ideal client-in our language of therapeutic process, the patient had a wellgrounded disposition within the healing system. She had been involved in Charismatic spirituality since 1978, was well advanced in her own "spiritual development," and was herself trained and active as a spiritual director for others. She was a middle-class woman forty years of age, married for twenty years, and the mother of four children. Her education included two years of college, and her husband worked at a responsible job of lower managerial status. She reported that her first Charismatic religious experience, baptism in the Spirit, had resulted in a spontaneous healing from a phobia of snakes. Shortly afterwards she had a session of inner healing during which she was relieved of guilt over teenage sexual activity that she felt inappropriate for a devout Catholic girl, and of guilt over a narrowly avoided extramarital affair later in life. After four years the Charismatic group in which she was a member dissolved, and she became involved in a program of Ignatian spirituality, becoming trained as a spiritual director. Although no longer active in Charismatic groups, at the time of this session she was herself under the spiritual direction of a Charismatic priest, who had also conducted prayer for inner healing with her. Her principal complaint was lack of a close and emotionally satisfying marital relationship. She had considered (and not yet ruled out) divorce, but attributed her ability to remain in the marriage until the present to her Charismatic involvement. The preceding three years had been especially traumatic, even violent. Resulting from a pregnancy that originated with unwanted sex forced by her husband, the birth of another child was the bitter fruit of this period. A personal crisis was precipitated by her participation in a team praying for deliverance from evil spirits

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

113

for a seriously troubled and suicidal young girl. Our patient attributed the negative influence of this event both to having experienced a traumatic event similar to that troubling the young girl, and to having "picked up" the evil spirit Suicide from which the girl was delivered (cf. chapter 7 on deliverance). Subsequently she became increasingly depressed and suicidal herself, till another woman who had also participated in the deliverance recommended that she get counseling. In research diagnostic terms we defmed this as an episode of major depression. It is critical that although the onset of this episode was attributed to spiritual causes, this attribution precluded neither an understanding of its relation to concrete life circumstances nor recourse to psychotherapy or "counseling." Accordingly, she sought out the healer-therapist, whom she had met the previous year in a professional context. She had been in therapy for two months when she consented to enter the research protocol, and the session described below is the third of five followed with her. The session is exemplary in that it includes both a major breakthrough event and an unusually comprehensive mix of psychotherapeutic and religious interventions. In the week prior to the session, the client had been concerned about whether she was prepared to face the difficult issues surrounding her marital crisis. Certain passages from the Bible "came to her," affirming that she should proceed, but she was at the same time beset by "fear and inner anxiety." The day before her session she realized that these feelings were abnormally elevated and hence could be due to the influence of evil spirits. In a telephone conversation with the priest who was her spiritual advisor she brought them under control by "binding" them (see chapter 2), and the opening episode of the present session was constituted by a discussion of evil spirits and their effect in general and on the patient (we will examine this episode in detail in chapter 8). The next episode was initiated with the client's statement that in the past week she had begun to feel that her marital problems as well as recent conflict with her adolescent daughter were rooted in a behavioral pattern established somewhere in the past. She had been struck with the thought that no matter what she did, her husband and children were critical: ''They don't see the good, they see the bad." She described her own response as a feeling of failure, which she expressed to them as anger in order to cover a sense of being hurt. When she noted that this response was exacerbated during her menstrual period, the healertherapist recommended a book on premenstrual syndrome. The patient then expressed her feeling that the pattern had originated

114

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

in her relationship with her mother. She felt that the feeling was linked to previous sessions of inner healing with a Charismatic priest in which she had experienced mental imagery of her mother, and to the fact that in the preceding week those images had been "coming back." One of these images was from a period of about two or three years of age when "evidently [1] used to stick my tongue out and she used to slap my tongue, and I got a bloody nose." The memory included a sense of "mixed messages" that she was inherently bad yet loved by her mother, and she connected this with the contemporary feeling of failure provoked by her husband's and children's criticisms. Another image was a scene of shouting and screaming; "and behind my mother was my grandmother and my great-grandmother. It was very, very strange." Again the healer-therapist suggested some reading, this time on the Charismatic technique of intergenerational or ancestral healing (see chapter 2). She explained the theory that if the deceased still needs healing, bonds may be established between the generations that prevent the healing of the living relative, and described how "ancestral healing" both helps the deceased and breaks their bond to the living. The immediate therapeutic impact of this explanation was a religiously consistent understanding by the client of why the issues of maternal relationship had not been resolved through prior inner-healing prayer and were now resurfacing. The principal episode of the session, identified in followup as most significant by both healer (H) and patient (S), began with the patient's . comparison of herself and her young son:

s:

H: S: H: S: H: S:

H:

Basically I do see him as an extremely gifted child with a lot of life .... He can express himself, and I allow him to. I think I was a spitfire like him. You couldn't kill this kid. I would have to really do a huge number on him to be able to squelch what he has inside. It really, really is beautiful. What does that tell you about yourself, what you just said? It's that I have that potential. You called it beautiful. Yeah, I have a hard time believing that. But I do believe it with him. Well, if you are like him, then you are like him. And he's like you. Maybe you can see more of the positive in yourself. Yeah. [Begins soft crying; therapist comes to kneel by her chair, applies laying on of hands. ] Why don't you close your eyes for a few minutes and let that sink in. rll close my eyes too. Have some space .... Let yourself be with that insight. Maybe you can thank the Lord for that child. It can help you love yourself. [Silence during pause.]

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

s:

H: S: H: S: H:

S: H: S: H: S: H:

S: H: S: H:

S: H: S: H: S: H:

S: H:

115

I could picture S. and I could see that grin. I just got a sense of him having the freedom to be-it's going to sound a little strange-even dirty. I mean physically a mess. And that grin sort of came through. Then I pictured this little girl that was always perfectly dressed, and I kept getting the words "it's okay little one." That's what I got, and the smile kept coming to me. Because when you were a little girl you weren't being told "it's okay." No. I think you need to feel some of your pain. Yeah, because I'd like to deny that. Yeah, but you can't now. It needs to come out. Why don't you let yourself cry. Whose shoulders would you like to cry on? Just cry on mine .... [Healer moves from her chair to the patient's side and touches her; client cries.] That little girl is hurting, she needs to cry.... It's okay for her to cry. I see myself take hold of [my mom] and she's crying. You're holding her? Uh huh. Nobody held you. I didn't realize that. It's okay to hurt, it'll be okay, it's okay.... [Client cries.] Have a good cry .... It's safe to cry.... At some point imagine the Blessed Mother taking the little girl in her arms. Just be on her lap and let Mary hold her in your arms. Cry on her shoulder and just feel all the maternal love of God. Mary can take your pain, so let that little girl cry on Mary's lap, let her put her arms around you, and comfort you .... You're entitled to ask for comfort. I couldn't let go. I fmally took her with me to the Blessed Mother. Your mom? Yes, I couldn't ler go, I felt like she would shatter if I did. Oh my. She felt that fragile to you as a child. No wonder you've been carrying burdens for other people for all these years. No wonder. No wonder. What a burden for a little girl. If she doesn't take care of her mother, her mother will shatter. Does that tell you what's going on? Sure does. I think you're at the beginning of a lot of healing. I do too. You can let her go now. I sure can try. The Lord can help you. Because he has her in his hands now. You can let go.... [Pause, client cries softly.] Take your time, you don't have to move yet. Take a deep breath. My heart hurts. Your heart is hurting?

116

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

S: It actually physically hurts. H: Does it feel scary, or like it really ... ? S: It feels weird, it feels very tingly, and it feels there's a hurt in it. I can't explain it any other way. H: It sounds like you've been carrying a lot of pain for your mother. No wonder your heart hurts. To carry that much pain, to carry all her pain inside yourself since you were a little girl.

This episode opens with a therapeutic intervention allowing the patient to see herself in a positive light through comparison with her son. Problems of intimacy are associated with problems of self-image as they are projected into the arena of autobiographical memory. For the client versed in the procedures of inner healing, the invitation to close her eyes is an invitation to imagery. Sensory engagement in this image includes a visual focus on her dirty, grinning little son in contrast with herself as a perfectly dressed little girl, and an auditory focus on the words "it's okay little one." The interpretant of this complex comparative symbol connects the themes of intimate parental reassurance (being "okay") and spontaneity as an ego ideal (the freedom to get dirty as opposed to the repression of being always perfectly dressed). The next therapist intervention invites the patient to feel the pain of being developmentally deprived of intimacy and spontaneity. Still in the realm of imagination, she is invited to "cry on someone's shoulder," presumably that ofJesus or the Virgin Mary, but apparently to avoid forcing the development of imaginal performance the healer momentarily retreats to an offer of her own shoulder to cry on. Nevertheless, imaginal performance begins. In a symbolic inversion of the mother-daughter role, the patient nurtures her own mother. Onto this scenario the healer superimposes the Virgin Mary as the shoulder to cry on who will provide the absent maternal intimacy and "take" the pain. It is evident that the healer's attention is on the divine healing presence while the patient is focused on her mother. In complying with the request to sit on the Virgin's lap she still holds her mother, the report of which appears to startle the healer mildly. However, the patient's insight that her mother's emotional fragility may account for her own inability to be intimate, and the reversal of nurturing roles, are integrated with and supported by the divine presence. In addition, the complex kinaesthetic or positional imagery appears to be a symbolic compromise for a patient who self-avowedly nurtures others without herself being nurtured-the one who is holding is also being held. In resolution we see an enactment of the psychocultural theme of control.

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

117

Too much control requires the emotional "letting go," and the patient is instructed to relinquish her mother into the hands of Jesus-or more to the rhetorical point, is informed that the mother already is in the divine hands. Her response is a highly complex image of tingling and physical pain in the heart. This can be understood as a kind of synesthetic metaphor based on the conventional understanding of the heart as seat of the emotions. As physical and emotional pain are merged in the bodily synthesis, the image is presented simultaneously in the proprioceptive and affective modalities. Finally, the image is further enriched by "tingling" which, as we know (chapter 4), is for Charismatics typically an indexical sign of divine power. This is only a preliminary account of the imaginal performance, however, only the barest outlines of which are present in the dialogue between healer and patient. The phenomenological details of the performance are recounted in the client's experiential commentary, presented here in edited form: 8 When she said, "Look for somebody to hold," I wanted to hold my mother. You know if I wanted to cry on somebody, it was her that I would like to image. And all of a sudden I realized it was me that was holding her, instead of her me .... And when she told me to go to Mary right after this, I couldn't let go, because I was afraid she was going to shatter. I really was. I brought her with me to Mary-it's like I was watching her down there-I guess she was an adult, but I'd say she was a child, because it was a small figure .... And the physical sense that went along with this was amazing, amazing. Because it was just like something-I don't know what a heart attack feels like, but I was beginning to think I really was [chuckles], but I really physically ached in my heart. I've never felt that before. I can't explain it, I know she needed to be comforted. I was sensing she didn't want to be mean, she really didn't-maybe she was too tired-I don't know why, I was too little to know why. But I knew she needed me. So when I went to Mary I couldn't leave her alone, because I was afraid she'd go to pieces. I didn't have enough freedom just to cry. Because if! did she'd just go to pieces. . . . When I went and sat in Mary's lap, before I realized she was crumbling down, it was almost like I was in the lap, and she was crumbling. And that's when I reached out my hand-I'm not even sure that hand had been disconnected, but there was still a part of me back there. And finally I just sort of brought her on and said, ''Well, the lap's big enough for two." And I got a sense that she was crying too with Mary, also with me .... What she said to do up here [in a room where the patient is sent to reflect after the session] was to picture the fact that my mother is now in Christ and that I didn't have to hold on any longer.... I tried to really image with Christ, sort of taking my mother away. And the pain went when I did that, it physically left.

118

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

So I had a sense that she left, but I didn't stay sobbing on Mary's lap either. I just sat there. I didn't get a sense of Mary crying, I got a sense of her really wanting to hold me individually.... I couldn't get back to that image, either, after I imaged Christ coming back in. So I was sort of left hung, that was about where I ended it. [Laughs.] I couldn't move it-and I do believe this with imagery, when you're done you're done. I've never been able to further one yet! [Laughs.] I would like to have this nice little ending, but it was sort of just left hanging. I just got a sense that my mother moved away with Christ. It was more of a sense of her going to him-he didn't come into the scene. At this point there was no imagery, it was more of an internal sensing. It was not "I saw her leave, I saw him come." I think I did say, "Please come into this" to him. I might have even said out loud, "My Lord." I can't explain it. It's not like I have to have a sense of him coming and going, I just have to say, "My Lord" and he's there-but I did get a sense of disconnecting, a floating away of her. Then I didn't revert back to me and Mary, I just let it go .... [The physical pain went then but] I still feel like I'm breathing-sort of overwhelmingly breathing. I'm surprised at the way this went, in a very nice way. It's just amazing what God can do.

The emphasis on spatial orientation and kinesthetic quality in this phenomenologically articulate account, as well as the integral role of pain and its removal, attest to the eidetic, engaged, and multisensorial nature of imaginal performance. The therapeutic imaginal performance is notably unlike the revelatory images of being slapped and of domestic strife. The latter were simple, more-or-Iess explicit and well-defined images which identified autobiographical scenarios in earlier healing sessions. Here, in contrast, we see the characteristic indeterminacy of imaginal process in two ambiguous metaphors of emotional fragility-the "small figure" of a mother who is at once adult and child, and in the performative image of the mother going to pieces and reconstituted by the touch of her daughter's hand. The existential thickness of this indeterminacy is highlighted by the immediate yet fluid sense of bodily engagement and disengagement. The patient's imaginal self was "almost in the lap" as she sensed her mother "crumbling" and reached out a hand that was not yet certainly even "disconnected" from her mother, since "there was still a part of me back there." The characteristic spontaneity of imagery is evident in the "sudden" role reversal between mother and daughter, in the emergence of fear that the mother would "shatter," and in the "amazing" physical correlate of this fear. The emotional truth of the mother's constraining influence is perhaps best attested by the fact that, even in imagery, the mother's fragility constituted a demand that did not allow the patient "enough freedom just to cry." The possibility of resolution is emotionally established when all three imaginal performers

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

119

cry together, achieved in a performative blurring between the actual weeping of the patient and the imaginal weeping of her mother and the Virgin. The next development should give pause to anthropologists committed to event-based theories of ritual performance, for the imaginal performance quite evidently continues beyond the ritual action of the healing session proper. Alone after the session, the patient follows the healer's instructions to relinquish her mother to Jesus. This imaginal act is accompanied by spontaneous cessation of both her pain and her weeping and by the feeling that she is to be the sole focus of the Virgin's intimate attention. This integrative moment of therapeutic process could easily be missed by an overly strict drawing of boundaries around the ritual event. Let us draw attention to the reported alleviation of pain in her heart that accompanied the imaginal "letting go" or relinquishing. Her report was quite matter of fact, but in our postsession the somatic immediacy of her experience suggested additional probing on its possible significance. When asked, she was tentatively able to integrate her heartache into the performative gestalt. Whereas she described it physically as similar to a sharp pain in the side one might get after jogging when out of shape, she described it peiformatively as an indexical icon of her existential engagement in the embodied rhetoric of transformation: "Maybe it's breaking, separating." Finally, we must comment about the relation between the sequence's structure in consciousness and its performative structure. Casey points out that the structure of an image characteristically includes a wne of ambiguity, an "imaginal margin," in which the indeterminate presence of additional contents exists as a potential for further development of the image (1976:53-55). Our patient is explicit that Jesus never enters the performative scene as a visual image, but hovers as a presence on this imaginal margin. The performative force of maintaining the divine figure in the imaginal margin is, I would suggest, that it reinforces the kind of sense of an almost-sensible divine presence that Charismatics cultivate as a feature of the habitus. In so doing it also reinforces the continuity between imaginal performance and everyday action, and hence enhances the reality and specificity of the experience. This performative use of the imaginal margin is continued as the patient's mother passes from the visual center of the imaginal performance into the indeterminacy-and divinely guaranteed safety-of the margin. The movement toward the margin is itself reinforced by a shift in the

120

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

sensory modality in which the imaginal performance is conducted. As the sequence nears an end, from whence by previous experience she is aware she can carry it no further, the prominence of the visual modality yields to intuitive "internal sensing." Thus the mode in which her "mother moved away with Christ" was "a sense of disconnecting, a floating away of her." In turning to the four elements of therapeutic process (cf. chapter 3) in this session, it is safe to simply reiterate the highly developed disposition of the patient, thoroughly integrated into the Charismatic habitus. Her experience ofthe sacred is limited neither to the divine presence of the Virgin and Jesus,9 nor to the emergence of discrete images, but extends to the intersubjective features of the session. The healer herself regarded it as an "exceptional" and "powerful" session: I was very moved by the integration of how everything can happen together, and how it just "happened," rather than its being an intentional thing on my part. I guess that's the sort of integration that I would like to have all the time, but it seldom happens. In part it's that I seldom have clients of the level of development ofK. ... So it was like I really felt we were moving together, but I felt a lot of that was like the God in each of us moving together. It's hard to put into words, because I really felt guided, but it wasn't this usual sort of thing where I'm conscious of inspiration. It's sort of like I was feeling very close to God, and feeling a very gentle kind of, making the right moves and her making the right responses in kind of like a dance. I felt it was moved by God, but because each of us is very free in God, rather than I'm sitting here praying and I get a word of knowledge, sort of inspiration. But more just the freedom of God working in me, and I could feel it in her, and I just had the feeling of a back and forth of that .... In this case it was more like there was a spontaneity to what I did. I almost didn't choose it, but I really felt God in that spontaneity.

That is, the healer perceives divine spontaneity in the interaction as much as in the unexpected turns of imaginal process. Part of this was the healer's experience of the countertransferential emotional component of the patient's affective/proprioceptive imagery of heartache: Oh, I was feeling her pain. I really felt pain inside myself. When I went over to the chair I could feel pain, even before she came up with that image I could feel pain-emotional pain. It was like a deep, deep hurt, like there's so much hurt inside, like I could feel that there was lots and lots and lots, just the depth, this deep well of hurt.... I'm assuming that's what it is, short of her having some sort of physical condition that I'm not aware of. I'm not a doctor, and maybe she does have a heart condition, but it didn't seem that way. But that's something that I've experienced myself, and I've had a few other people experi-

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

121

ence. And that is a literal, physical pain in the heart when there is an emotional feeling of deep hurt.... I don't know [how to account for it], some day we're going to fmd out how our emotional and physical selves are cOIll1ected. I think they're deeply and completely connected. After all, when we have these emotions there must be a chemical and electrical and whatever equivalent. We just don't know how it is, so the emotional pain just comes out in physical pain that's real. . . . I think the reason may be more than symbolic, maybe the reason we talk about our heart from time immemorial, maybe there's a real physiological reason for it and we know it intuitively, you know like some kind of unconscious knowledge that we all have, that we don't have worked out yet. 10

From the patient's standpoint, the elaboration ofalternatives originates in reflection on the life circumstance of her mother, whom she described as physically fragile and frequendy sick, lacking the supportive companionship of a husband who was preoccupied by working three jobs at a time: Because probably I was very active-people would tell me what a terror I was-because my mother was sickly, and she also had my father home trying to sleep during the day. It would be very difficult to keep a kid like that quiet. You know they're just not quiet children. She could be getting frustrated as she goes along, until her anger-and I was feeling unloved. I have to say that, for some unknown reason. I know she loved me, now, the adult me, but I think that as a child I didn't feel that, and it hurts to say.

Faced by the frequent anger of her mother, she concludes that she developed a "reaction pattern" of becoming not sad but angry when hurt, and "that's probably why I was slapped in the face." Another aspect of elaborating alternatives is the opening of an alternative path through the healing process, identified in her acknowledgment that "the whole session surprises me, because I knew it was more than my marriage." She concludes that the memory images kept popping up because the deity did not want her to start with her marriage, but to "go back further. He's saying he wants to enter into the areas I don't even know exist." Here the issue of marital intimacy is displaced by that of parental intimacy, and therapeutic focus is shifted from the current relationship to the biographical formation of the self as the capacity for intimacy. Two characteristic features of Charismatic healing are evident. First is a tendency to focus attention on the individual rather than the relationship. Behind this tendency lies an ethnopsychological preference for fmding an intrapsychic locus of problems, and a cultural prescription for North American females to carry the burden of "emotional work"

122

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

in intimate relationships with men. The individualistic tendency also implies the Charismatic tenet that the way to achieve change in another is to change oneself in such a way as to elicit different responses from the other. More pragmatically, it is an acknowledgment of the difficulty in involving a non-Charismatic husband in a religiously based healing process. The second feature is movement to the biographical past, and to memory as symbol of the self. A high degree of disposition to this movement is expressed by the patient: The past is so imponant for wholeness. If you really want to be a whole person, and that's where God draws you, you can't eliminate it, it's pan of who you are. And I'm definitely working out of past stuff, and it's got too much of a grip on me, and I'm not all right. I want it to go, and I don't want to hurry it-I want to make sure that it's him that's leading me. It took a lot for me at that point to let go. I appreciate her for sensing that I needed to let go .... And maybe it was good that I felt the pain in my hean, because that shows me it's real. I know that sounds so stupid that I would even doubt that the pain would be real, but there's a pan of me that says, "It can't be this bad," but it is. It really huns that much. That floors me, because I just deal [as a counselor] with so many people that are-you know incest, and all this stuff-and I say, "Now that's deep, that's real pain." And I just can't fathom that I would have any kind of pain like that. But this is just as real to me. It's just as strong. It's not as horrifying, I guess-maybe it is in its own way. Maybe it is, because it's been just as crippling. I guess I didn't realize that as much until today.

Finally, it is precisely the acknowledgment of emotional pain and the ability to "let go" of it that constitutes the actualization of change. In this session the patient identified as a critical moment the healer's articulation of her need to feel her pain. This was because, she said, she tends to tell herself she has no need to feel it. Equally critical, she felt, was the moment that the healer came to her and touched her, granting her the "physical permission to let go." The healer independently concurred that there "needs to be a lot more of the little girl that could never be sad, that could never feel pain, because she had to be strong for her mother." Quite importantly, however, the healer drew a dear distinction between psychotherapeutic process and the process of healing of memories: Those feelings are stuck deep inside her, and I think to just pray for healing of that without allowing her to know her feelings and to feel her feelings, is doing a big disservice to her personality development. That's the psychotherapist in me that believes that God doesn't intend for all these things to be shoncut. Pan of the healing is through the human process-so in S's case, the fact that

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

123

that image surfaced advanced the psychotherapy. You could work in psychotherapy for months looking for what's stuck in her, whereas that one image gave you sessions and sessions and sessions of talk. Now that image came through grace, in my mind. But once that image gives you what that stuck issue is, I wouldn't want to rush to pray for healing. So even my imagery with her when I brought it up was Mary comforting her, but that would still allow her to cry. I didn't, as you noticed, and I won't for a while unless she runs to [the priest who had conducted healing of memory prayer with her]-ifit's up to me, I'm going to let her get back into that little girl who's hurting, and be comforted perhaps in her imagery, but I will very consciously and purposefully not take her too soon into praying for healing of the hurt of that little girl. . . . If one rushed to an inner healing it would be like she were put aside again without ever getting her attention-if I can talk in that language. I have very strong feelings about this.

In this discourse we see a characteristic Charismatic notion that healing of memories can divinely achieve in one session what would take months in psychotherapy, here modified by a complementary notion that ritual healing in itself may not provide an adequate resolution of a therapeutic issue. For this healer, the probable next step in the actualization of change was to get in touch with her mother now healed [i.e., now in heaven] .... Not get in touch in the sense of a seance, obviously,11 but to connect with the real love that's there, and how the healed love of the parent can really be experienced. And that's a particular kind of healing thing I do . . . simply to use your imagination to connect with a reality that's always there.

In this session we have encountered a variety of episodes dealing with evil spirits, ancestral healing, incorporation of previous inner healing, therapeutic intervention based in interpretation of present imagery, and a breakthrough event and its resolution through imaginal performance. Despite this richness, we reiterate that the meaning of the session is not circumscribed by the event itself. It is impossible to separate therapeutic process from the course of the patient's overall career as a Charismatic, since meanings of earlier healing events are tied together in a memorial pastiche of the self. In subsequent months, for example, this patient's process continued in sessions with her healer-therapist and her spiritual director as well as in an eight-day retreat that she attended annually. An additional childhood issue that arose was having been sexually abused over a period of time by older boys in her neighborhood-a memory that she had never repressed, but that she had never before understood under the rubric of abuse and its traumatic consequences. This allowed an elaboration of alternative emotions to the "guilt, self-

124

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

hate, and shame" that had accompanied her since having been blamed for these incidents by her mother. Her relationship with her mother remained the central issue, with maternal imagery reoccurring frequently. Another important sequence of embodied imagery occurred during her retreat, in which she "connected" with the presence of a mother and grandparents who were "pouring out love." As she thanked her mother for her attempts to love, she "felt embraced by Jesus." Without conscious intention to move them, her hands became "unclenched and untwined" from their traditional palms-together Catholic prayer posture to the open palms-on-the-Iap Charismatic posture, feeling like they were "separated by a force-as if they had been held together by a force." While peripherally aware of this movement-a gestural or bodily metaphor ofemotional openness and spontaneity-her attention was on "being in the presence of my family and of having the presence ofJesus, who had brought me to my family, within me." She described the actualization of change as a sense of being "one with him, loved by him, released from bondage to self-hatred, whole. I'm not being held in the past any longer, I'm fmally in the present." Although the patient's relationship with her mother had temporarily preempted the problem of marital intimacy, she stated that she "feels closer [to her husband], maybe because I feel closer to myself." Here we see a connection between intimacy and identity, the latter related to the patient's insight that her ongoing experience of sexual abuse had led to a generalized hatred of men, and that verbal abuse by her mother had led to self-hatred and extreme sensitivity to criticism. As for her husband, she felt that if she expressed her feelings he would listen, but that he was "adamant about not looking at his own past, which includes a lot of hurts." Both inner healing and the healing of relationships are, in the end, the healing of memories.

The Woman Who Merged with Herself The healer was a fifty-one-year-old married teacher who had been active in the Charismatic Renewal for fifteen years. After about six years as an active prayer-group participant she became an assistant in the group working with a well-known healing priest. In reaction to a period in which "nothing was going well in my life," she began to listen intensively to instructional tapes made by senior members of this

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

125

priest's entourage, and to read "anything I could put my hands on," including "everything by Agnes Sanford who we know in the healing ministry as the Mother of the healing ministry." This self-immersion in knowledge initiated her own inner healing, which, together with her experience as an assistant, constituted her training as a healing minister. Thus, unlike the healer in the previous case, she had no professional training as a counselor or therapist. Eventually, "at some point Father started using me in his ministry to pray with people." Through giving workshops as a member of the larger healing group, she achieved a reputation in the local Charismatic hierarchy of renown such that people began to seek her out in her own right. A basement room in her home was set aside as a "ministry room," furnished with a couch, several chairs, and a portable stereo used to play soft devotional music during healing sessions. One wall was lined with shelves bearing audiotaped "teachings" on matters related to healing, which she distributed to patients based on their particular problems. In this room she received patients one day a week. She typically worked in a team with two other women whose role was to support her with prayer and occasionally to contribute a word of knowledge or confirmation to the proceedings. The patient was seated in a straightbacked chair with the other three standing beside and behind her, laying on hands. The patient was a forty-five-year-old married mother of three, a high school graduate, whose father was an inactive Catholic and whose mother was irreligious. As a child her godmother took her to Episcopal churches, and she became a Catholic after marrying a Catholic man. Because of her alcoholic father's irresponsibility, her mother worked to support the family, leaving her to manage the household and raise her younger sister. She recalls receiving no education or instruction about sex, but became rebellious and promiscuous after her father's death and her mother's subsequent "clinging" to her. Our diagnostic interview showed that some years before entering ritual healing she had undergone an episode of what was most likely a psychotic depression with paranoid features, linked to her father's death and her decision to give up her first child, born prior to her marriage. 12 She also underwent a period of overt alcoholism, and a series of phobias including fear of riding in cars, of water, of crowds (agoraphobia), of elevators and being enclosed (claustrophobia), of being alone, and of being in the dark. 13 There were no current diagnoses at the time of her participation in the study. She reports a close relationship with her husband of twenty-two

126

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

years, forged through a substantial amount of extended family turbulence. This patient had been active in the Charismatic Renewal for fifteen years, first in Episcopal and then in Catholic groups. She reported being convinced of the reality of the divine when once, half-awake, she asked to feel the divine presence and was startled to simultaneously feel someone holding her hand and hear a voice identify itself as Jesus. In a similar hypnagogic state she was convinced of the reality of Satan when a huge Doberman dog with a collar of precious stones appeared and identified itself as the devil, offering her a Faustian bargain which she refused. Other formative spiritual experiences include a command from the deity not to press charges against a neighbor who was harassing her family, and another to stop drinking: "When you're in heaven with me you may have wine at the banquet table-until then, nothing!" She had had some experience with inner healing and healing of memories in the Episcopal Charismatic Renewal, and had been exposed to her present Catholic healer at a "workshop." When I met her, she had been seeing this healer once a month for two years. She reported having been healed of all her phobias and, through the power of forgiveness, of resentment against a brother-in-law who attempted to sexually molest one of her daughters. She stated that it was through the healing of memories that she realized her family had in fact been fmancially quite poor when she was young. She had in healing also come to realize that she hated her father, and that much of her previous behavior was thus based on the generalization that she "hated men and didn't know it." Our account centers on the significant event that dominated the first of three sessions I observed with this patient. The session begins with the patient complaining of headaches and the healer determining that "there's a lot of occult surrounding her." The first episode, which we will discuss in greater detail in the following chapter, is accordingly devoted to deliverance from these evil influences. The healer then apparendy receives the inspiration of a word of knowledge about the patient's emotional state, for without any apparent conversational lead-in she asks: H: Why are you angry at H [husband]? Can you tell us? S: He's been excellent. I really don't know. H: But you're angry. Are you happy with the way he's been? S: He reminds me of my father. H: Dh, yes. I'm glad you said that. That's exactly....

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

s: H:

S: H: S:

H: S:

H:

S:

H:

127

And I still hate my father, heh-heh. So I'm projecting it on to him. It happened when he got gray hair. I have to have him dye his hair, heh-hehheh. Yeah, cause you are very angry with him and it really is not him it's your father .... I'm glad you saw that yourself, because I'd rather you fmd it than I have to say it, but that's exactly what I've had since we started praying. Okay? He reminds you of your father right now. That's why you're always angry with him. And it's not his fault! Ha hal No it's not. How about you forgive your father? [Cries.] My father in bed. I love him, but I hate him too. A lot of it is coming to my conscious mind that I had buried. Especially in bed. I used to pretend it wasn't true, but I know it is. I can't pretend. It is true. I've picked that up on you for a long time. Unless it surfaced so you could see, it wasn't for me to tell you. I used to want him dead. I'm glad he is now. [Chuckles shared.] I wanted to kick him in the balls. SHH! S! The Lord told you to dean up your language .... I had a feeling this would surface today, this morning I was watching a program with Jimmy Swaggart14 ••. and he said how half of the children today will be sexually abused, and the mark that it leaves on their lives. . . . So I had a feeling the Lord would surface this for you today. I did too because ... when I went in [the store] a guy came in and I went "uhhh!" because he looked just like my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law got my daughter. And you know when he went in there, augh! The reaction was like bang! So I'm not surprised. Yes, just thank the Lord that he allowed that to surface, because the things that lie buried are harder to heal.

The healer then prays, praising Jesus for the autobiographical revelation that has just occurred. She asks if the patient feels afraid for people to see that she has weaknesses, and the latter answers yes. The healer says that as she receives more and more healing, she'll be happy to realize that she is in fact quite sensitive, and will want others to know that she suffers like the rest of humankind. The patient responds that she always played the role of the "strong one" in her family. The healer agrees, but explains that the fear of showing weakness has to do with one's "personality type," which is "developed to a great extent from the traumas you go through in early life, the aberrations that come about." There is more quiet prayer in tongues, then the healer prays aloud again, with a chuckle thanking God that the previous "two years of prayer have not been in vain." She then initiates an imaginal performance in order to bring the revelation to a resolution:

128

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

H: Visualize the cup [the liturgical chalice]. s: Okay. H: Okay? S: All right. H: And anything that surfaces in, y'know in relationship with your father. Okay? Put it in the cup-call little S to you first. ["Little S" is the imaginal presence of the patient as a child-the healer and her team pray aloud in tongues.] Is she coming? S: Oh yeah, right away. H: Okay. Mm, things have changed, haven't they? [The healer laughs loudly.] You never-she never used to want to come. [Laughs again-the patient used to have difficulty in visualizing herself as a child-more prayer in tongues.] Have her put things in the cup with you, anything she wants to that has to do with her father's relationship to her.... Is she having a good time? [Laughs.] S: She's not finished. H: Oh my Go/na-na-na.... [The healer prays aloud in tongues, and her assistants join in as before.] Praise you, Lord, bless you. Tell us when you think you're finished. You're done? Put your father in the cup. S: Ohh! H: [Laughs-continuous prayer in tongues by team.] Put your mother in the cup for the time you felt she wasn't there to protect you [from her father]. S: Exactly. H: [Team prayer in tongues continues throughout the following.] Put your sister in the cup ... and your niece ... your brother-in-law. I'd like you to uh!D'you see the paten [gold liturgical plate for the Eucharistic bread]? See if you can see the paten. S: Yes. H: [L prays in tongues briefly.] Okay? D'you see it? Okay. Place yourself, in C's, little C and little [husband]'s paten with your children .... Did you put all the bitterness, the resentment, the anger, the hate, in the cup; and that priest also, that Episcopal priest, in the cup? Okay? Now with your child, bring the cup and the paten [constant background of tongues continues during pauses in conversation], and you're with your babies in your mind's eye, your most comfortable place. Is the Lord near? Okay. Both of you offer Him the cup and see what He'll do with it. [Louder tongues uninterrupted about one minute.] Anything happen? Can you tell us? S: The child, myself the child, and myself now become one-one person, okay? H: And then? S: And then he embraced us first and then that happened. H: That you became one? S: Yes; and then I saw the uhlJesus just open his arms like this and the cup

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

H:

s: H:

S: H: S:

H: S: H: S:

S:

129

poured and then I saw His mother, the Blessed Mother; and then He said you have our hearts, you belong to me and you'll save my people. What do you think happened? What do you think that meant when your two personalities, uh, when you and the child became one? I think I'm more grown up. You are. Praise you, Lord. [The healer begins prayer, with the patient and team members joining in. One of the latter prays in tongues, the other repeats "Praise you, thank you Lord Jesus."] It's very lonely Lord, the healing that is taking place in her relationship [with] her father. Do you have that tape [of Charismatic "teaching"] on the father relationship? No. Of course, that would not have been one that you would.... [Laughing.] I avoided that at all costs! Do have the one for prayer for abuse? No. What do you have? The one on the cup [describing the imaginal technique just now put to use. More prayer in tongues and praise of Jesus. The healer also prays to help moderate Q's "dirty" language, but laughs as she does so.] All pray together: As it was in the beginning, it is now and it shall be. R [her husband] really has been excellent.

The session ends. The relatively high level of disposition in this patient is attested to not only by an involvement of long duration with the movement, but also by a commitment of over two years to the healing process. The ongoing healing relationship also accounts in part for the rather cryptic nature of the interaction, as patient and healing team are by this time quite familiar with one another's "therapeutic moves." The patient has already become aware that she "hates her father," and the insight that she "projects" this hate onto her husband is the elaboration of an alternative to the anger that is restricting the psychological intimacy of her marital relationship. This is consolidated by an experience of the sacred in the form of a revelatory image. The image, apparently evoked by the typical Charismatic injunction to "forgive" her father, locates the origin of her hate in sexual abuse. Let us retrace the ritual action to draw out its therapeutic elements. In this session both healer and patient confirm a divine foreshadowing that the childhood abuse was about to emerge into consciousness. The healer does this in the presumably not-so-coincidental mention of the issue by the televangelist, and the patient in the presumably notby-chance encounter with the double of her lecherous brother-in-law.

130

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

The healer reports already having "picked up" through the word of knowledge both that the patient had been abused and that she was emotionally confusing her father and her husband. However, as with most mainstream Charismatic healers, she acknowledges intentionally not raising the subject until the patient came to this insight herself, for it is regarded as dangerous to disclose a word of knowledge if a person is not emotionally prepared for it. Skipping ahead for a moment to her experiential commentary elicited following the session, we observe that the patient also recalled an instance a month earlier which she said showed that "the Holy Spirit is a gentleman," and does not allow revelation to harm a vulnerable person. At a workshop on cultivating the word of knowledge, another woman praying with her reported "getting" the word "bed" and seeing "a beautiful bed." The patient saw this in retrospect as the beginning of an incremental process of bringing her childhood abuse to consciousness, for even at the time she knew that "the bed wasn't beautiful for me-it was ugly." In the experiential commentary she went on to discuss the role of her husband's resemblance to her father in undermining her denial and facilitating a breakthrough in the healing session: See, I used to say that my father didn't abuse me, and I used to suppress that and have it in my subconscious, but yet my relationship with men would certainly-anyone that looked at my life would say, "Gee, you have a problem with your relationship with men," you know, but I wouldn't face it.... But today, it was right out.... I saw him in the bed, and me in the bed as a little girl, my mother's bed.... My husband's gray hair has a lot to do with it. Gonoa get some Grecian Formula. [Chuckles.] No, really, it's true, it is .... I have to go like, '"That's my husband, that's not my father. You're ... projecting that onto him." At first I just thought I was nuts or something. Then I says, naw, let's take a real-you know, that's just another excuse not to look at it. And then I would see my husband-I see a lot of things visually, a lot of visions and things. And I see my father's face in my bed, and it was my husband. And I go like, '"This is getting weird. We're gonoa have to deal with this." I even told him [her husband].

Here the imaginal-almost hallucinatory-superimposition of the father's face on that of the husband is a somewhat less subtle preparation for the breakthrough image that emerged in the healing performance. Returning to the session itself, the revelatory retrieval of memories continues as the healer evokes the cup (i.e., the golden chalice that holds the transubstantiated blood of the deity in Catholic liturgy) and the patient's imaginal "inner child." She instructs the adult and child versions of the self to cooperate in putting any memory relevant to the

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

131

relationship with her father into the cup. The healer remarks on the readiness at which the imagery is available in comparison with earlier sessions, understanding this as a sign of progress in both the patient's therapeutic process and her spiritual growth. She then surprises the patient by instructing her to put her father into the cup, knowing from familiarity with the imaginal realm that he will fit with no problem. She presses the advantage of the breakthrough moment, calling for all the relatives who in previous sessions have been identified as causing emotional injury to the patient also to be put into the cup. Along with the memories and people, all the associated negative emotions are imaginally placed in the cup. In a parallel movement, the patient is instructed to place herself, her husband, and her children on the complementary liturgical instrument, the paten that holds the transubstantiated body of the deity in the Eucharistic celebration. While the entire imaginal performance is an experience of the sacred, a particularly critical moment is the entrance of the deity as an actor to receive the cup of the patient's affliction. The healer's query, "Is the Lord near?" suggests that the deity has been spiritually waiting in the wings of the imaginal margin, and reflects a sense of the phenomenological immediacy of divine presence. In addition, like many of the points at which she asks if the patient "can see" something or if something "is there," it is an example of her consistent monitoring of the patient's engagement in producing the imaginal performance. After being instructed to offer the cup to Jesus, the patient is left to her endogenous imaginal process for a full minute, supported only by the team's glossolalic prayer. Then she is questioned as to what "happened," and responds rather sketchily that Jesus embraced her two selves, and in that embrace the two selves merged. When the deity opened his arms the contents of the cup poured out, and then Jesus spoke on behalf of himself and his mother. (The presence of the divine was introduced by the patient independent of the healer's instruction.) As in the last case, much greater detail on the performance is available from the postsession experiential commentary: When she said, "Bring your child to Jesus," I saw him at the altar in white, and I saw-when she said "paten," I didn't. I thought she meant "pattern" as in "things are the same," then I went, "Oh, I get it. I know, the equipment for communion." And when I presented myself, and my child, and my husband, and my family on that, first Jesus went like this and he embraced me, and my child, and my child-the Q child inside me-just went ''whhom,'' and I saw that. Then they [Jesus and the Virgin] were behind me, enmeshed in me, and

132

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

he embraced me, and I saw the Blessed Mother embrace me too. And I felt their heart in mine, and he said that I had the same heart that they did, the same sacred heart. And I could see that in vision. I saw that in a vision ... that's how he speaks to me, it's a form of prophecy. It meant that I knew who I was in him. I am trying to know who I am in Christ, just like his mother always knew who she was, and who she was in God. And who he was. She always knew. And I always, I had a desire to know, too. Who I am in Christ, who I really am, without a bunch of pretend barriers that everyone puts up-when the walls are down, to really look at who I am .... I didn't know what to expect from the session before I came in, except that somehow I was going to grow up more.

As she made dear in her response to the healer's query, the patient's expectation of "growing up" was phenomenologically enacted as the merging of her adult and childhood selves in the divine embrace. The formulaic Charismatic articulation of personal identity as "knowing who I am in Christ" is concretely experienced as a multiple bodily metaphor that includes merging aspects of the self, embracing and enmeshing with the two divine figures, and sharing hearts with them ("I felt their heart in mine"). In the stereotypical divine embrace and the sharing of hearts, intimacy and identity are shown, as in the previous case, to be mutually determining psychocultural conditions of the sacred self. Intimacy is possible only with the achievement of an identity "in Christ," and identity is a kind of intimacy with oneself, that is, a reconciliation with the fundamental alterity of the self that we encountered in chapter 1. It is fitting that the action of the session is framed by a final repetition of the patient's opening remark about her husband's "excellent" behavior, for the intimacy of their relationship is the semiotic fmal interpretant in the symbolic resolution of that ultimate violation of intimacy, incestual rape. What we have called the elaboration of alternatives in therapeutic process is present in this session as a new way of understanding her father and relationships to men, as the capacity for letting go of emotional wounds by giving them to the deity, and as the possibility of maturity. One year after this session, the patient summarized the actualization of change achieved by her ritual "growing up." She felt that she no longer had to "hide or suppress her emotions and pretend"; that she no longer had to be afraid of men because "I'm a human being-I don't have to be June Cleaver1s anymore-I'm their peer"; that despite the continued occurrence of distressful events, "I don't have to be in control anymore" because she can rely on the supportive presence of Jesus and Mary. In addition, she reported that she could now face pain-

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

133

ful situations such as visiting very ill people in the hospital, that she can now forgive people "like the guys who recently beat my daughter up," that she had found the courage to make her disruptive mentally ill daughter move out of the house after the daughter had attacked her two other children, and that she was "not as selfish and self-centered as before." This account perhaps tells us more about the values embedded in a Charismatic notion of "growing up" as a sacred self than it does about the clinical results of a therapeutic process. To be sure, however, any clinical observation must be qualified by a parallel ethnographic observation by means of which it is contextualized within the indigenous therapeutic logic. For example, the observation that a mild tendency to hallucinate is evident throughout our account is qualified by the observation that this tendency appears to have been completely domesticated into a disposition toward imaginal self process. The fmal word on therapeutic process must be granted to the patient, who in the fmal analysis "feels good inside."

The Man with the German General Within In this session, the healing team of two was led by a Catholic woman aged thirty-eight. She had been involved in the Charismatic Renewal for ten years, beginning with an episode in which she experienced healing prayer in the aftermath of an automobile accident. She worked full-time in a Charismatic counseling center, the staff of which included both psychotherapists and specialists in inner healing. Her own training included a master's degree in counseling, two years apprenticeship in inner-healing prayer, and certification as a spiritual director in the Ignatian method. Her other influences included bioenergetics and dysfunctional family/addictive behavior approaches, making her perhaps the most eclectic healer in our project. She was assisted in her work with this male patient by a male inner healer, following the precept that one-on-one healing prayer should not be conducted with participants of opposite sexes. The assistant was an Episcopalian whose sole involvement with the Charismatic Renewal came from having learned inner-healing prayer from a renowned Episcopalian Charismatic healer. The patient was a thirty-seven-year-old married man with three children, a college graduate employed in a managerial position. His child-

134

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

hood religion was Baptist, but he had become Episcopalian at age twenty, and at thirty-four had become Quaker. He had participated in the Episcopalian Charismatic Renewal, where he met his wife and participated in an intentional community. However, they were no longer active, and reported worshiping now "in a different way," not having prayed in tongues for some time. He defmed his principal problem as stress derived from a long-standing self-image that demanded high levels of accomplishment. He felt that guilt and insecurity about inadequate achievement caused diminished enjoyment and a partial "paralysis" in the sense of making it more difficult and time-consuming to achieve particular goals. His preoccupation with accomplishment had created a strain on marital intimacy, in that his wife "didn't feel like she had access to me or wasn't able to have the relationship she wanted to." He reported having had problems with overeating and with preulcerative stomach symptoms. Our diagnostic interview revealed a single episode of alternating mania and depression in college, a simple phobia of heights, and a period of dysthymia and generalized anxiety disorder immediately preceding his recourse to healing. He had encountered the principal healer at a stress-management workshop in which she integrated body relaxation techniques and inner-healing prayer. He had been corning for counseling and inner-healing prayer for a year and a half when he participated in our project, and felt that he had made progress in a process of healing that he explicitly equated with spiritual growth. In each session the female healer took the lead in counseling and "grounding," a bioenergetics technique in which the patient bends over at the waist, breathes deeply, and becomes attentive to embodied imagery, muscular tensions, or sensations. The male healer took the lead in subsequent prayer and imagery processes, during parts of which all three held hands, and during other parts of which one or both healers laid hands on the patient. The following is the most significant event the patient selected from the first of five sessions I followed with him. The event occurs in two parts. The first begins with a memory brought forward by the patient of an incident from his high-school years, in which his mother became angry upon discovering that he had arranged an overachieving and "superhuman" academic and athletic schedule that left no moment unaccounted for. The principal healer suggested that this memory be taken into the grounding exercise. As they began, she instructed him to initiate an imaginal performance when he straightened his posture:

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

135

H: Imagine an image of that person who has insisted that schedule, and a lot of other things in your life that have been superhuman. When you see him, focus on that person's posture and clothing, language and breathing, and see if the spirit inspires you with verbal knowledge of what that person would say. When you're ready, step one step to either side, and take on the person's posture, breathing style, and language, and we'll meet him as you open your eyes when you're ready. [Pause.] S: Very straight, really precise. H: Okay, accentuate everything about him. His face? S: Rigid. H: Knees-how are they held? S: Locked. H: Lock them and accentuate, and before you talk, what is my body experiencing that tells me about the way I hold in this personality, and we're going to talk to you. Okay? [He begins.] Hello. S: H'lo. [Using deeper voice.] H: How are you today? S: Fine. H: You look rather, uh, anxious. S: No. H: Under stress ... S: Nope. H: What's going on in your life? S: Just trying to get things done. H: Have you met S? S: Mm-hmm. H: It appears that you asked S to put together this schedule. S: Yes, It'd be good for him-make him feel good about himself-best thing for him. H: I'm not really sure that's what S thinks. S: I think he knows it'll make him-and ifhe wants to accomplish these things, that's the way to do it. H: Would you be willing to give us some insight-talk to S about why it's a good idea? S: Mm-hmm. Discipline is the only way to accomplish anything. If you don't put aside the things you want to do at the moment, then you'll never accomplish anything that you want to accomplish in the long run. It's-life isn't really made for fun; it's really made for accomplishment, [and] satisfaction in that accomplishment. You always strive for the future.

H: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us, or with him? S: No, I think that basically encompasses my philosophy. H: You just close your eyes, see what your body's feeling as you relax your

136

s: H:

S:

H: S:

H: S: H:

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

hand, relax your breathing, drop your shoulders, drop your head, move back into grounding gendy. [Loud exhale; both breath audibly.] Just let go of whatever you contained in the last few minutes, breathing it out. Let's start to modulate some of this. When you're ready, gendy come up. [S continues audible breathing.] How are you feeling? [Returns to normal voice.] Relaxed. Very relaxed after that. That was an extreme kind of physical and emotional tension that I'm not completely familiar with. A lime shocked at the intensity of the philosophy that's there. I recognized it as something that I've internalized. The goal setting, that it's there or bust. Listen to your language, in terms of the body-bust. I felt-I'm thinking that it's difficult for me to deal with that strength of personality, of-more relaxed part of me would have a hard time being protected against that side of me, because it's so powerful, and has the strength and determination. Two of your favorite statements. Did you hear them? One about discipline, and that accomplishment's more important than play. And the other thing that really caught me was "live for tomorrow," plan for the future. So when you think. of the powerlessness of that figure, how does your life live out those three scripts, and move with being obedient to that subpersonality as opposed to being true to yourself?

Unlike the previous two cases, the patient in imaginal performance does not reenact his memory by entering a particular situation, but by entering, as it were, its underlying motivation. In this episode the patient, by means of embodied role-playing in what is likely a state of light hypnosis, identifies a controlling "subpersonality." Here embodied imagery is enacted in a transformation of the postural model, including vocal posture, as he responds to the healer in a deeper-than-usual voice. Following some additional discussion, the session turns to prayer: H: Breath in and breath out. Breath in the tranquility of Christ ... to hear Jesus speak, to feel Jesus touch. In the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. You have revealed to us, a new person, a new subperson within S.... Lord Jesus we ask for the strength and patience to embrace this new subperson, befriend him, maybe. To begin to look at those good things about him, that has made S successful, and yet has those qualities that tries to overpower him and take away his freedom. Jesus, we ask that you journey with S to meet this person face to face, to begin to dialogue with that person-what he wants, what he wants to do within S, and who gives him that authority. Let S ask those questions and let this person respond. [Pause.] Jesus, relax S, sharpen his mind to use this person in the way you want him to, [whispering] befriend him, Lord Jesus. Let that

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

S:

H: H2:

s: H: S: H:

H2: S:

137

person that is so rigid with you [i.e., in his relation to the deity], know that he is loved also.... We just image inside your light-your radiant light moving through S. We see this prayer fmding it's way to that space, where that controller is hidden, and we see this prayer like a blanket of safety and love, surrounding and quieting him, putting him in his rightful place before you, Jesus, even while we breath gently, we imagine that controller responding to this prayer by beginning to feel his feelings as we see that part of time that has been lost in an isolated controller, being made open by this prayer; open to his feelings, open to S the essence of who S is. We praise you, Jesus. Lord, imagine if these hands were joined by these two men. The energy moving through them is beginning to unite the man S with that part of the personality that is truly masculine. Praise you, Lord, that in the days ahead you bring into S's consciousness the way he has received all that is now in the masculine, and the way he needs to be more open to receive the gift of his own masculinity. We ask your forgiveness, Lord, for the times that controller has ruled S's life, and we ask forgiveness of the controller for turning decisions over to him, for causing him weariness and undo stress. Just be with your feelings now, S. [S breaths once audibly, then pause-movement.] The question [to the controller in imaginal performance] is, "Why are you so strong?" And the response [is he's] just following my orders. "If he wants to be different he just has to tell me. Show me what you want-how you want to relate." We prayed some more and it was quiet a while. Then we [the controller and the patient] were at a very peaceful spot-a garden with flowers around us. He and I were there together relaxing. He was relaxed saying [he doesn't] mind this. This is fme, if you want to live this way-no problem. It really wasn't his choice. So I feel the door opened up to dialogue there. You've been given the choice. Excellent. Anything else? It was quite clear. I remember a prayer we had a few weeks ago. We went to a garden-some monster-type things in front of it and it was a peaceful place. That's significant. The garden is nurturing of some pleasantness. It was significant that you got the word choice, because I didn't hear any choice. He was made controller, but I need to change that name. Exactly. So you can dialogue with him. You [earlier] called him a gestapo type. When you were that person, the way you stood, one shoulder was higher than the other. Does that mean anything? I'd have to think about that one. I didn't visualize that.

H: Maybe if you go back and image him, you'll see if that's still there, and finally the connection with the German soldier. What's all that about? S: I think it was in the fifties and early sixties when I grew up, you got a lot

138

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

of prejudice on TV about the Germans, and I just fmished reading The Secret of Santa Vittoria, and that's probably the reason. H: In that book, what did the Germans represent. S: They ruin their fun. The people had to operate underground to avoid the Germans.

As in the cases we have already discussed, this sequence of imaginal performance occurs during more typical inner-healing prayer rather than in the bioenergetics grounding exercise. However, while the divine presence is vividly invoked in the prayer, it appears in embodied imagery not as an actor, but as the peaceful setting of a garden where the patient interacts with the controller within himself. In his experiential commentary he discusses the beginning of reconciliation with this aspect of himself: What I was doing was letting myself go so that that part of my personality could come through completely. . . . I felt very relaxed.... I was aware of feeling slightly ridiculous and had to not let that emerge.... And [then] just really felt, physically, the tension and I was aware of the kind of physically destructive tension that kind of personality could cause in my body-the sttess on my stomach, tension like high blood pressure tension, holding back. And stress, the kind you read about that causes heart disease. . . . [But what the imaginal personality] wanted to express was a very externalized facade of discipline, excellence, accomplishment.... [The experience] helps me become aware of when that kind of stress is going on and how I can control it. It helps me separate out, "Okay, now that's what's clicking in-is it really appropriate?" But it's a better sense of making those choices myself rather than having it be an automatic, habitual kind of response. I swim for exercise and health, but also swim for pleasure at my lunch hour, for relaxation. Yet many times it becomes duty, work, and that kind of discipline taking the joy out of it, the relaxation out of it. Because you have to do it. You have to do it well. ... [The imaginal figure represents] places when it's there and doesn't have to be there. It's not that it's discipline but, oh, pressure. Compulsive. Several sessions in the past have done a similar type of identifying various parts of the personality-a worrier or a real pleasure-lover, trying to divide the personalities a little bit to get some of this stuff out . . . one of which is this perfectionism thing. When things are going well and easily, then you're feeling no perfectionism. It's when they don't go well that you start to respond because you don't have control over them. You can't make them look perfect.... It was a very accurate portrayal of that part of my personality. The fact that that got isolated, coupled together with the prayer at the end where I was able to then realize that I could be friends or use this part of the personality as a help rather than a hindrance, was the most significant thing. That discipline side of my personality is something that really wants to be on my side. It doesn't really want to fight against me. I think I will find myself with less tension because

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

139

an awful lot of the stress that I feel is brought on by the internal conflict of this disciplinarian or this controller.

The patient comes to realize not only that his need to be in control controls him, but that he is the one who by his own choice set up the controller in the first place. Particularly in the reference to swimming, it is evident that control is understood not only as overachievement, but as the inhibition of spontaneity. In subsequent sessions he identified a childhood longing for freedom in the face of external controls imposed by teachers and his father. He also identified, as a defense against an insecurity that was a consequence of these controls, the overdevelopment of a sense of discipline that was "not external, but feels external." Finally, he discovered a sense of being existentially "lost" between self-indulgence (overeating) and discipline (overwork), and was instructed by the healer to cultivate freedom through his relation to the deity in that in-between space. Our third psychocultural theme of intimacy is tied into this complex, as it becomes evident that the patient seeks intimacy through making others dependent on his ability to control and "take care of everything." An awareness of maintaining habitual tension in the genital area, without which he felt his body would "collapse or fall apart," is linked to alienation from his masculinity. In the therapeutic logic developed by the healer, his masculinity is the same controller who, if "befriended," will then make way for integration of the masculine and feminine sides of his personality and the possibility of true intimacy. Finally, we note in this case the occurrence of bodily image and experience on multiple levels: in repeated sessions (not all summarized here) the patient experiences muscular tension in a variety of body parts; in the grounding exercise he adopts the postural model of, and thereby incarnates, the controlling subpersonality; and in prayer walks and talks with the controller in a peaceful garden. A fmal instance of embodied imagery in this process, reminiscent of the woman who merged with herself, is contributed not by the patient, but by the assistant healer. In one session he reported a vision ofJesus with a child and three other people-the patient, and the masculine and feminine aspects of his being. The three "ministered" to the child and Jesus "merged" the three figures into one. Throughout the process the elaboration of alternatives occurs as a series of embodied oppositions: tension/relaxation, controU spontaneity, insecurity/intimacy, masculine/feminine.

140

IMAGINAL PERFORMANCE AND HEALING OF MEMORIES

Summary In this chapter we have offered accounts of the experiential specificity of therapeutic process in three Charismatic patients. We are already a long way from the experiential muteness in that classic case of the pregnant Cuna Indian patient whose distress in giving birth was ameliorated, according to Levi-Strauss (1963), by the combination of abstract homology between the structure of the shaman's chant and the structure of the physiological process of labor, and the black-box psychodynamic mechanism of catharsis drawn from Freudian psychoanalysis. Our method of eliciting experiential commentary allowed us to achieve a greater degree of specificity than is typically presented in accounts of religious healing. This allowed us to monitor incremental change in self and suffering by describing the embodied self process of imaginal performance with respect to the therapeutic functions of disposition, experience of the sacred, elaboration of alternatives, and actualization of change. Following each patient over time allowed us to understand how therapeutic process transcends the boundaries of particular sessions and permeates the pursuit of everyday life concerns. In the next chapter we carry the cultural phenomenology of the healing of memories a step further, reexamining these cases at the juncture between ethnographic knowledge about Charismatic healing and the self processes of imagery and memory.

6 Image, Memory, and Efficacy

Like the relation between imagination and perception with which we were concerned in chapter 4, the relation between imagination and memory is known by scholars to be a close one. Personal memory of events and episodes (in contrast to the memory of schematic autobiographical facts) is known frequently to be experienced in imaginal form (Brewer 1986, Casey 1987), and it is precisely this kind of memory with which Charismatic ritual healing is concerned. So far we have developed a phenomenological argument that imagery in revelation and in imaginal performance is a bodily practice insofar as it engages multiple sensory modalities, and a bodily mode of being in the world insofar as its final interpretants can be identified as habits. The mutual reference to habit was one way in which we reconciled the phenomenological and semiotic accounts of revelatory imagery. Yet we might justifiably ask whether, when it comes to the relation between imagery and memory, a cognitive account might not be more productive than a phenomenological one. At least we could ask for an integration of phenomenological and cognitivist perspectives in an analysis similar to that in which we integrated phenomenology and semiotics. We must briefly return to the theoretical pole of our discussion to address this Issue. For an important reason, it is less easy to reconcile a phenomenological account with one based in the cognitive form of representationalism. As we discussed in chapter 1, there is a methodological difference between phenomenology and semiotics. The cognitive approach differs 141

142

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

not only methodologically, but also in that it tends to share the empiricist epistemology that we identified as incompatible with phenomenology. Stated another way, we would have to reconcile not only the relation between the semiotic image as sign and the phenomenological image in consciousness, but competing cognitive and phenomenological construals of the image in consciousness. For example, although he claims to have a phenomenological project, the cognitivist philosopher Mark Johnson defines imagination as our "capacity to organize mental representations" (1987: 140), and follows Kant's intellectualist grounding of imagination in the faculty of judgment. 1 For him a "rich image" is a mental picture rich in information (ibid.:24), and not an act rich in existential meaning. He asserts but does not demonstrate the lack of a gap between the rational and the bodily, for in the end his project is to place the body "in the mind" rather than "in the world." Like many cognitive theorists he accordingly relies on a notion of "image-schema," which has the curious sense of simultaneously seeming to be the somatic ground of imagery and an abstraction from imagery as bodily practice. If Johnson's is a brave but hazardous way to integrate the bodily into the study of imagery from a cognitive perspective, equally brave is the recent effort of cognitive students of memory to include autobiographical memory as a legitimate topic of their research. It is instructive that in order to do so, one of the leading scholars in this area found it necessary, with admitted chagrin, to introduce the "soft" concept of self as the referent to autobiographical memories. However, as might be expected, lurking behind the self is a "self-schema," and the events and actions that form the substance of autobiographical memory are defmed as "visual-temporal," such that a relevant question becomes whether or not individuals can "form a mental 'video recording''' of their memory (Brewer 1986:27-28). These efforts must be applauded, but for our purposes they still do not promise the experiential specificity we have found with a cultural phenomenology grounded in the body. Whether these positions ultimately can be reconciled, or whether there is a decisive epistemological step away from the representationalist paradigm to the standpoint of being in the world, is unfortunately beyond the scope of our argument. For the present we must again favor, as the grounding concept for memory, not the cognitive notion of schema, but the phenomenological notion of habit as immediately embodied practice (Merleau-Ponty 1962, Casey 1987, Connerton 1989).2 In place of the two-dimensional understanding of the memory image as visual representation, we must favor notions of the world as "an underly-

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

143

ing field of presentation for the specific content remembered," and of

self-presence "of the rememberer himself or herself at the scene remembered" (Casey 1987:69). The full extent to which memory can be understood as an embodied process is shown in the work of Casey (1987) and Connerton (1986). The trajectory of their arguments is strikingly parallel, though precisely inverted: the former argues from habitual body memory toward commemorative ceremony, whereas the latrer progresses from commemorative ceremony to the incorporation of memory in habitual bodily practices. Each author's project completes half the hermeneutic circle begun by the other, and both move the study of memory not only into the self, but beyond the mental into the sensate body, the intersubjective milieu, the collective habitus, and back again. The social theorist's (Connerton) argument fills out that of the philosopher (Casey) much in the way that, as we found in chapter 1, Bourdieu's analysis of the socially informed body in its habitus complements Merleau-Ponty's project of inserting the perceptual body synthesis into the cultural world. We shall continue to draw on the insights of Casey and Connerton throughout this chapter. Let us be reminded that, beyond the theoretical goal of identifying an existential ground of culture, reconceptualizing the domains ofimagination and memory within a paradigm of embodiment has immediate relevance to our empirical goal of determining the efficacy and specificity of ritual healing. Within the conventional framework for the anthropological study of religious healing, we can go only so far with the strategy of shifting analytic focus from defmitive outcome and cure to incremental process and change, and of eschewing global notions of catharsis, suggestion, or social support. If memory images and imaginal performance are only mental representations, we will again get no further than Uvi-Strauss's (1966) argument that the homology between ritual form and illness process is inherently-and inevitably mystically-efficacious. 3 We must accordingly pursue the nature of imagination and memory as embodied self processes, and we will do so by examining three pivotal ethnographic features that we have observed in the healing of memories: 1) that the emergence of autobiographically significant memories is attributed to revelation; 2) that such memories are construed as in some way traumatic, and that healing requires forgiveness of the trauma's perpetrator; and 3) that a privileged mode of healing is an imaginal performance of the traumatic event, or an enactment of a problematic scenario with Jesus in the role of healer.·

144

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

Revelation as Reminder

In our earlier discussion of revelatory imagery we showed that the image as sign is intersubjectively constituted in ritual performance, but our discussion of the image in consciousness was largely from the perspective of the healer. We now return to revelation from the standpoint of the patient whose memories are at issue. It will be recalled that the cultural form of such revelation is typically a ''word of knowledge" which is "received" from the deity by the healer. In the following text, a Charismatic healer who is accustomed to experiencing the word of knowledge offers a demonstration to me, the anthropologist:

s:

TC: S:

TC:

S:

What I'm going to do is ask the Lord for an area in your life that needs to be healed. This is how we use word of knowledge. This ... you need healing like everyone else. I'm just going to ask for a word, and see what word I get. That word will be a symbol of something in your life that needs to be healed. Okay? I want to just thank you Lord. . . . [He prays silently.] One word I get is hurt and pain. [Pause.] Tension, I'm getting the word tension. Relaxation, tension. [Pause.] Self, lack of self-confidence. Sister. I'm getting the word sister. Mother. Conflict at work. Insecurity. [Long pause.] Desire for relaxation, to be yourself, to be more at peace. [A short pause.] Okay, let's take the first word I get. Now, I'm suspicious of that because we were talking about hurt and pain here. Can you relate to that, hurt and pain? Well ... In your life at this point. At this point. I mean, is this something that should be current, or something that can be at anytime? Well, we ask for an area that needed to be healed. Does that sug- ... hurt and pain, does that suggest a time in your life where there was a lot of hurt and pain, and you really feel a need for prayer in that area?

The healer's ready flow of words of knowledge (which occur in the verbal intuitive modality as described in chapter 4) indicates confidence, but a confidence tempered by awareness of possible "interference" by themes that may originate in our recent conversation rather than in my personal autobiography. It is evident that each word is intended to serve as a reminder to me, and that my response is expected to be as spontaneous and open as is the healer's exercise of his gift. It is also evident that I have neither the cultural knowledge nor the spontaneous disposi-

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

145

tion to respond correctly. I am not to make a judgment about past or present relevance and then search my memory, but to immediately come up with an "area"-an event, relationship, or issue-that corresponds to the word of knowledge. It is expected that something will come into consciousness, and furthermore that whatever comes will require healing prayer. The word of knowledge bears a remarkable similarity to a technique devised by Galton in the last century, and used by experimental psychologists in studying both personal memory and imagery. In this technique the researcher presents a word to the subject with the instruction to "think of a specific memory associated with each word" or to "give themselves up to the visual imagery evoked by the word" (Brewer 1986: 37-38). When the focus is on personal memory, researchers have found that the kind of question asked influences the proportion of responses that will be in the form of imagery (ibid. :40). It is reasonable to suppose that the repertoire of words and images that we have identified in the word of knowledge not only enhances the occurrence of a memory image that can subsequently be subjected to imaginal performance, but that the cultural defmition of the word of knowledge constitutes a set of instructions to come up with certain kinds of memories. Experimental psychology points out the systematic nonavailability of negative memories in autobiographical recall protocols (Linton 1986:59). Given this observation, it is of interest that Charismatics attending workshops on word of knowledge are told that whatever comes to them always refers to something negative, e.g., the word "love" refers to a lack of love, or the image of a "beautiful bed" indicates a traumatic experience associated with that bed. If memory is culturally biased toward a "generally integrated, cheerful view of life" (ibid.:60), and thus constituted as a censoring defense mechanism, the principle of interpretation elaborated in Charismatic healing appears to have anticipated and circumvented it. An approximation of how this works comes from considering the level ofgenerality at which the word of knowledge gains purchase on the supplicant's memory. Linton (1986:57-59) has proposed a hierarchical structure of events in long-term memory. At the most general level is mood tone, too general to provide a memory cue but presumably specific to each memory. Below mood tone in the hierarchical structure are themes and subthemes that define "coherent directions or unifying aspects of life." Smaller in scope and more temporally restricted are sets of memories "bound by the coexistence of some significant persistent ori-

146

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

entation," and labeled extendures by Linton. Events and episodes are even more self-contained and independently coherent, constituting the "highlights" of extendures. Finally, there are elements of events and episodes such as the actors, setting, and action, and details such as nuances of sound, color, and texture. This structure is useful for understanding revelation in the healing of memories as a mnemonic system that taps memory at different levels of generality. Thus, insofar as it is explicitly organized around stages of life and those persistent orientations that we have identified with the self, the healing procedure is pitched at the level of what Linton calls extendures. A word of knowledge of the general type portrayed in my encounter with the healer-hurt, sister, tension-attains its purchase at the level of themes. A more specific word of knowledge-bed, little girl in a red dress, two men standing with you and Jesus-attains its purchase at the level of elements. However, the patient's response may be cast at a level of greater or lesser generality than the image itself. For example, a thematic image may point to a traumatic event, or an image of a discrete element may be the synecdoche of such an event. In general, the patient's response is typically formulated either as a discrete event, a type of recurring episode (such as sexual abuse), or a generalized mood tone. The latter is probably the case in the frequently reported situation where, upon being presented with a word or image, the patient immediately breaks into weeping. This analysis allows us to add precision to our account, initiated in chapter 4, of the coincidence between apt image and autobiographically relevant memory in ritual performance. This coincidence is possible because, although events and episodes can be considered relatively unique, their elements and themes are relatively typical. In the dominant North American ethnopsychology, autobiographical events are regarded as unique possessions that constitute a unique person with an individual identity, whereas the cultural typicality of themes and elements is downplayed. This is the basis for the conviction that the word of knowledge is a divine inspiration, relevant to the patient's unique life, and thus something that the healer "could not possibly have known by human means." This is consistent with a tendency observed periodically in the history of Christianity, and especially characteristic ofPentecostalism, to search for the "divine coincidence," the hand of God in daily life (Poewe 1989). The experience of thinking about a person who happens to phone that same day, or about a person in the prayer group losing his job the same week another member decides to hire a

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

147

new employee, are attended to in precisely this manner. Just as a conviction of self-reference may occur as one listens to prophetic utterance in a group setting (Csordas 1987), so the word of knowledge is experienced as personally relevant with pinpoint accuracy. That this reinforces rather than diminishes the cultural force of regarding the person as unique can be clarified by noting that it is not the only possible solution. In the Church of Scientology studied by Whitehead (1987), equally a product of North American ethnopsychology, people come to understand themselves as protean beings called "thetans." Their experiences through present and previous lives partake of universal incidents occurring in a common cosmic "time track," which they experience in a kind of imaginal performance. While much of the contents of these experiences is one's own, states Whitehead, "the charge contained in this idiosyncratic material is held to be secondary to and derivative from the overwhelming charge contained in the 'basic' universal incidents that Hubbard [the church's founder] has discovered" (ibid.: 190). The negative "charges" of one's accumulated experience are products of and stored in the "Reactive Mind," colloquially referred to as the "Bank." Whitehead offers several examples of scientology practitioners saying something to a neophyte that stimulates "spontaneous subjective involvement" with the Bank in a way reminiscent of the Charismatic word of knowledge. 4 The point is that although each person ostensibly has an individual Bank, Bank is also a metaphysical principle established by the first universal beings, such that all personal Banks are in effect branches of a single cosmic Bank. The technique of the sacred is the inverse of that used by the Charismatics. Scientologists attend to the typicality of themes and elements, whereas Charismatics attend to the uniqueness of events and episodes. The former are impressed that their experience conforms to a universal Track and that its emotional charge is stored in a cosmic Bank, whereas the latter are impressed that the word of knowledge is unaccountably relevant to their unique experience. The Charismatic sacred self is validated by the appearance of divine spontaneity and coincidence, whereas the Scientologist Being is validated by the divine timelessness of a science-fiction utopia. We are now in a position to move from our understanding of revelatory images as signs to a phenomenological understanding of images as reminders. Casey observes that reminders adumbrate or "shadow forth" a content, and their relation to the remindand (parallel to the semiotic object of a sign) is not indicative but evocative, not denotative

148

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

but allusive (1987:98). In these terms, revelatory imagery constitutes a "mnemotechnic" system, upheld by the concreteness of sacred experience in which indeterminate but typical themes and elements adumbrate autobiographically unique events and episodes. Revelatory imagery also illustrates Casey's point that reminding as a mode of memory takes us beyond a purely mentalistic conception of memory as recollection, and toward an understanding of the phenomenological unity of mind and body, self and other, internal and external, past, present, and future. First, revelatory imagery collapses the duality of mind and body because it is not only a sign but an act, a bodily practice. Revelatory reminders and remindands are not only thoughts and words, but sensuous embodied images, and the memory evoked is not necessarily a reliving in the sense of watching a ''videotape'' copy, but one that evokes concrete self-presence. Second, revelation collapses the duality between self and other by the intersubjective interplay of themes and elements shared within a habitus. What is an image in consciousness for the healer stands between healer and supplicant as a sign, and for the supplicant herself becomes a reminder. Third, it collapses the duality between internal and external because the revelation experienced by the supplicant is also part of the memory being reconstructed. External reminder and internal remindand are indistinguishable and reciprocal, as revelatory themes and elements are integral to autobiographical events and episodes, and as a memory itself can serve as a further reminder. Finally, to understand how it collapses past, present, and future, we must recall that the mnemonic process in healing of memories is cumulative. This is generally the case insofar as all Charismatics pursue healing in the course of "coming to know the Lord," but is particularly evident in ongoing cases like the first two discussed in chapter 5. In the first case we observed successive images of the patient's mother that directed the process toward the content of the mother-daughter relationship. In the second case we encountered a series progressing from the child in the closet, to a beautiful bed, to her father's face superimposed on that of her husband, to anger at her husband, and fmally to her father in bed. 5 The past is thus alive in the present. Moreover, as Casey points out, it is quite possible for a reminder to remind us of something that lies in the future, or that we expect ourselves to do in the future. The apparent oxymoron of a "future reality" (Casey 1987:97) parallels a formulation by M. Singer (1984:56, 68) who, elaborating on Peirce, sees each human being as a symbol, the inter-

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

149

pretant of which may be a "future memory" of cognition or a "future self." For the Charismatic, each memory that comes to light in ritual healing is not only constitutive of the current self, but is a future memory of a sacred self that she is creating. It is the guarantor of a stable orientation in the world and of the continuity of an emerging disposition within the Charismatic habitus.

Embodiment and Trauma It is impossible to examine the Charismatic emphasis on removing the residual effects of trauma without reference to the work of Pierre Janet (1925, 1973). By way of metacomment, we must first note that Janet's theory of psychopathology was largely ignored for the first three quarters of the present century. Its very intellectual availability is part of a phenomenon of contemporary cultural history that also includes the development of Charismatic healing and of clinical interest in post-traumatic stress disorder, with a complementary shift away from psychoanalytic emphasis on the wishes and fears of fantasy, and toward the concrete emotional damage of psychological violence (van der Kolk and van der Hart 1989, Jenkins 1991b). This is especially the case with respect to sexual abuse, the social reality of which Freud denied, but the frequency of which has not declined since his day. Thus it became possible for the woman in the first case we examin!!d to reconceptualize what the older boys in her childhood did to her as sexual abuse, and thus it became of central therapeutic importance for the woman in the second case to acknowledge repeated rape by her father. The elaboration of imagination as a capacity of the sacred self lifts the psychocultural veil of silence that keeps this aspect of sexual oppression shrouded in autobiographical memory. There is no question that the body is profoundly implicated in such instances. In the strongest sense, Casey observes that traumatic body memory results in the fragmentation of the lived body: This is the body as broken down into uncoordinated parts and thus as incapable of the type of continuous, spontaneous action undertaken by the intact body ("intact" precisely because of its habitualities, which serve to ensure efficacity and regularity). The fragmented body is inefficacious and irregular; indeed, its possibilities of free movement have become constricted precisely because of the trauma that has disrupted its spontaneous actions. (1987:155)

150

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

Insofar as the body is the existential ground of self, and insofar as spontaneity is a salient psychocultural theme for the self, we can understand how in our first case, the verbal blame for the patient's sexual exploitation and the physical slap in imaginal performance became the disintegration of the maternal body-self and the literal pain of heartache. No less is the body implicated in the second case, where the trauma of sexual abuse was transformed into a fragmentation that required therapeutic merging of childhood and adult selves, and even resulted in the ambiguity of bodily identity between her father and husband. In the third case, the trauma created by the situational exigencies of living up to internal and external demands was manifested as a controlling "subpersonality" with its distinct, alienated postural model of repressed muscular tension, a subpersonality that had to be negotiated with and which in the vision of the healer was physically merged with the patient's other imaginal bodies. 6 Charismatics would likely agree with Janet's formulation that memories are automatically integrated into a system that organizes experience and that allows them to remain accessible to consciousness and voluntary control. Traumatic memories, however, may be split off or dissociated from consciousness, becoming subconscious, fixed ideas that "organize cognitive, affective, and visceral elements of the traumatic memory while simultaneously keeping them out of conscious awareness" (van der Kolk and van der Hart 1989:1532). Such memories are invariably associated with a vehement emotion, the severity of which "depends on both the emotional state of the victim at the time of the event and on the cognitive appraisal of the situation, [and] determines the lasting impact of the trauma" (ibid.:1533). These ideas correspond to the Charismatic notions that memories can sometimes be retrieved (from the subconscious) only with the help of divine inspiration, and that healing can occur only by removing the "bitter root" (vehement emotion) of the experience. That the severity of the trauma is a subjective matter was discovered by the first woman whose healing process we examined, and was expressed in her comment that prior to healing she had thought her problems were negligible alongside those of people she herself counseled. Nevertheless, it is the case that Janet was explicidy concerned with overt pathology. Given that Charismatics are concerned as much with memory as a basic self process as with specifically pathogenic memories, that their goal is a comprehensive self-transformation, and that for major pathology they often defer to clinical expertise, it is not surprising that Charismatics

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

151

have an essentially populist definition of trauma. Thus, even for psychologically healthy people, healing will occur for events such as being "lost" as a child (e.g., being temporarily separated from one's parents at a public event), or being stranded on an offshore rock as the tide washed in during a childhood beach vacation. Some of Janet's therapeutic principles would likely be embraced by Charismatics as well. Just as Janet advocated interventions such as "changing the patient's lifestyle to fit his emotional strengths and weaknesses and trying to prevent intergenerational transmission of trauma" (ibid.:1537), Charismatics advocate active involvement in the lifestyle of prayer groups or communities, and sometimes use the technique of generational or ancestral healing. Janet also believed that memories had not only to be uncovered, but also "needed to be modified and transformed, i.e., placed in their proper context and reconstructed into neutral or meaningful narratives. He saw memory as an act of creation, rather than as a static recording of events" (ibid.: 1537). Likewise, Charismatics' most common critique of conventional psychotherapy is that it brings memories to consciousness without resolving or healing them. The imaginal performance serves precisely to transform memories by placing them in the context of divine presence, thereby both neutralizing and making them meaningful. Indeed, in this respect Janet's theory recognizes what has frequently been observed as the essential principle of efficacy in religious healing, namely that it succeeds in transforming the meaning of an illness and thus the effect it has on the life of the afflicted (Bourguignon 1976a; Csordas 1983). Where Charismatics part company with Janet is in their emphasis on forgiveness as an element in resolving trauma. Clearly a Christian notion based on the paradigm of the crucified Christ forgiving his persecutors, it appears in the psychotherapeutic literature only when tentatively introduced by Christian writers (Gartner 1988, Wapnich 1985). One of these authors has observed that forgiveness is often a byproduct of psychotherapy, insofar as toward the end of treatment a patient is often less bitter and more able to recall positive features of a parental relationship (Gartner 1988:314).7 In Charismatic ritual healing, however, forgiveness is both a goal and a technique. This was evident in the second case we examined, where following the emergence of the traumatic memory the healer instructed her supplicant to forgive the perpetrators of her affliction and offer them to the deity . We shall leave the psychotherapeutic status of forgiveness to a debate between psychol-

152

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

ogists and religionists, for we must now address our third main topic of this chapter, the role of imaginal performance.

Imaginal Performance as Self Process If, through the transformation of traumatic memory, imaginal performance is a privileged moment in that element of therapeutic process we have called the elaboration of alternatives, we must be careful not to exaggerate the privilege. To do so would be an extreme form of the "occasionalist illusion" (Bourdieu 1977: 81-82) that direcdy relates practices to properties inscribed in the situation, and presumes that the truth of an interaction is contained entirely in the interaction. Recent work in experimental psychology suggests that memory may be an essentially reconstructive process rather than one that produces representational copies of past events. Such reconstruction is likely both when the event was a repeated one, as is often the case in childhood sexual abuse, and when the same event is recalled and discussed a number of times, as is often the case in the proce~ of Charismatic healing of memo""ries (Brewer 1986:42). 8 The transformation effected in imaginal performance must on these grounds alone be understood as part of a larger process. From an anthropological perspective, while the initiatory character of ritual healing is occasionally acknowledged (Crapanzano 1973, Finkler 1985), seldom has therapeutic process been examined with sufficient specificity to challenge the event-based models presupposed in much of the literature. In fact, therapeutic process may more often than not be incremental in nature, and only summarized or objectified in performance events (Csordas 1988). In the cases we have examined it is evident that themes and images are developed over time, weaving the contexts of everyday life and ritual performance into a single phenomenological fabric. Moreover, imaginal performance is not a necessary ingredient of every healing session, occurring in less than half of the sixty sessions we observed. Nevertheless, imaginal performance offers a unique window on the processes of the sacred self, and we must now examine it more closely. If we focus on the actors in imaginal performance, we notice that they typically include the supplicant in either a child or adult persona, significant others, most frequent among whom are parents (but sometimes others such as teachers, siblings, playmates), and the divine figures

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

153

of Jesus and occasionally the Virgin Mary. The concrete experiential presence of these actors in an evocation of developmental themes invites interpretation as a strikingly literal example of "internal object relations." The school of psychoanalytic thought oriented around this concept emphasizes the development of personality through the internalization of relationships (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983, Hamilton 1989). In this view the "objects" are objects of relationships, and the developmentally earliest objects are the parents. In the version of the theory espoused by Melanie Klein (1932, 1964) and her followers (Isaacs 1943), phantasy is "the basic substance of all mental processes," and all desire formulated in phantasy "implies an object of that desire. . . . Implicit in the experience of wanting is some image, some fantasy of the conditions leading to the gratification of the wanting" (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983:124, 131). Greenberg and Mitchell point out that this formulation is compatible in principle with the phenomenological notion that all thought is intentional (ibid.: 131), and I would add that it appears compatible with our notion of imagination as an orientational selfprocess. We can also construe the internal object as a kind of semiotic object, recognizing in the phrases "object of relationship" or "object of desire" that the relationship and desire are semiotic interpretants in the form of habitual dispositions. By thus incorporating the object-relations perspective into our cultural phenomenology, we can understand imaginal performance as a manipulation in fantasy of internal objects in order to resolve developmental stalemates. In other words, internal objects are objectified as the actors in imaginal performance. The nature of the stalemates addressed in the three cases we have. examined in chapter 5 can be understood with the Kleinian objectrelations concept of "splitting." This is regarded as a primary developmental and psychological mechanism by which infants attempt to protect the integrity of object relationships by projecting their innate destructiveness onto the environment and introjecting its good aspects or, reciprocally, by projecting the good aspects of themselves onto the good object and experiencing themselves removed from discomfort or danger. Thus, they split their self-and-object world into all-good and all-bad camps. (Hamilton 1989:1553)

In our first case we can see the split between the good and bad self in the preliminary contrast between the patient's son who had the freedom to get dirty and her image of herself as a little girl who was always primly dressed. Consistent with our analysis of basic psychocultural

154

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

themes, the principal characteristic of the good self is spontaneity, whereas the bad self is repressed. In the imaginal performance proper the split between good mother and bad mother is dramatized in the central image of the patient seated on the lap of the Virgin 9 while holding her own disintegrating mother. The complex resolution is not a synthesis of good and bad mothers. It is instead a physical conjunction of the three bodies holding one another, reinforced with the insight that the real mother's badness was in fact a product of vulnerability, and concludes with a letting go of the bad mother not in the form of an abandonment, but as a relinquishing to the divine figure of Jesus. In the second case a preliminary image of good father and bad father appears in the patient's seeing the face of her father superimposed on that of her husband. She repeatedly acknowledges that her husband is good. His resemblance to her actual father allows him to take on the psychological role of the good father, while at the same time becoming the object of displaced anger for the drunken sexual abuse she suffered as a child. In the imaginal performance there is a dramatic merging of the childhood self and the adult self, described by the supplicant as a concrete experience of "growing up." Here again is a resolution of splitting between the bad childhood self, understood as a promiscuous, manipulative man-hater, and the good self understood as a mature Christian woman who "knows who I am in Christ." The bad self is not abandoned, but merged with the good self in the embrace of the divine figure. Once again in the third case the bad self is a composite of the patient's father, a German general, and his own aspirations. In imaginal performance the good and bad selves open a dialogue. The patient "befriends" this part of himself which, as it turns out, wants to be "on his side." Later, one of the healers introduces· the image in which three aspects of the self merge, including the bad self represented by the domineering masculine side of his personality. Emerging in the form of revelation from the healer's engaged position in the intersubjective milieu, this image can be interpreted as an indexical icon of the patient's self process. A parallel model of self process, also formulated in the object-relations tradition, is D. W. Winnicott's (1965) notion that the self becomes divided into a true and false version. In contrast to the idea that the self becomes objectified by splitting itself into good and bad aspects, this version posits an objective split brought about by the mother's inability to actualize the infant's needs, and the progressive impingement of others on the child's as-yet-unintegrated experience. The true

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

155

self which is the "source of spontaneous needs, images, and gestures, goes into hiding" in order to protect itself, and is replaced by a false self "fashioned out of maternal expectations and claims. The child becomes the mother's image of him" (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983:194). In this light the first patient's repressed little girl was a false self fashioned in response to her mother's critical abusiveness and simultaneous need to be "held together." The second patient's childhood persona was likewise a false self fashioned in the absence of protection by her mother from her sexually abusive father. The third patient's overachieving childhood self, struggling for the veneer of control in the face of insecurity, is again a false self, though in this instance apparently predicated on paternal rather than maternal demands. It is the rediscovery of the spontaneous true self in the first case, the mature true self in the second, and the self that inhabits the sacred space between discipline and selfindulgence in the third, that constitute "knowing who I am in Christ." Although these analyses constitute a start toward understanding imaginal performance in the healing of memories, they do not adequately account for the role of the divine figures. An immediate response from a psychoanalytic perspective might be that these figures are simply and invariably positive introjects of the parental objects, and we have in fact made this interpretation of the Virgin in the first of our cases. It might also be said that Jesus is a better candidate for the positive father object than is "God the Father" because that person of the divine trinity is too often experienced as punitively stern. However, as anthropologists we must regard this easy solution as too easy, especially since it relies on a representationalist interpretation of these figures instead of treating them as phenomena. Hence we must examine the implications of the indigenous view that in effect grants the divine figures autonomy as internal objects in their own right. Remaining within the framework of internal object-relations theory, we might first try out another of Winnicott's (1958) notions, and suggest that Jesus is a kind of "transitional" object. For the young child the transitional object, such as a blanket or a teddy bear, is a "developmental way station between hallucinatory omnipotence and the recognition of objective reality" (Greenberg and Mitchell 1983 : 195). The implied transition is not a once-andfor-all process, however, for adults continue to vacillate between states defined by enduring contrasts of "solipsistic subjectivity with objective perception; the inner world with the world of outer reality; the world of 'subjective' objects over which one has total control with the world of separate and independent others" (ibid.: 195).

156

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

The last of these contrasts is particularly relevant for our present discussion. Object-relations theorists see an essential paradox in transitional experiencing because it appears to constitute an intermediary realm in which an object is neither under illusory, omnipotent control nor part of objective reality. In our ethnographic example, this paradox becomes explicable in the intimate coexistence of imagination and memory as self processes in Charismatic ritual healing. Despite this coexistence, they nevertheless have contrasting phenomenological characteristics. Again following Casey (1976, 1987), whereas imagination is characterized by free play (see chapter 4), memory is characterized by the inescapable reality of the past, a kind of autobiographical sedimentation. This means that although imagination is autonomous, it is a "thin autonomy" in contrast to the "thick autonomy" of memory. That is, imagination is relatively more subject to the vicissitudes of existence, omnipotent but shallow, whereas memory is limited by but persistent in its claims on reality. These are precisely the poles of the paradox in transitional experience, and they both allow the actors in imaginal performance to be transitional objects and to contribute to their aura of the sacred. Jesus as an actor in imaginal performance is characterized both by imaginal controlledness and spontaneity, and by the dense presence of a divine figure who determines the past, present, and future meaning of memories in which he intervenes. Moreover, the deity is not an external transitional object like a teddy bear, but literally an internal transitional object that synthesizes in itself all the features of omnipotence and those of an objective Other to which one can have a mature relationship. The existential force of an internal transitional object that synthesizes imagination and memory allows the divine actor to perform convincingly for the adult patient in healing some of the same functions as does the blanket or teddy bear for the developing child. Frequendy the divine presence offers a sense of security and protection for Charismatic patients that is the condition for some of them to face potentially upsetting contents of traumatic memory. Those who would be terrified to face the same material in conventional psychotherapy are able to do so only because they feel themselves under divine protection in ritual healing. Let us take yet another step, however, for Jesus is not only a protective presence but an intimate presence in healing. In Charismatic thinking, he is the ideal object, or Other, with which one can have a mature, intimate relationship. Once again it might be suggested that the experience of intimacy cultivated as a sense of divine presence, and concretized

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

157

in the recurrent embodied image of a divine embrace, is either a representation of lost parental imagery or a surrogate for the absence of intimacy with a spouse. This interpretation might be adequate if the goal of healing was to create a state of intimacy, but not if the goal is to cultivate a capacity for intimacy as an aspect of the sacred self If the capacity for intimacy can be cultivated through intimacy with a divine figure, that intimacy must be a genuine intimacy and its object must be an authentic Other. Is this the case in Charismatics' relation to Jesus? In one of the few empirical studies on the subject, Stephen Levine (1991) intriguingly characterizes psychological intimacy as an "elusive state of grace" that requires two people, but offers each the benefit of coming to know oneself through the relationship. While this formulation provides an interesting gloss on the idea of "knowing oneself in Christ," a series offive intrapsychic processes identified by Levine stands out in specifying the features of intimacy in the Charismatics' relation to the deity: 1) imagined presence of the Other, most prominent for Charismatics in ritual healing, but also possible in everyday prayer; 2) invented conversation with the absent Other, a vivid characteristic of Charismatic "prayer life" in which people not only talk to Jesus, but experience his answer by means of intuitive or auditory imagery; 3) anticipation of togetherness with the Other, which Charismatics express as a hunger for prayer; 4) preoccupation with the physical attributes of the Other, less relevant due to the indeterminate physical attributes of Jesus, but still present insofar as the imaginal presence is either a conventional iconic long-haired, white-robed, handsome young man, or an isolated face, hands, or heart; 5) eroticization of the Other which, although largely repressed as inappropriate, appears occasionally among devotees who want to be the imaginal "bride of Christ," or who luxuriate either in the sensuous imaginal embrace10 or in the passively reclining sacred swoon of "resting in the Spirit." Not only are the intrapsychic processes of the relation with Jesus similar to those of interpersonal intimacy, but the relationship comes to hold an enduring, intrinsic value, with the consequences identified by Levine as attachment, concern (expressed as wanting to do the Lord's work), and vision of the Other as special. I would suggest that this experience is neither a surrogate nor a transitional intimacy, but a manifestation of genuine intimacy with a primordial aspect of the self that is the existential ground both for its fundamental indeterminacy and for the possibility of an intersubjective relationship-its otherness. In these terms, Jesus is the alterity of the

158

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

sel£ Levine (ibid.) argues that intimacy always requires two persons, and that to speak of intimacy with oneself is to speak metaphorically. In contrast, I am arguing that the capacity for intimacy begins with an existential coming to terms with the alterity of the self, and that the personal relation with Jesus is a metaphor for that condition of selfhood. This is the Jesus that speaks internally with the "still, small, voice" within, and whose presence is an act of imagination. The alterity of the self can be taken in two senses, however. The first is complementary to the sense of self-presence which we have already identified as characteristic of memory images (Casey 1987). Zaner points out that self-presence as situated reflexivity is one of two foundational moments for the self. The other he calls presence to the other self, which is an ''urgency . . . to reveal itself to other inwardly realized selves .... Since this is an urgency felt inwardly but before and to the other self, its maturation is intimately bound to the reception given by the other to the seWs urgency. Hence the self is not accidentally or contingently, but essentially responsive to this reception" (1981:153). The vivid presence of Jesus in imaginal performance is a culturally specific way to complete this second foundational moment, providing an ideal Other to correspond to the self-presence that characterizes autobiographical memory. There is yet a second and deeper sense of the self's alterity, and that is the possibility of experiencing oneself as other or alien to oneself. This alterity of the self is not based on anything like Janet's notion of subconscious memories unfamiliar to consciousness, but is an essential feature of our embodied existence. To reiterate our conclusion from chapter 1, this essential otherness originates in the limitations of our physical being that leave us with a sense of inescapable contingency, in the autonomic functioning of our bodies that insistently goes on without us, but which implicates us in anything that happens to our bodies, and in the possibility of seeing ourselves as objects from the perspective of another (ibid.:48-55). The body is thus a hidden presence or an alien presence, a "latency thanks to which anything else can be or become patent" (ibid.:54). In this way the body is the condition ofpossibility for the divine presence insofar as it is integrally experienced as "the ground for both subjective inwardness and objective outwardness" (ibid. :54). The deity as imaginal actor is a benevolent objectification of this preobjective sense of alterity. The Virgin Mary plays this role for our first patient. The patient in our second case experienced not only the merger of her childhood and

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

159

adult selves, but a merger with the divinity who embraced them both. In the third case, a vision by one of the healers places Jesus in a similar role, while the supplicant reports the negative aspect of alterity in a sense of control that is "not external but feels external." These imaginal acts were a coming to terms not only with the memories of traumatic events, but also with that very alterity which is the body as existential ground of self. As we will see in chapter 7, insofar as it is not so integrated, this essential otherness is also the condition of possibility for demonic presence.

Commemoration and Transformation Bearing in mind this analysis of the roles played by the actors in imaginal performance, we can frame a final discussion of efficacy by rejoining Connerton (1989) and Casey (1987). Central to their arguments about memory is the commemorative ceremony, whether it be the Jewish Passover, the Catholic Mass, the American Memorial Day observance, or the Tanagran festival of Hermes. Both authors argue that commemoration is a totalizing form of memory that includes components of both bodily and verbal action. By this action memory is located in space as well as time, and insofar as the action is collective, memory is situated not in the individual, but at the juncture of the individual and the social. For both authors commemoration is not a representation of the past, but a re-presentation that collapses the dualities of past and present, space and time. In our terms, both have embraced the project of moving our understanding of memory from the mode of representation, whether textual or cognitive, to that of embodied being in the world. Again exemplifying the complementarity that I alluded to earlier, Connerton shows that in commemoration the form of memory in practice is not representation but reenactment, whereas Casey makes a parallel point by suggesting that in commemoration the substance of memory in experience is best understood with Levy-Bruhl's ( 1926) concept of mystical participation, in this instance an active participation of the commemorator with the object of commemoration. I want to argue now that the Charismatic healing of memories is a particular kind of commemorative ceremony. Casey (1987) distinguishes ceremonial commemoration carried out as a public ritual from intrapsychic commemoration that occurs in the psychoanalytic process

160

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

of identification, where a person is memorialized in another's psyche. In healing of memories we find a middle ground between the two forms, where intrapsychic commemoration is carried out in explicidy rimal terms. As is true of all commemoration, it is profoundly social. Revelatory images and imaginal performance constimte the intersubjective milieu of the rimal relationship between healer and patient. Within the imaginal performance the patient engages in intimate interaction with both the perpetrators of trauma and the divine figures. On this middle ground of rimal healing, the dualities of body and mind, intrapsychic and intersubjective, are thus even more profoundly challenged than in other commemorative ceremonies. What is being commemorated is, in the first instance, the wounded and suffering self. Here commemorabilia (or semiotic representamens) are phenomenologically indistinguishable from commemoranda (or semiotic objects), for the memories that are in question are themselves constiments of the patient's self.ll Far more than this, however, the rimal is at the same time a commemoration of the healing and protective presence of the divinity in every moment of the patient's past life. It thus links the perdurance of the person in autobiographical time with the perdurance of the divine in cosmic time. In Casey's terms, "Between the fixity, the sheer ever-the-sameness of eternity, and the ceaseless flux of transient temporality ... there is the perduring, providing sameness and difference, motion and rest, at the same time and not just in succession" (1987:229). The patient comes to participate in the cosmic, while the cosmic comes to intimately inhabit the traumatic moments of the patient's autobiography. Again, rimal healing is also a commemoration in a genuinely collective sense. Connerton notes that anthropologists who emphasize performance typically show how it makes structure explicit, but are generally unconcerned with the diachronic component of collective identity (1989:103). Here is precisely the significance of the Charismatic precept that everyone is in need of healing. For any time a patient undergoes healing of memories, she implicidy acknowledges this universal need, and in so doing participates in a commemoration of the human condition as defmed in the Christian doctrine of original sin and the fall of humankind. It is in part by this process, regarded as preparation for full life in a Christian community, that Charismatic collective identity is formed, or more precisely that the sacred self is created as a member of that collectivity defined as the kingdom of God.

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

161

Elements of Efficacy Having now described the psychological effects of imaginal performance in terms of internal object relations, and the cultural form of memory as a self process in terms of commemoration, we must finally identify the source of efficacy in the healing of memories. We might be expected to conclude that the experience of totality in the commemorative collapse of dualities is that source. To this totality we could add that of the simultaneous enactment of our three basic psychocultural themes: the inherent spontaneity of imaginal process, the intimacy with the divine figures achieved in that process, and the relinquishment of control over one's affairs to the deity. Unfortunately, granted the phenomenological salience of such totality, there is no reason to attribute an efficacy to it. To do so would not carry us beyond the imputed efficacy of those nonspecific mechanisms like catharsis, suggestion, or placebo with which we have expressed dissatisfaction. So wherein lies the specificity that we require of a therapeutic efficacy that is at the same time a creative self process? One element of this specificity is the close relationship between imagination and memory we have been observing. At this point we should distinguish that this relationship takes two forms in our material. With respect to autobiographical memory, imagery and memory are intimately associated, in that memory often occurs in imaginal form. With respect to imaginal performance, however, it is apt to say that imagery is applied to memory. Specifically, returning to a distinction that we used above with respect to object relations and therapeutic content, we can say that the efficacy of therapeutic process is reinforced by the application of imagination'S "thin autonomy" to memory's "thick autonomy." The thin autonomy of imagination is one of pure possibility, whereas the thick autonomy of memory, although bound up in its origins, is constantly transforming and undermining the determinacy of the past through its own action and discovering within itself the truth of its own experiencing (Casey 1976, 1987). Because of this thick engagement in the actuality of experience, there is an inherent difficulty in the "expressive exfoliation" of memory, a difficulty that is absent in imagination (Casey 1987:279-280).12 Their complementarity in therapeutic process consists in that imagination is "thickened" with existential care, whereas memory is "thinned" by the relative ease of imagination. Within this complementarity is a specific efficacy defined by two fea-

162

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

tures: the rhetorical juxtaposition of the divine world of the purely possible to the struggling human world of traumatic autobiographical memory, and the phenomenological superimposition of divine imagination upon human memory in imaginal performance. We must also look to the phenomenological characteristics of imagination in its own right, foremost among which is its inherent efficacity. We have observed above that we can hardly fail to imagine what we intend to imagine, that imaginative spontaneity is sudden, effortless, and immediate, and that the contents of imagination are self-evident, being nothing other than what they appear to be. These are, not coincidentally, characteristics we expect of divine action. Second, the essential indeterminacy of imagining corresponds with the indeterminacy we have found to be characteristic of the self, and makes imagination an apt self process. Third, that imagination is "presentifying" rather than productive or reproductive (Casey 1976:2, 223, 225) is critical to its efficacy as a self process for orienting to and engaging the world, the traumatic past, and the sacred. Fourth, anthropologists and philosophers have not only attempted, as we have seen, to establish the autonomy of imagination from other mental acts (Casey 1976, Stephen 1989). They have also argued over whether it is legitimate to posit a coherent "imaginal world" (Bildwelt), or whether imagination constitutes merely an "anti-world" characterized by an essential poverty and nothingness of being (Casey 1976:2-3). The method of cultural phenomenology has prepared us to make an empirical contribution to this debate: Insofar as, from the standpoint of religious experience, imagination gives access to a culturally defmed spiritual realm; insofar as the features of imagination (spontaneity, autonomy, indeterminacy, selfevidence) correspond to what is expected of a spiritual realm; and insofar as imagination engenders a coherent and cohesive experiential domain by the presence of Jesus as an internal object for patients and a consistent source of divine inspiration for healers, the issue is decisively resolved in favor of the Bildwelt as a coherent domain of experiential specificity. A fifth element of efficacy originates in the embodied nature of healing imagery, a characteristic which, as we have seen, is existentially guaranteed by Heideggerian "care." The phenomenlogical reality of this imagery subsists not only in the vivid multisensory quality of revelation and imaginal performance. It also subsists in that the actors who act upon each other in imaginal performance are not mere representations, but real appearances,13 not virtually produced by the playing of a "mental videotape," but actually present as embodied imaginal performers.

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

163

It might be objected that this claim is too strong since, like other forms of autobiographical memory (Brewer 1986:42), the patient in healing of memories frequently experiences the event from the perspective of a third person seeing him- or herself. This objection is weak in the face of the concrete actions performed by patients in imaginal performance, such as holding one's 4isintegrating mother, placing loved ones into the sacramental cup, or w~g in a sacred garden. Patients also experience action being performed on their own bodies, whether they are being held by the Virgin or undergoing a merging of partial selves. The indeterminacy of the exact locus of consciousness (observer or actor) must not be confused with the definiteness of self-presence in imaginal performance. This self-presence is supported by the imaginal presence of other internal objects which, especially in the case of parents, are posited by object-relations theorists to have their origin precisely in early bodily experience. 14 It is also supported by the presence of the divine figures who, as we have observed, achieve their fullest degree of phenomenological concreteness in imaginal performance. The embrace from Jesus, observable as his characteristic action in countless episodes of Charismatic healing of memories, is as phenomenologically real qua embrace as are the words he speaks in the recesses of imagination. There is no more convincing a way that the deity could be both incarnately present and readily accessible. If imaginal performance is embodied in this way, we can conclude that its efficacy can be traced to the way the body is the existential ground for efficacy in general (Zaner 1981, M. Johnson 1987). In the words of Hans Jonas, our notion of causality originates in "the universal extrapolation from propriobodily prime experience'into the whole of reality .... Without the body and its elementary self-experience ... there could be no idea whatever of force and action in the world and thus of a dynamic connection of all things: no idea, in short, of any 'nature' at all" (quoted in Zaner 1981:36). The relevance of this argument is extended to the domain of memory by Casey who, following A. N. Whitehead, argues that causal efficacy is mutually grounded in the past and in embodiment, because both demand that we conform to their inescapable actuality. Memory itself is fmally grounded in embodiment, however, for if the primordial experience of causal efficacy "is the privileged point of connection to a settled past, then its own bodily basis, i.e., the concrete feeling of bodily efficacy, will be intrinsic to any connection with any past" (Casey 1987:175). This concrete bodily efficacy is the "unmediated feeling of the body's causal efficacy qua 'withness' . . . functioning as efficacious in its own right and not as a

164

IMAGE, MEMORY, AND EFFICACY

mere means. To be efficacious in its own right is at once to be capable of producing further feelings on subsequent occasions and to re-enact prior feelings in memory" (ibid.:175). These primordial experiences of creative and reenactive efficacy do not only become objectified as concepts of force and causality (M. Johnson 1987), but are preserved as prototypes and templates for experiencing the force of divine power-indeed, the encounter with divine power is perhaps the one cultural experience that most vividly preserves the sense of phenomenological primordiality (cf. Eliade 1958). It is thus no accident that the bodily efficacy of the divine embrace is the privileged and recurrent act of transforming traumatic autobiographical memory among Charismatics. Because the embrace is imaginal it encapsulates the pure possibility of intimacy; because the imagery is embodied it is convincing in that it partakes of the existential ground of aU causality, force, and efficacy; and because it is enacted by a divine figure its meaning and intent are beyond question. There is a sixth and final element of efficacy in imaginal performance. It is critical that the efficacious presence ofJesus does not act on memories from the standpoint of the present, reaching back and transforming them as from a distance. Neither is the imaginal deity "inserted" into the past, even though healers sometimes refer to the healing process as "praying Jesus into" the moments of a patient's life. Wherein lies the efficacy of the divine presence is that, through successive episodes of healing, and when the process proceeds according to plan,15 the patient comes to "realize" that Jesus was always already there with her. This fundamental ''withness," which we have associated with the alterity of the self, is incorporated as a disposition of the sacred self. There can be no question at this level-the level of the habitus-of whether or not Jesus is successful at transforming a particular memory. Recognizing his presence is the transformation of that memory. This observation carries us a step beyond the celebrated and enigmatic claim of Kleinman and Sung that "to the extent that indigenous practitioners provide culturally legitimated treatment of illness, they must heal" (1979:24). For Charismatics, efficacious healing is predicated not only on a cultural legitimacy that says healing is possible, but on an existential immediacy that constitutes healing as real. The immediacy of the imaginal world and of memory, of divine presence and causal efficacy, have their common ground in embodiment. The moods and motivations evoked upon this ground are indeed uniquely realistic.

This series of photographs documents a typical public healing service conducted by one of several well-known Catholic Charismatic healing ministries in New England. Their healing services took place every Sunday for more than ten years under the leadership of the late Franciscan priest Rev. John Lazansky. Supplicants at the healing services of five such ministries responded to our questionnaire about their experiences of being prayed with for healing.

1. Before going into the main part of the church where people who desire healing have assembled, members of the ministry gather in the church sacristy, clasping hands in a gesture of spiritual community as they pray for divine blessing of their efforts. The man in the suit at left wears a red sash with a dove representing the Holy Spirit which identifies him as an usher in the service. The man at right holds his hand in the characteristic open-palmed Charismatic prayer posture.

2. The service begins with Father Lazansky walking through the assembly, holding a crucifix in one hand and selectively laying the other hand on devotees as they sing a hymn. Other healers observed sometimes used a liturgical instrument known as an aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on the assembly while walking among them. Some people "rest in the Spirit" as the healer lays hands on them or sprinkles them, slumping back into their seats in the pew.

3. Following a sermon on the theme of divine healing power and the way it transcends scientific understanding (an allusion to the presence of we researchers who were photographing the event), Father Lazansky asks people with particular problems to come forward for special attention. His selection of problems varies from week to week based on the divine inspiration available through the charism or spiritual gift known as "word of knowledge." In this service he was inspired to pray for children and those who had problems with their legs. Here he lays hands on a young girl surrounded by her family.

4. While the leader prays at his central station in front of the altar, other members of the healing ministry divide into teams and spread to various locations throughout the church. Ushers organize the orderly approach of devotees to the teams for healing prayer. It is made clear that healing power is as readily available through the teams as it is through the principal healer, but nevertheless it is evident that he is the only one who prays unassisted. Here a team leader (at right) is assisted by two others as they pray over the woman in glasses. The team member with his back to the camera also lays a hand on the team leader in prayerful support. The man at left is the "catcher" who will break the devotee's fall if she rests in the Spirit. Note the look of rapt intentness on the faces of team members.

5. Throughout the healing service the "music ministry" performs from a position beside the altar. Some of the numbers are hymns in which everyone participates, but devotional background music in the form of soft, prayerful chants is also played, especially during the long period in which individuals are receiving attention from the healing teams. A healing team can be seen at work in the right background, behind the music ministry.

6. A woman beginning to rest in the Spirit falls away from the outstretched hands laid on her by three healing team members into the waiting arms of the catcher. Referred to as "slaying in the Spirit" among Protestant Pentecostals, the experience is described as being overcome by the power of divine presence. As shown here, the body is characteristically straight-legged during the fall, and the person falls directly backward to the catcher. It is rare for people falling in the sacred swoon to collapse or have their knees buckle under them.

7. The same woman resting in the Spirit after having been laid gently on the floor by the catcher. She will remain there for several minutes, experiencing divine power and presence, then get up on her own and return to her seat in the pews. Not everyone who is prayed with rests in the Spirit, and the proportion varies from one healing service to another, depending in part on the emphasis placed by the principal healer on this practice. The length of time any person remains on the floor may be only several seconds and rarely lasts longer than an hour (see chapter 9).

8. Father Lazanslcy prays for a disabled man in a wheelchair. A member of the healing ministry who is acting as catcher is also laying on hands. The priest typically would stand during these prayers, but on this occasion he was suffering from an infected foot and was more comfortable seated. He was under medical care for the infection, and he felt no qualms about praying for others while afflicted. In the background another team of healers prays for a woman who appears about to rest in the Spirit and fall into the waiting arms of the catcher.

9. The healer instructs the man to rise from his wheelchair and begins to manipulate the man's disabled hand while he is being steadied by

the catcher. The woman second from the right wears the usher's sash; she is flanked by two women waiting to approach the healers. The woman at the far right prays in a variant of the open-palmed Charismatic prayer posture.

10. The supplicant is instructed to walk up and down the aisle to demonstrate the power of healing prayer. His movement is tentative and halting as he moves about ten feet from his wheelchair, but he is much acclaimed by the assembly. The walk is as much a test of his physical capacity and of his willingness to improve as it is a proof of a divinely caused amelioration of his condition (see the discussion of "margin of disability" in chapter 3).

7 Demons and Deliverance

A great deal can be told of a people from the character of their demons. How evil spirits are conceptualized as forces, beings, or entities offers insight not only into the structure of a cosmology, but into the structure of the behavioral environment that evil spirits share with humans. How they are said to afflict humans offers insight, from the perspective ofits most characteristic vulnerabilities, into that cultural objectification we have labeled the person. How the action of evil spirits is experienced offers insight into the culturally constituted self as an ensemble of capacities for engaging the world, for if anything, demonic affliction is an affliction of self and a crisis of being in the world. Finally, the ritual practices by means of which the influence of evil spirits is banished offer insight into the social consensus that creates a human reality. With these issues in mind, we approach the third major genre of Charismatic healing, deliverance from evil spirits. Our discussion will be organized into two main parts, corresponding to the behavioral pragmatics of ritual performance and the formal representation and classification of evil spirits. We begin with the specific techniques, rules, and practices of identifying and dispensing with evil spirits. In them we will catch a glimpse of the practical functioning of the habitus. We then discuss the structure of the demonology and the various ways of classifying the action of evil spirits upon humans. In that structure we will fmd a cultural domain that is even more coherently organized than the domain of imagery, and in which is inscribed both a collective represen165

166

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

tation of the person and a semiotic of the self. We conclude with a brief discussion of the cultural logic by means of which Charismatics distinguish demonic affliction from psychiatric or medical disorders, and a reflection on the ethno-ontology of evil spirits.

Deliverance as Ritual Performance Whereas the healing of memories was borrowed from Episcopalian Charismatics, deliverance was borrowed from classical Pentecostals and nondenominational neo-Pentecostals. Each genre conforms to the stylistic conventions of those denominations: healing of memories appears relatively staid in its emphasis on removing the emotional residue of trauma by means of forgiveness and the invocation of divine presence in imaginal performance, whereas deliverance is relatively dramatic in its emphasis on defining, identifying, and authoritatively commanding the departure of negative emotion and behavior. Yet among Catholic Charismatics the two genres have always been closely related, and the history of deliverance must be understood accordingly. Covenant communities were some of the first groups to adopt deliverance, following an episode ("Deliverance Monday") in which two Protestant healers cast out evil spirits from the members of the Word of God community in the late 1960s. At first deliverance was a part of initiation into group life. It was assumed that everyone had some degree of affliction, and that spirits were obstacles to spiritual growth. For a time in some Charismatic communities, the "covenant" document that one signed in order to become a full member included consent to undergo deliverance as a "standard means of purification in the life of the community." Inner healing or healing of memories was a longer process that could then take place subsequent to the initial "freeing" achieved by deliverance. Deliverance was relatively common along with healing of memories and physical healing in the public healing services that began to be common in the 1970s. However, many healers eventually shied away from deliverance in the brief encounters possible in these settings. This was in part because of the perceived spiritual danger that patients might not be thoroughly freed from demonic influence, or could be more easily reafflicted, if no provision was made for a "follow-up" to healing, and in part because of the occasionally violent behavior with which the

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

167

demons within patients appeared to disrupt the proceedings and frighten participants. Full-scale sessions of deliverance take place only in private and are conducted by a team. It is an ongoing subject of debate among healers whether deliverance should be considered as a separate, specialized "ministry," or whether there is properly only one "healing ministry" in which practitioners must be prepared to pray in all the healing genres. Those who are of the former school appear to have been most influenced by the fact that deliverance was introduced as a distinct set of practices, that those practices require a substantial degree of specialized knowledge, and that deliverance is ideally a team effort that benefits from having an established group whose members are comfortable in the way their "spiritual gifts" complement one another. Those of the latter school appear most influenced by the notion of a "pneumopsychosomatic" integration of healing genres, and by the ideas that it is spiritually dangerous to "focus too much on the devil," that attributing problems to evil spirits may give people too much opportunity to look for a "quick fix" without taking responsibility for their problems, and that deliverance practice can at times be undesirably sensational, disruptive, and ''violent.'' Most healers would probably agree that organized deliverance practice "peaked" in the mid- to late 1970s. Some reflectively comment that at that time they "saw everything as evil," and ran the risk of bringing up traumatic material that they were unprepared to deal with. At times tension was created in Catholic parishes where non-Charismatics were put off by the practice. In such a situation, one prominent deliverance team in the locality of our research was "put under obedience" to the bishop, who curtailed their activities for a year. Following that period the healer who had served as their mentor persuaded the team to reconstitute as an inner-healing ministry. They would continue to practice deliverance, but only when the necessity arose in the course of inner healing, and with a much lower public profile. This kind of change represents a fundamental inversion in the relation between healing of memories and deliverance. Whereas originally deliverance was an initiatory practice meant to remove spiritual obstacles to a subsequent gradual process of inner healing, the tendency became for inner healing to be the fundamental process, with deliverance invoked only upon the emergence of obstacles or "blockages" to that process. By and large, the change was a shift away from the idea of freestanding deliverance ministries and toward the subordination of the practice to an integrated conception of healing. The emergence of this model for the 1980s appeared

168

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

to be accompanied by a growing sense of the necessity to complement healing with both psychotherapy and spiritual direction, a move aided by the growing number of sympathetic Christian psychotherapists in Charismatic networks. We can perhaps best understand this evolution of deliverance among Catholic Charismatics as a process of domestication. To borrow the tide of a popular Protestant book on deliverance, for middle class suburban Catholics, dealing with spirits was uncomfortably like having "pigs in the parlor." From the Charismatic standpoint, making deliverance less wild was making it less "violent," and hence more in tune with the motives of "peace, love, and joy" in ritual practice. From the anthropological standpoint, domestication moderated the performative elements in ritual healing, sometimes to the point of driving them, as it were, ''underground.'' Introduction of the performatively less-virulent "ancestral spirits" (c£ chapter 2) into the cultural repertoire of distress-causing agents can also be understood in this light as an aspect of domestication. We will now show how this process has affected deliverance practice in three domains: the "discernment" or identification of spirits, their behavioral or performative "manifestation," and the ritual practices of "casting out" the spirits. DISCERNMENT OF SPIRITS

One of the basic principles of deliverance in its classical Pentecostal form is the necessity to know the name of an evil spirit before it can be cast out. Here the anthropologist will recognize the widespread ethno-ontological principle that knowledge of a name grants power over the person named because the name participates in the essence of a person; and it will be recalled that in the Charismatic behavioral environment demons are a kind of person. If the name of a demon indicates its essence, the corresponding pragmatic logic is that its name also indicates the demon's effect on a person, and thus its discovery adds therapeutic substance to the ritual performance. The prototypical method of identifying evil spirits is to command them to name themselves via the voice of the afflicted. This technique has largely fallen into disuse. Some ill-prepared healers, or again healers following a more dramatic Protestant style, have been known to unduly stir up the emotional milieu of healing by shouting their command for additional emphasis and for a show of divinely sanctioned authority. Even when issued moderately, this command is understood as a potential invitation

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

169

to histrionic and disruptive behavior-not necessarily on the part of the affiicted, but on the part of the spirit reacting through the affiicted to the healer's challenge. Cursing, taunting, arguing, and even attempting to deceive the deliverers about the identity and number of spirits present are all behaviors attributed to evil spirits. In the domesticated form in which the self-naming of demons is sometimes retained, the healer recognizes or "picks up" the name in the speech of a patient without directly addressing the spirit. The following example was given by a priest experienced in deliverance: [The patient] had said, "I can kill anyone here with the strike of my hand." He was a black belt in karate. So I told B [another team member], "Hey one of the evil spirits has to be a death wish on other people, murder and so forth ... karate, which is not just a defensive technique at that point. She told P [the team leader], "Hey, ask about that spirit." And sure enough, it came out.

In such a situation, the spirit itself is not speaking, but in a sense "gives itself away" in the patient's utterance. The healer then presents the idea to the patient, and if it rings true the team, with the patient's cooperation, proceeds to cast it out with a prayer of command. Spirits may also reveal themselves through explicit interrogation, whether inspired or not. A positive response to the question, "Do you have suicidal thoughts?" which in clinical practice might be taken as a symptom of depression, might in deliverance be understood as identifying a spirit named Self-Hatred. In sum, a spirit may name itself in response to direct command, may name itself indirectly in the speech of the patient, or may be named explicitly by an experienced and self-reflective patient. When the identity of a demon is not patently evident, a resource for some healers is the spiritual gift of "discernment of spirits." This gift occurs both in the form of revelatory imagery as described in chapter 4 and in the inspired reading of a patient's speech, demeanor, or behavior. One healer observed that he did not "pick up" the presence of spirits through the gift of discernment unless a patient was unable to verbalize the problem; another stated that evil spirits are likely to be involved in situations where a patient comes saying, "I have a problem but I don't know what it is." That is, the behavioral pragmatics of this healing genre include a heightened sensitivity to interactive cues. Some healers will say that discernment is the parallel in the spiritual domain of what intuition is in the psychological. With respect to speech they report attending not only to choice of words but to tone of voice and rapidity of speech-fast speech, for example, may indicate the spirit Anxiety.

170

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

Also attended to are body movements, mannerisms, facial expression, and the movement or appearance of the eyes. In a patient's eyes the healer may discern "either hurt or something else," a certain something else that is evil. For example, in a man's demeanor that is, in the phrase of one healer, ''the opposite of the Pat Boone look," the gift of discernment may reveal the spirit Lust. One healer stated that ancestral or familial spirits communicate their presence only in the patient's voice or appearance, whereas demonic spirits may cause cold chills or pain in the healer. For this healer, different sensory modalities (visual and olfactory as opposed to proprioceptive and haptic) are objectified as media for different kinds of spirit. Moreover, since in North American culture the latter senses tend to be experienced as having a locus more within the perceiver's body, the relatively greater virulence of demonic spirits is objectified as the communication of their presence across the boundaries of the healer's body. In addition to revelatory imagery and this inspired experiential hermeneutic of speech and behavior cues, there are what might be called relatively "objective" criteria for identifying the presence of evil spirits. By objective I mean criteria that are treated by healers as more or less self-evident indexical signs of demonic presence, rather than as the revelation or inspired interpretations characteristic of discernment. One is the suddenness of a problem's onset in a patient's life, or a sudden change of mood or expression in the course of a healing session. Again, while praying in tongues for a patient, typically with a mellifluous sound, the healer's voice may suddenly "become raspy." The healer recognizes her own "deliverance tongues" as an embodied indication that the agenda of glossolalic prayer has been shifted by divine agency from "praise" to "casting out." In this suddenness we once more see spontaneity as a criterion of the sacred. Another relatively objective criterion is negative reaction by the patient to utterance of the name of Jesus, talk on religious themes, or exposure to religious objects such as the crucifix, bible, or sacramental. Still another is embedded in a technique, apparently quite rare, in which the healer asks the deity to repel him from an object if it is inhabited by a spirit, or to draw him toward an object if it is free from evil. One healer reported physically being flung backward across a room when applying this prayer to the portrait of an evil family forebear. By far the most important and widely recognized criterion, however, is that whatever the problem submitted by the patient, it is beyond his or her ability to control. We will examine

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

171

the way the psychocultural theme of control is brought into play in defining the essence of evil in the following chapter. DEMONIC MANIFESTATIONS

Our next task is to define several types of visible "manifestations" of demonic presence. "Occult" manifestations are those in which spirits reportedly express their presence by causing some disruption in the physical environment, such as causing lights to go out, candles to be blown out, doors to slam, children's beds to shake, or objects to move apparently without cause. Manifestations attributed to demonic "harassment" may either be disruptions in the physical environment or in a person's emotional state, and are said to occur when evil spirits are threatened by Christian activities such as evangelization, healing, or prayer. Both these types of manifestation are not necessarily limited to events of ritual healing, but may occur in the settings of everyday life. More typical of ritual performance, and of greater relevance to the cultural constitution of the sacred self, are those manifestations which can be understood as embodied metaphors of demonic activity in an afllicted person. For descriptive purposes we can divide these into disruptive manifestations and manifestations of the spirit's departure. In the first type the evil spirit makes its presence known in a way that may disrupt a session of deliverance. In a revealing play on the idiom of psychotherapy, it is sometimes said that "the spirit is acting out." Disruptive manifestations include the kind of antagonism described above when spirits are commanded to name themselves as well as violent behavior accompanied by apparently supernaturally enhanced strength (see chapter 9). If the identity of a spirit is not yet known these manifestations can sometimes provide clues. Thus the presence of the spirit Anger can be manifest in a contortion of the face or in the eyes. Bodily twisting and contortion instead of peace while a person is lying on the floor supposedly "resting in the Spirit" manifests the generalized presence of evil. In a more specific example, the "twisting up" of a woman's hands while she was receiving Communion was the manifestation of her Anger and Resentment (the names of two evil spirits) at the Roman Catholic Church. We will systematically examine the categories of spirits that constitute the Charismatic demonology in the second half of this chapter, but from the performative standpoint we must here take note of an implicit category of metaspirits whose manifestations define resistance to the

172

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

therapeutic process of ritual healing. Unlike the evil spirits we will discuss below, they are manifest not in the life or problems of the patient, but are features of the ritual process itself. Some of these may be manifest in a patient's attitude or may need to be discerned by the healer. Thus the healer might identify the presence of "Blind Spirit," the effect of which is to prevent the patient from seeing his own situation. A generalized spirit of Bondage indicates the presence of a more specific spirit not yet identified. Other disruptive manifestations may be behavioral rather than attitudinal. For example, the principal manifestation of a Whining Spirit is its pitiful pleading not to be "thrown out of its comfortable abode" within the patient. A Finally, a Mocking Spirit may debunk the entire proceeding or even the existence of evil spirits themselves. In such a situation it is sometimes said that "the evil spirit in someone is making fun of the Lord's spirit in another." The following is an account by a healer who was herself afllicted by a Mocking Spirit. After watching several episodes in which one of her healing-team partners cast out evil spirits, she found herself mocking him a little bit. And he defended it, saying that was the spirit. So I went into the rectory, where we kind of hung out between [sessions of praying for] people. I looked in the mirror and I started mocking the whole thing. Do you know, in the mirror there was an awful look in my eye. It was horrible. It didn't feel like I had scrunched up my face or done something [intentionally] to make my eyes look hard and mean. And then as I walked down to go to the next patient I had all these fllthy thoughts in my head, just like I wanted to urinate downstairs, in the rectory. That's what I wanted most. Awful! It was just ugly, just disgusting! And I told my partner about it later. We went back to my apartment and I continued to mock him, and we were talking about it and I began to get cold. I grabbed an afghan and put it around me. He told me later that if you get cold, that's a sign of evil spirits. Well, finally I just allowed him to pray with me. All I can say is that it happened, it was very real, which I don't understand to this day. And I remember going home and feeling so washed, and feeling radiant, and I looked in the mirror and my face was gorgeous, just filled with light.

It is evident on functional grounds that the existence of a Mocking Spirit as a potential feature of ritual performance is a valuable rhetorical device for confronting challenges to the ritual system, not only from skeptical patients but from doubtful healers as well. However, another dynamic may underlie this spirit, for it is sometimes said that Mockery is manifest not in a person's speech but in their facial expression or in a "funny kind of laughter." In my own experience, and I invite the reader to reflect on his or her own experience in this matter, there are

DEMONS AND DELNERANCE

173

instances when, in the face of emotional tension or on learning of a tragedy, one finds oneself unintentionally smiling or breaking into anxious laughter. It is worth hypothesizing that this affectively anomalous experience occurs in the highly charged emotional atmosphere of prayer for deliverance, that its very sense of embodied "otherness" may at times be identified as a demonic manifestation, and that on occasion it may be interactively elaborated in ritual performance. In the second type of common manifestation, the spirit gives some physical sign that it has left the patient. Such a manifestation of departure is understood as a necessary criterion of successful deliverance. In the 1970s it was reported that spirits might exit or be expelled from their host in the form of screeching, coughing, spitting, a movement in the belly as if a fetus were kicking around, writhing on the floor, a "snake" coming out of the person's mouth, excretion offeces, or vomiting -one healer recalled that in those days their team never performed deliverance without a bucket available for vomit. In addition to these generic manifestations, some healers identify characteristic manifestations of individual spirits. The spirit Lust exists with "three heavy breaths" accompanied by a rotten halitosis that smells ''worse than a dead person." The spirit Masturbation departs with a spontaneous elevation of the arms, with hands bent "way back," farther than a person could normally bend them of his own accord. The spirit Witchcraft exits with a loud shriek sounding "very much like a hyena" and with a distinctive "trajectory of voice." Such performances were apparently as unsettling for healers as for patients, and word of their occurrence was not likely to enhance the practitioners' image outside the Charismatic Renewal. Healers accordingly "began looking for less violent ways" of performing deliverance, and began the domestication of demonic manifestations. Although practitioners of deliverance generally still adhere to the idea that there must be some manifestation of a demon's departure, in the 1980s those reported were markedly more tame. They included coughing, sneezing, burping, crying, sighing, and yawning, or a feeling of lightness as if a burden had been lifted from the patient. In addition, it apparently became more frequent for the manifestation to occur via the healer rather than the patient. Thus, a healer whose hands were upon a patient's head might feel one of her fingers move slightly, taking this as a manifestation that the spirit had exited the person's head, slightly disturbing the fmger as it passed. Again, in the words of one healer:

174

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

See, if they're [Le., patients] not aware of spirit activity-and especially in the beginning they're [typically] not-if they don't burp, or if they don't yawn or something, we're the ones doing it. It all comes out through the healers, the people who are doing the praying. Most often for us, when we're praying, we do a lot of yawning. It's "deliverance yawning," and it's not the same kind of yawning we do when we're sleepy and tired. It's a very deep-it starts very surface type as we're praying and going deeper into the person's [human] spirit. And the deeper we get in there, the harder the yawn gets. And it's very, very intense.... And coughing very often. Coughing if it's a deep, deep spirit. Very often it's sort of like an irritation in your throat. And you know you haven't had anything [to eat that might irritate it]. You know, it's like something is stuck there.

For the healer the phenomenological condition of domesticating the embodied metaphor of demonic expulsion as a yawn or cough is that it is distinguished as "other" from the mundane yawn or cough. It is "deeper" than a yawn of drowsiness, or feels as if something is "stuck" when nothing has been swallowed. Displacing the manifestation from the patient to the healer not only allows it to be more readily controlled in ritual performance, but in principle makes it unnecessary for the patient even to know that a spirit is being expelled. When patients who know nothing about evil spirits or deliverance are instructed about the nature of demonic activity, they come to learn not only what a manifestation is, but also a domesticated performative repertoire of possible or legitimate manifestations. This element of learning is complemented by cultivating the reflective emotional atmosphere of inner healing instead of the confrontational atmosphere of deliverance, since the latter type of atmosphere may be more conducive to dramatic emotional reactions identifiable as demonic manifestations. Although it has quite evidently declined, the occurrence of dramatic manifestations has probably nevertheless not disappeared entirely, and its possibility is still clearly acknowledged. Some healers say that "if God is working strongly it draws out the manifestations." Others appear to understand domestication as a natural process. They observe that manifestations were worse when they as healers, and the healing system as a whole, were less "mature," such that evil spirits were more likely to try to take advantage of and "scare" them. Yet there were explicit strategies at work in the domestication of demonic manifestations. One, as we have seen, was to replace deliverance with healing of memories, and reverse a tendency to "see everything [i.e., every problem] as evil." Another was to introduce the sacraments of reconciliation (confession) and the Eucharist as media of divine power for deliverance.

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

175

By far the most influential means of domesticating evil spirits, however, has been the ritual practice of "binding" them. Apparently an exercise of the biblical prerogative that ''whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven," this is a practice which Catholic healers claim as their distinctive contribution to the Pentecostal ministry of deliverance. The binding prayer is a simple performative act: the healer states that in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ she binds the spirit, possibly adding that the spirit is not to manifest itself or disrupt the proceedings. Some say that binding also weakens the spirits by preventing them, if more than one is present, from communicating with each other or calling on support from other demons hovering in the vicinity. One healer reponed that she bound spirits in order to "work with their [patients'] personality without deceit" instigated by the spirit. Not surprisingly, however, binding is not completely successful in all instances. Its failure may be attributed to the intensity of the "spiritual warfare" in which participants are engaged, or to a healer who is presumptuous and unprepared to handle such a serious problem. It may indicate that one is faced by a "full possession," requiring not Charismatic deliverance but a formal Church rite of exorcism, performed by a priest with the power conferred by his ordination and with ecclesiastical approval. Finally, since a spirit is cosmologically bound to obey any command given in the authority of the all-powerful deity, failure of the binding prayer may indicate that there is in fact no evil spirit present, but that the manifestations are those of a psychiatric disorder. DISPATCHING DEMONS

The final prototypical element of deliverance is the "prayer of command," or "prayer of authority" for the spirits to depart. Perhaps because of caution inspired by the perceived danger of evil spirits which can, if improperly dealt with, attack others present as they leave their host, and which are understood to have great propensity to deceive and dissimulate, these tend to be the most formularized prayers in the Charismatic ritual repertoire. l Healers tend to have their own preferred format, some more elaborate than others. One gave the following more-or-less typical example of how she would dispatch a specific spirit: "Spirit of anger, we come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we send you to the foot of the cross where you will be dealt with by your Lord and master, because Jesus Christ is master of all." The "authority" to dispatch evil spirits is understood to

176

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

derive from invoking the divine name, and inexperienced healers who neglect that invocation are said to risk opposition and disruptive manifestations by the spirit. Whereas the command is to be expressed authoritatively, experienced healers are also dismayed by reports of those who feel it necessary to "shout" at the evil spirits. They attribute such a relatively undomesticated procedure either to inexperience or to the influence of "Protestant" deliverance style. Finally, it is regarded as good practice to include a priest on any deliverance team, since his spiritual authority is understood to be enhanced by the sacrament of ordination. The common technique of "sending the spirits to the cross" is a precautionary measure, for if the spirit is simply commanded to depart its host, it may linger in the environment or enter others present. In addition, it is regarded as somewhat presumptuous for the healer to "tell the spirit where to go," for that is a divine prerogative. Moreover, since the introduction of ancestral healing, it is thought that at times a healer may misdiscern a human spirit as a demonic spirit, and thus it is safer to leave the discrimination to the deity l~t one accidentally send a distressed human spirit to hell. Some healers prepare, through "discernment," a list of all the spirits afHicting a patient. In subsequent discussion they make certain that the patient understands the ways in which spirits interact with one another to negatively influence his life. In a formal deliverance the prayer of command may be repeated individually for each spirit, and the patient may also be expected to participate by "renouncing" the spirits. Healers often say that once a spirit is cast out, the resulting "empty space" must be filled by something positive, and accordingly they add to the prayer a request that the patient be "filled with God's love," with his healing "light," or with "fruits of the Spirit" such as peace and joy. The result of the deliverance prayer can be observed in the "manifestation" of a spirit's departure, and/or by the "sudden" absence of the problem or symptoms-spontaneity is once again a criterion of spiritual power. This aspect of deliverance practice has also undergone domestication. Some healers have tended to use binding not only to supplement but to replace the casting out of spirits. Based on the etiological notion that spirits afHict their hosts by "latching on" to an emotional wound, some say that it is safer to bind spirits where they lie for fear that they might "rip up the person as they are expelled," i.e., that they might "tear open" the emotional wound to which they adhere. In this view, binding is deliverance, because when the wound is closed by means of the healing

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

177

of memories, the spirit no longer has a purchase on the person and must relinquish its hold. Others both bind the spirit and "send it to the Eucharist" so that the spirit is "released to Jesus in the Eucharist," meaning that sacramental power rather than the power of explicit command will free the person. In this model the process of deliverance itself is reconceived as one in which the malevolent spirit is "dissipated or absorbed" by divine power instead of being "cast out or released," with a corresponding decrease in the potential for violence and in the performative necessity for spontaneously manifested results. Another dimension of domestication is the modification of deliverance prayer toward less specificity and explicitness regarding evil spirits. Healers may eschew the formal practice in which "root spirits are named and delivered in hierarchical order" in favor of an indirect method in which the "generalized power of evil is recognized and one utters a simple prayer focused on divine love." One healer replaced the listing of specific demons with a "categorical" or generic command for "all you foul spirits" to depart. The principal effect is to gready simplify performance, although the overt reason he gave was to ensure that he did not miss any demons in discernment, thereby both posing a direct spiritual danger to the patient and revealing his own ignorance as a healer to the spirits. Although some healers still adhere to the necessity of knowing the identity of evil spirits in order to cast them out, this categorical approach has for others reduced the necessity of specific discernment. Thus they might say that a spirit must be named only if the patient cannot be freed otherwise, or that an explicit prayer of command is necessary only in the presence of occult spirits, which in any case must always be acknowledged and explicidy renounced by the patient (see below on demonology). The final step of domestication is taken when the healer chooses not to make the presence of evil spirits known to the patient, perhaps euphemizing his or her problem as a ''wound'' instead of a "spirit." One healer reported going through a process of casting out each spirit, with the patient participating by repeating the deliverance formula after him, but never explicidy identifying each problem as a spirit, and explaining the manifestation of vomiting as "the Lord sweeping out the house." This aspect of domestication is most fully realized when the healer utters the prayer of command silendy or under his or her breath. It thus happens that a person undergoing healing prayer can have demons discerned, bound from manifestation, and cast out all without ever know-

178

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

ing that they have been delivered. This mode of procedure avoids the risk of "scaring" the increasing number of people who have access to Charismatic healing without great familiarity with Charismatic practices, and who might mistakenly conclude they are "possessed" or "have evil within" them. It is also said to protect against the adverse emotional consequences that might ensue if the healers "haven't heard right" in discernment. One highly respected healer pointed out that, in the case of patients relatively well versed in Charismatic ritual practice, both he and the afflicted person may know quite well that an evil spirit is at issue, but still never mention it openly. This would appear to have profound consequences for understanding the rhetoric of ritual performance. In previous accounts I described the efficacy of deliverance according to Fernandez's (1974) model of the metaphoric predication of a quality, in this case identified as the name of a demon, upon an inchoate pronoun which is the patient's self (Csordas 1983, 1987).2 To summarize the argument, if the cosmological effect of this predication is to objectify evil spirits, the psychological effect is to formulate a problem which had previously eluded the patient. The identification of multiple spirits sets the stage for describing how spirits are interacting within the person, and thus provides a parapsychodynamic idiom for dealing with psychological conflicts. The identification of multiple spirits also adds the rhetorical power of redundancy as related and near-synonymous spirits are discerned and dispatched, and allows the process to take place over a period of time, with incremental progress indicated by the successive casting out of spirits. The participation of the patient is enlisted in part by reference to the Christian's cosmic responsibility to engage in "spiritual warfare" against the forces of evil, which translates into a pragmatic responsibility to achieve emotional freedom, and a ritual responsibility to actively renounce, bind, or cast out spirits from oneself. 3 Again paraphrasing Fernandez, the ritual discernment, casting out, and manifestation of a spirit creates rhetorical movement along a qualitative continuum from evil to good, a movement that is completed by some healers when they symbolically "replace" the spirit with positive qualities defmed by the vocabulary of motives. Beginning with this account of rhetorical process, we must consider two consequences of the domestication of deliverance practice. First is that the performative elements of deliverance are toned down, so much so that in cases where both healer and patient are aware of dealing with

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

179

evil spirits without mentioning them explicitly, the rhetorical process can be rendered implicit while still remaining in effect. The second consequence is that when the healer performs deliverance silently and without any awareness on the part of the patient, its performative elements are rendered absent and can have a rhetorical effect only on the healer. Here we are confronted not with imaginal performance as in the healing of memories, but virtually with invisible performance. A first step toward understanding these consequences is to rethink. the metaphoric predication and qualitative movement of the rhetorical process in terms of SchefPs (1979) theory of catharsis, defming catharsis as a function of the entire process of discernment, casting out, and manifestation. Although the notions of deliverance and catharsis are both compatible with the hydraulic imagery of North American ethnopsychology that values "releasing" oppressive "internal forces," the aspect of SchefPs theory that is most useful for construing deliverance as a self process is the necessity of appropriate "aesthetic distance" for performative efficacy. Transformation is impeded if the performance is "underdistanced," in which case emotional engagement will be too intense, or if it is "overdistanced," in which case emotional engagement will be insufficient. From this standpoint the domestication of deliverance could be understood as a collective adjustment of ritual practice in order to achieve "optimal" aesthetic distance. The adjustment is made along a series of qualitative continua: from wild to tame (the inclusion of ancestral human spirits as alternatives to virulent demonic ones); from external to internal (the tendency to subordinate the emphasis of spiritual affiiction from without to that of emotional woundedness within); from violent to peaceful (the toning down of manifestations such that vomiting is replaced by burping or yawning); from Protestant to Catholic (instead of the relatively egalitarian procedure in which the spirits "name themselves" through the affiicted, discernment becomes more the hierarchical prerogative of the healing minister); from behavior to experience (the identification of habitual behaviors and "sins" yields to the identification of the autobiographical "bitter roots" of those behaviors). In sum, these continua represent the lines along which a Pentecostal practice is aesthetically adapted from a working-class to a middle-class habitus. As one might also conclude from Bourdieu's (1984) analysis of French middle-class culture, optimal aesthetic distance is a function of "taste" as a disposition within the class habitus. However, the relevance of aesthetic distance is eliminated when the patient is excluded from the performance. Apparently, this kind of exclu-

180

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

sion occurred to some degree even in the early days of Catholic Charismatic healing, based on the idea that some patients were not prepared for, would be unduly frightened by, or even suffer emotional harm if brought face to face with the reality of evil spirits operating in their lives. However, a degree of controversy and negative publicity within the Church certainly encouraged the increasingly low profile of the practice from the 1970s to the 1980s. An additional damper was applied by the critical tone concerning deliverance in the fourth "Malines Document" penned by Cardinal Suenens, the highest-ranking Catholic Charismatic ecclesiastic (Suenens 1983). Very likely, as deliverance became less available the rank and file became less familiar with it, thus presenting less demand for the ministry. Moreover, healers themselves report that deliverance is both emotionally draining and spiritually dangerous, and some report relief at not being called so regularly or at having the relatively easier method of ancestral healing at their disposal. 4 Yet the healing of memories and ancestral healing have not completely subsumed deliverance as, in contrast, deliverance has always subsumed the ritual functions of healing of memories among some Protestant Pentecostals. Though it cannot activate a rhetorical process in ritual performance, "invisible" or silent deliverance quite likely helps to preserve the integrity of the healing system for those committed to the reality of evil and the efficacy of deliverance prayer. Moreover, with the Wimberite notion of "power evangelism" (Wimber 1986) exerting influence on Charismatics in the late 1980s, there were intimations of a revival of interest in practices such as deliverance. Domestication may be a cyclical process. There is a fmal point about the domestication of deliverance that goes beyond those we have already made. That is, to the extent that it became less dramatic and less specialized, and like other elements of Charismatic ritual we have discussed, its practice came to be extended beyond formal ritual settings and into the settings of everyday life. Insofar as evil spirits are understood to be constantly on the attack in "spiritual warfare," it came to be understood that "mature" Charismatics can discern and deliver themselves. If, as will become dear in the next chapter, demonic aflliction is uncontrolled habit, deliverance can be a technique of personal control applied to oneself, in a family setting, or among friends. Especially for those who have come to inhabit the Charismatic world over the course of nearly two decades, deliverance is no longer only an operation on the habitus, but one with an integral place in the habitus.

DEMONS AND DELNERANCE

181

The Charismatic Demonology The next step in understanding deliverance as a self process is to take a closer look at the nature of evil spirits. Charismatic healers operate with a rather highly elaborated contemporary demonology. Our first insight comes with attention to the names of evil spirits. During the Renaissance, the golden age of Christian demonologies, each demon characteristically had both a personal name and a principal attribute, a sin to which it had the power to tempt people. Thus Balberith tempted to homicide and contentiousness, and Carnivean tempted to obscenity and shamelessness (Robbins 1959). Across centuries of virtual desuetude as a psychological idiom (other, perhaps, than within esoteric cultic traditions), however, both the conventional personal names and their specific attributes have been lost. In the Pentecostal and Charismatic demonology that appeared in the twentieth century, personal "spirit names" were characteristically either those familiar from the bible (e.g., Beelzebub, Moloch, Gog, Magog), or were inspired or invented names. 5 When deliverance was first introduced among Catholics in the early 1970s, such spirits with exotic or mysterious names were occasionally identified. Since they were detached from any attribute that could serve as a psychological referent, however, these names offered only empty performativity. Eventually, for both Protestants and Catholics the pragmatic nature of healing practice prevailed, and it became almost invariably the case that evil.spirits were "named for how they act" on a person. Thus there are spirits named Anger, Depression, Lust, etc. As we shall see, this fusion of the personal name and the mode of action of demons has implications for what we might call their ethnoontological status. A second way in which the contemporary demonology differs from that of the Renaissance is in its relative deemphasis of sin. More precisely, in addition to demons named for sins, there are those that correspond to a full psychocultural repertoire of negative emotions, behaviors, and thought patterns. If the Renaissance was a golden age of demonology, the contemporary demonology reflects the fact that the twentieth century is a golden age of psychology. Table 7.1 is a citation in full of the most comprehensive demonology formulated by practitioners of deliverance. 6 Here we see emotions such as insecurity, nervousness depression, and impatience; behaviors such as rebellion, passivity, hyperactivity, and withdrawal; interpersonal problems such as

Table 7.1 Charismatic Demonology. Root or Master Spirit 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) 11) 12) 13)

Bitterness Rebellion Strife Control Retaliation Accusation Rejection Insecurity Jealousy Withdrawal Escape Passivity Depression

14) 15) 16) 17) 18)

Heaviness Worry Nervousness Sensitiveness Persecution

19) Mental illness 20) Schiwphrenia

Subordinate Spirits Resenttnent Hatred Unforgiveness Violence Temper Anger Retaliation Murder Self-will Stubbornness Disobedience Antisubmissiveness Contention Bickering Argument Quarreling Fighting Possessiveness Dominance Witchcraft Destruction Spite Hatred Sadism Hurt Cruelty Judging Criticism Fault finding Fear of Rejection Self-rejection Inferiority Self-pity Loneliness Timidity Shyness Inadequacy Ineptness Envy Suspicion Distrust Selfishness Pouting Daydreaming Fantasy Pretension Unreality Indifference Stoicism Passivity Sleepiness Alcohol Drugs Funk Indifference Listlessness Lethargy Despair Despondency Discouragement Defeatism Dejection Hopelessness Suicide Death Insomnia Morbidity Gloom Burden Disgust Anxiety Fear Dread Apprehension Tension Headache Nervous habits Restlessness Excitement Insomnia Roving Self-awareness Fear of man Fear of disapproval Unfairness Fear of judgment Fear of condemnation Fear of accusation Fear of reproof Sensitiveness Insanity Madness Mania Retardation Senility Schiwphrenia Paranoia Hallucinations Rejection Rebellion Bitterness Insecurity Inferiority Lust Fantasy-lust Harlotry Fear of rejection Self-rejection Self-accusation Compulsive confession Jealousy Envy Suspicion Distrust Fears Persecution Confrontation Projection Accusation toward others Self-will Selfishness Stubbornness Self-deception Self-seduction (48 others)

21) 22) 23) 24) 25) 26) 27) 28) 29) 30) 31) 32) 33) 34) 35) 36) 37) 38) 39) 40) 41) 42) 43) 44)

Paranoia Confusion Doubt Indecision Self-deception Mind-binding Mind idolatry Fears (all kinds) Fear of authority Pride Affectation Covetousness Perfection Competition Impatience False burden Grief Fatigue Infirmity Death Inheritance Hyperactivity Cursing Addictive and compulsive

Jealousy Envy Suspicion Distrust Persecution Fears Confrontation Frustration Incoherence Forgetfulness Unbelief Skepticism Procrastination Compromise Confusion Forgetfulness Indifference Self-delusion Self-seduction Pride Confusion Fear of man Fear of failure Occult spirits Spiritism Intellectualism Rationalization Pride Ego Phobias (all kinds) Hysteria Lying Deceit Ego Vanity Self-righteousness Haughtiness Importance Arrogance Theatrics Playacting Sophistication Pretension Stealing Kleptomania Material lust Greed Discontent Price Vanity Ego Frustration Criticism Irritability Intolerance Anger Driving Argument Pride Ego Agitation Frustration Intolerance Resentment Criticism False responsibility False compassion Sorrow Heartache Heartbreak Crying Sadness Cruelty Tiredness Weariness Laziness (may include any disease or sickness) (Physical) (Emotional) (Mental) (Curses) Restlessness Driving Pressure Blasphemy Court-jesting Gossip Criticism Backbiting Mockery Nicotine Alcohol Drugs Medications Caffeine Gluttony

Belittling

Railing

Table 7.1 (continued) Root or Master Spirit

45) 46) 47) 48)

Gluttony Self-accusation Guilt Sexual impurity

49) Cults

50) Occult

51) Religious 52) Spiritism 53) False religions SOURCE:

Subordinate Spirits

Nervousness Compulsive eating Resentment Frustration Idleness Self-pity Self-reward Self-hatred Self-condemnation Condemnation Shame Unworthiness Embarrassment Lust Fantasy Masturbation Homosexuality Lesbianism Adultery Fornication Incest Harlotry Rape Exposure Frigidity Jehovah's Witnesses Christian Science Rosicrucianism Theosophy Urantia Subud Latihan Unity Mormonism Bahai Unitarianism (lodges, societies, and social agencies using the Bible and God as a basis, but omitting the blood atonement of Jesus Christ) Ouija board Palmistry Handwriting analysis Automatic handwriting ESP Hypnotism Horoscope Astrology Levitation Fortunetelling Water witching Tarot cards Pendulum Witchcraft Black magic White magic Conjuration Incantation Charms Fetishes Ritualism Formalism Legalism Doctrinal obsession Seduction Doctrinal error Fear of God Fear of hell Fear of lost salvation Religiosity Seance Spirit guide Necromancy Buddhism Taoism Hinduism Islam Shintoism Confucianism

Hammond and Hammond (1973: 113-115).

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

185

strife, accusation, retaliation, and competition; thought patterns such as doubt, self-deception, indecision, and confusion; illnesses including mental illness, schiwphrenia, and physical infirmity. Alongside such overtly psychological categories, the traditional sins such as cursing, covetousness, gluttony, and sexual impurity are themselves cast in a psychological light. The practices of cults, occultism, spiritism, and false religions reflect a contemporary attitude that anything "non-Christian" is demonically inspired. They also of course recall the Renaissance demonologists' campaign against practices such as "witchcraft," which was in some ways more of a preoccupation for the sixteenth century than were evil spirits. 7 Finally, the category of religious demons represents a self-reflective recognition that Charismatics may be afflicted with "hyperreligiosity" or "superspirituality" including, certainly, a preoccupation with evil spirits. Under this category, overinvolvement with religious matters to the neglect of other life responsibilities is attributed to deceptive demonic machinations. THE DEMONOLOGY AS COLLECTIVE REPRESENTATION

We will have more to say about the principles according to which this demonology is structured, but already a general conclusion may be drawn. That is, taken as a whole, the Charismatic demonology may be understood as a collective representation (Durkheim 1965) of the person as a repertoire of potential negative attributes-the person in, as it were, a photographic negative. Here we must be careful to distinguish a collective representation from the explicit concept of the person which for Charismatics, as we have seen, is the tripartite composite of body/mind/spirit. 8 We must also distinguish either of these from the self as a series of indeterminate and differentially elaborated capacities for orientation in the world. Precisely as a kind of collective representation, we can determine the place of the demonology within the Charismatic symbolic system by the way it simultaneously participates in three interrelated terminological domains: the ethnopsychological, cosmological, and ritual. On this level, the internal consistency of the Charismatic healing system as a cultural system (cf. Schneider 1980) is in part guaranteed by a structural coherence among these domains. This coherence is defmed by the oppositions internal/external and positive/ negative. The first domain is the ethnopsychological repertoire of everyday

186

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

Table 7.2 Most Comnwn Evil Spirits Reported by Catholic Charismatic Healers (each mentioned by at least two healers).

Anger Fear Lust Hatred Resentment Rejection

OccultlWitchcraft Bitterness Pride Depression Guilt Low self-image

Self-hatred Unforgiveness Suicide Devaluation

Rage

words for problematic emotions, behaviors, and so forth. Table 7.1 is a comprehensive listing of evil spirits encountered "empirically" in the practice of one team of healers, but it is also worth recalling the words of another healer who pointed out that in fact there are "as many evil spirits as you can think. of psychologically." For example, there are as many discrete spirits of Fear as there are possible phobias. Nevertheless, perusal of the demonology provides a useful precis of the emotional and moral concerns of Charismatic culture, a precis from which one can also identify the points of its convergence and divergence from other variants of North American culture. This two-dimensional representation becomes three-dimensional when we consider how Charismatic healers respond to a query about the most-common evil spirits encountered in healing practice. The results, ordered by the number of healers who cited each spirit as among the most common, are presented in table 7.2. Most prominent, returning to Janet's term introduced previously, are the potentially ''vehement emotions" of fear, anger, hatred, resentment, rejection, bitterness, and rage. Lower in the list, but still prominent, are self-abnegating emotions of depression, guilt, low selfimage, self-hatred, suicide, and devaluation. Finally, there is a significant frequency of three of the "seven deadly sins," and the "occult" spirits. The cultural constitution of this repertoire is highlighted by the Charismatics' observation that ethnic groups may be afflicted differentially.9 Thus, within the United States it was reported from various healers that Irish tend to be afflicted by the spirits Guilt and Anger; Blacks by Hatred and Bitterness as an aftermath ofslavery, and along with Hispimics and "Orientals" a vulnerability to any spirits "passed down in the bloodline" (cf. the discussion of ancestral healing in chapter 2); Italians with occult spirits of the evil eye, curses, the "Italian horns," and hex signs; Sicilians in particular by the spirit Murder, because of mafia killings; Portuguese with the spirit of a father's curse; Haitians with spirits of "voodoo" and black magic; Germans by the spirit Legalism; Ameri-

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

187

cans by the spirits of Nationalism or Emotional Deprivation. Following a visit to Korea, two North American healers reported surprise at the relative frequency with which they encountered the evil spirits Repression, Suppression, Denial, and Fear of Failure. It is evident that to a great degree these "empirical" reports reflect a North American ethnopsychology of ethnic stereotypes. However, it is telling that our only Portuguese healer reported the high frequency of the spirit Boastfulness among Portuguese immigrant Charismatics. This apparently "culturebound" spirit was not mentioned at all by North American healers of any other ethnic background. It is likely that a comparative demonology among Charismatics in various regions of the world would reveal culturally typical terminological sets that could also be interpreted as collective representations of the person in negative image. 10 The second terminological domain in which the demonology is implicated is the cosmological domain. From this angle, each term is explicitly the personal name of a spiritual being, a demon under the command of Satan. The relation among terms reflects the social organization of the "kingdom of darkness" against which Christians are engaged in deadly "spiritual warfare." The existence of demons as active, intelligent, evil beings in a spiritual realm defmitively differentiates the demonology from any mere list of human emotions, and does so in a way that culturally validates a distinction between deliverance and psychotherapy as systems of healing practices. The possibility of reading these terms simultaneously as emotion or as demon does something more, however, in that it creates a structural tension between the two domains. A difference such as anger/Anger introduces into the healing system an essential ambiguity between internal origin and external cause, between psychological and spiritual, between recognizable human emotions and identifiable demonic influences, between self-possession and demonic possession. With respect to our interest in self process, the opposition sets up a rhetorical pull that decenters the North American ethnopsychology of emotion itself Anthropologists (e.g., Lutz 1988) have observed that for some societies emotion is not conceived as originating and residing within a discrete self, but as taking place between and among interacting people. The Charismatic decentering of emotion from the discrete self appears to create a similar effect, for to shift it partly (but defmitely not wholly) onto the demonic is also to shift it into the domain of intersubjectivity. Within this domain, the origin of intractable emotion and behavior may be understood as interpersonal, the demon may be

188

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

understood to exacerbate the problem, and the affiicted person may be held accountable for cooperating with the deliverance process. The fmal terminological domain in which the demonology participates is that of ritual language, specifically the vocabulary of motives described in chapter 1 (cf. also Csordas 1987). Whereas a structural contrast between "internal and external" characterizes the relationship between the domain of emotions and that of demons, there is between these two domains taken together and the vocabulary of motives a structural contrast between "negative and positive" representations of the person. Recall that the vocabulary of motives consists of terms for ideal personal qualities, activities, forms of relationship, forms of collectivity, and fmally negativities that define the domain of evil and "darkness." The demonology in effect fleshes out the contents of this darkness in such a way that there is virtually a one-to-one correspondence between individual positive terms in the vocabulary of motives and the negative terms in the demonology. Thus we can line up community vs. Competition or Covetousness, authority vs. Rebellion, love vs. Resentment or Hatred, peace vs. Anger or Anxiety, or service vs. Selfishness. Not only can a one-to one correspondence be drawn between individual terms, however, but the opposed principles by which the two domains are structured equally exhibit the contrast between positive and negative. Whereas the vocabulary of motives is structured as a discursive cycle of mutually implicating terms constantly reiterated in ritual language, the demonology is structured as an oppressive hierarchy of proliferating terms that defme affiiction. The former can be interpreted as a semantic representation of the mutual implication or interinvolvement of sacred selves in the Charismatic community, the latter as a representation of the redundant heaviness weighing upon the aftlicted self in isolation.

DIMENSIONS OF DEMONIC CLASSIFICATION

Let us now examine the dimensions of classification that organize the demonology as a tool for ritual practice. These include the hierarchy of evil spirits, the degrees of demonic influence, the modes of demonic affiiction, and the origin of the spirits. We must note before beginning that, insofar as knowledge ofdeliverance is a relatively specialized knowledge even among healers, the demonology is differentially elaborated depending on the experience of individual healers. Not only would many healers lack the experience to produce a comprehensive

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

189

list of evil spirits, but the principles by which the demonology is organized as a cultural system are relevant to only the most experienced. Consider first the dimension of hierarchy. Any Charismatic healer would likely acknowledge that evil spirits are hierarchically organized in a "kingdom of darkness" with Satan at its head. Only a few are willing or able to elaborate on the structure of that hierarchy. One offered a military analogy, saying that the hierarchy extended from "imps to corporals to sergeants to generals to Beelzebub." Another reported that the classes of evil spirits include "principalities, thrones, and dominations," a bit of knowledge readily available in the Bible. Only the most prominent and experienced healer I interviewed had a fully elaborated sense of the demonic hierarchy, of which she was reluctant to impart more than a few details to me. She said that there are several ranked classes or "hierarchies," among which are ''Thrones.'' Each Throne has beneath it 6 "Families" of spirits, and there are a total of 66 such Families. In the affiiction of anyone person, the presence of 7 Thrones is required to constitute a full demonic "possession," and such high-ranking spirits must always be accompanied by all their minions. This scheme is somewhat reminiscent of the Renaissance demonologies. They classified fallen angels on the principle of the old fourth-century angelic court, which consisted of angels of the First Hierarchy (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones), Second Hierarchy (Dominions, Principalities, Powers), and Third Hierarchy (Virtues, Archangels, Angels). The total of 66 "Families" cited by our healer also corresponds to the Renaissance notion of 66 demonic princes commanding 6,660,000 devils (Robbins 1959: 128, 130). There is no reason to suppose a direct historical continuity of practice, however, since such information is available in published accounts. A more likely explanation for this healer's knowledge is the biographical fact that, prior to becoming a Charismatic practitioner of deliverance, she was a member of a Satanic church, where such demonologies may be explicitly elaborated (Moody 1974, Truzzi 1974). For most Charismatic healers who practice deliverance, however, knowledge of the demonic hierarchy appears to be limited to the pragmatic awareness that evil spirits tend to operate in "clusters" consisting of a "manager" or "ruler" spirit and various "attending" spirits. These clusters correspond with the "demon groupings" in table 7.1, where the group heading names the dominant spirit and the accompanying list identifies its subordinates. A second perusal of the table will show that spirits of the same name may occupy various places within the classification. This complexity reflects possible variations in the emo-

190

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

tional circumstances of different patients in deliverance. For example, the spirits Drugs and Alcohol may appear as subordinates of either Addiction or Escape; the spirit Resentment can appear as subordinate to either Bitterness or Impatience; and the spirits Occult and Spiritism may, in addition to being dominant themselves, appear as subordinate to the spirit Mind-Binding. It can be seen that in practice the demonology becomes quite flexible-rather than a "periodic table" ofevil spirits, the Charismatic demonology is in effect a mnemonic of improvisation. Though in form the demonology is hierarchically ordered, in practice each demonic name (apparently multiple demons can have the same name) can appear at different levels of the hierarchy, subordinated to different master spirits in different instances. The system becomes more sophisticated with the addition by some healers of the idea that spirits have "aspects" and "attributes." An aspect is more or less a kind of nuance to the identity of a spirit. A healer, for example, may "discern" the simultaneous presence in a patient of the spirit Anger, the spirit Depression with an aspect of anger, and the spirit Rejection with an aspect of anger. In such an instance, recurrence of the aspect would be taken to indicate that Anger is the dominant spirit in the cluster. An attribute is a characteristic of the spirit as an intelligent entity. If the healer discerns, for example, that a particular spirit has an attribute of "power" or "knowledge," the revelation is taken to indicate that the spirit occupies a relatively high position in the demonic hierarchy and therefore may be more difficult to dispel. A second dimension of spirit classification is based on the mode of affliction, or the manner in which the spirit gains purchase on a person. There are three central categories, including "ministering" spirits, "cardinal" spirits, and "occult" spirits. The ministering spirit preys upon vulnerabilities created by emotional trauma or ''wounds.'' The spirit either enters the person through the metaphorical wound, or "latches on" to the person at the emotional site of this wound. Here is the point at which healing of memories and deliverance articulate most closely. For example, a person who grows up knowing she was an unwanted child will require healing of memories for that reason, and may in addition require deliverance if a spirit of rejection afflicted her by taking advantage of that traumatic experience. Protestant Pentecostals who reject the healing of memories in principle do accept this vulnerability theory, and so in effect can do everything their Catholic counterparts can while remaining within the genre of deliverance. However, some Catholic healers who think that deliverance is "too Protestant," too

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

191

Table 7.3 Modes ofDemonic Affliction: CoUusion and Vulnerability. Source of Vulnerability Spirit Type

Wound

Sin

PrR&tice

Ministering Cardinal Occult

+ + +

+ +

+

spiritually dangerous, or too potentially sensationalist, can claim without any overt performance of deliverance that healing a traumatic memory that provided the occasion for demonic influence will in itself cause the spirit to relinquish its purchase on the person. Cardinal spirits, with their reference to the "cardinal sins," are those that affiict a person both through the vulnerability of some "woundedness" and through vulnerability self-created by the commission of sin. Thus someone who commits the sin of adultery "opens himself" to the influence of the spirit Adultery, and once under this influence may find that adultery has become an unbreakable habit. Taking into account this double vulnerability, it is said that effective deliverance from cardinal spirits requires both inner healing and repentance. Occult spirits are dangerous demons which typically have "attributes of power and knowledge." Because they are associated with explicit practices, these spirits are by definition engaged intentionally, directly, and actively by a person. Any occult practice-from reading the daily horoscope in the newspaper to participation in Satanic rituals-is regarded as an abuse of divinely given "free will" by relinquishing that will to a power (·ther than the Christian deity. Hence it is said that occult practices are sinful and also that emotionally wounded people are particularly attracted to them. Because affiiction by occult spirits thus involves woundedness, sin, and intentional activity, the patient requires healing, repentance, and explicit renunciation of the evil spirits and the practices with which they are associated. Table 7.3 shows the relation among these three principal categories with respect to how the modes of affiiction bear an additive relation to one another. It is additive not in a merely quantitative sense, however, for from ministering to occult spirits the table shows a progression in the degree of active collusion on the part of the affiicted with demonic forces. As with many of our previous analyses, this formulation reveals a significant degree of cultural structure that yet remains implicit in the knowledge expressed by healers.

192

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

Noting once again that we are dealing with a pragmatic demonology, it is relevant that experienced healers are able to estimate the proportions of the kinds of spirits they encounter. Also because it is a pragmatic system, not all healers recognize the same categories. Curiously, two healers who did not make the distinction between ministering and cardinal spirits estimated that half of spirits encountered were occult and half were not, whereas two who did make the distinction had a quite different account. One said that 80 percent were of the ministering type and 10 percent each were cardinal and occult. The other stated that 85 percent were of the ministering type and the remaining 15 percent were divided between cardinal and occult spirits. Rather than attempt to account for this somewhat esoteric discrepancy, I will instead give two examples that point to the pragmatic variation in the classification itself. One healer granted legitimacy only to the category of occult spirits, preferring to consider all problems such as anger, fear, depression, or self-hatred as emotional problems to be dealt with by counseling and inner healing rather than by prayer and deliverance. Another enunciated a classification consisting of "familiar" spirits which "know you" and your vulnerabilities, "interlocking" spirits that work in a cluster, and "cardinal" spirits that prey on the vulnerability self-created by sin. This healer did not mention occult spirits as a separate type. His categories offamiliar and cardinal spirits correspond to the more-common categories of ministering and cardinal, but the interlocking spirits appear to be transposed from the hierarchical dimension we described above, in which clusters of spirits operate under the command of a manager spirit or Throne. Overall, his idiosyncratic classification appears to be concerned less with the mode of affliction than with the operational principles by which spirits achieve their maleficent ends. The notions of "familiar" and "familial" spirits have taken on an overlapping and ambiguous relationship since the introduction of prayer for ancestral healing (cf. chapter 2). For some Charismatics, it appears that "familiarity" derives neither from a spirit's intimate knowledge of a person nor from the folkloric notion of a witch's familiar, but from the notion that the source of affliction is not a demon but the deceased spirit of a family member. One healer who articulated the threefold categorization of ministering, cardinal, and occult spirits added the "familial" upon further discussion. He combined the senses of familial and familiar in elaborating that these were dead people whose spirits have not "let go" their earthly attachments, and thus stay "locked

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

193

into what is familiar to them," especially in places like Mrica where their living descendants actively relate to them. However, the situation is complicated by the understanding that because demonic spirits can come to know the dead by interacting with them in the spiritual realm, and further because evil spirits are skilled at and bent on deceit, they may imitate human ancestral spirits. Here the ethno-ontological discussion is clouded by a conflict between Charismatics' "empirical" encounters with ancestral spirits and a Catholic orthodoxy that does not permit "ghosts" to linger on earth. The orthodox position implicates any interaction with deceased spirits as "bordering on spiritualism," which is thought to be a demonically inspired occult practice. The practical dilemma for ritual performance was evident in the narration by a priest/laywoman healing team of an instance in which they put to rest the agitated spirit of a deceased priest. He had committed suicide in a parish rectory early in the century, thereby adversely affecting the state of mind of all his successors. When, in discussing the incident with me, the contemporary priest/healer cautiously skirted the issue of whether the deceased was an actual spiritual presence, his colleague called him to account. She turned to him and asked whether, given that they had encountered several situations in which a human spirit was either crying to be set free, or was "hanging around" disturbing a family environment until it could be "set free to be with the Lord," was it not necessary to say that the deceased spirit was actually present. Here empirical experience and theological dictate meet in a cultural impasse. A fmal dimension of classification pertains to the severity of demonic activity understood in terms of the degree of control the evil spirits acquire over persons. In the Renaissance a distinction was drawn between full-scale possession from within a person and less-severe obsession from without. This distinction was drawn to accommodate the idea that holy men could not be entered and possessed by the devil, but could only be externally besieged. A similar distinction is present in the contemporary demonology, though elaborated with somewhat different emphases, and it is a matter of discussion whether being "born again" precludes the possibility of being entered and/or possessed by evil spirits. One version of the scale of severity begins with temptation to which all humans are understood to be exposed. In oppression the evil spirits' attack is more directed, but they remain "outside" the person. In obsession the spirits have entered "inside" the person, but do not have complete control, or may have control over only certain "areas" of the

194

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

person, on the analogy of a house where fire is contained to one or two rooms. Possession is a condition in which the spirits have both entered and taken complete control of the person. Somewhat apart from these is demonic harassment, in which evil spirits are apparently not intent on gaining any degree of control, but on interfering with one's attempt to lead a Christian life or on disrupting spiritual activities such as Christian teaching and healing. Once again there is pragmatic variation in use of these terms. One priest cited the degrees of severity as "obsession, oppression, depression, and possession." In placing depression immediately before total possession, this scheme interestingly grants great weight to the psychological consequences of relatively profound demonic affiiction. Another priest distinguished "simple" affiiction in which the influence of spirit activity can be removed by the force of inner healing alone, "compound" affiiction that requires explicit deliverance of a specific demon, and "complex" affiiction in which the afilicted has conspired by having dedicated or "sold" his soul through the influence of the occult type of spirits. Some Charismatics argue, in a gesture toward the theological principle of divinely instituted free will, that complete possession can occur only with the consent of the possessed. 11 That is, there must be an invitation, an inner vow, a dedication, or a willful contract with the forces of evil. Given that the only category of spirit that afilicts people through their own intentional practice is the occult, this cultural logic holds that only occult spirits can completely possess a person. Whether or not this position is held, Charismatics agree that possession is rare in contrast to other forms of demonic affliction. In fact, of the eightyseven healing ministers interviewed in our study, only two reported personal involvement in formal exorcism, each only once in his career. A Catholic writer who has presented a popular journalistic account of exorcism reports that a European bishop acknowledged three thousand exorcism investigations in the period from 1968 to 1974, of which only four proved to be cases of "authentic" possession (Martin 1976). The practical consequence for ritual healing is that lay Charismatics can avoid infringing on the prerogative of the Church and its ordained priests to perform formal exorcism of the fully possessed by practicing deliverance from evil spirits whose influence on a person is in some degree less than possession. Although Charismatics praying for deliverance have been known to read "informally" from the Roman Ritual used in exorcism, the distinction both creates a separate genre of ritual healing upon which no judgment of unorthodoxy has been formally proclaimed, and avoids

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

195

the necessity for the lengthy psychiatric investigation and ecclesiastical approval that must precede formal exorcism.

Psychiatric Disorder, Physical Illness, and Evil Spirits

We have examined the articulation of the Charismatic demonology with the terminological domains of everyday emotions and behaviors, cosmology, and the vocabulary of motives. We have also seen how the demonology is internally organized according to principles of hierarchy, mode of affliction, and severity of affliction. Given the Charismatic concept of the person as a "pneumopsychosomatic" composite of body, mind, and spirit, it is also necessary to examine how evil spirits as causal agents are thought to affect the mind and body. This is the question of the relation between demonic affliction and mental or physical illness. Although we will see considerable variability in the ideas articulated by healers, a notion that appears to remain constant is that evil spirits prey on vulnerability. In principle, demonic affliction and mental illness are distinguished as due respectively to spiritual and natural causes. However, it is thought that the symptoms produced may be similar or identical-e.g., the spirit Depression can produce the clinical symptoms of depression-and thus the presence and/or interaction of these causes is a matter for "discernment." The most general observation is that, contrary to what might be expected from a clinical standpoint, healers tend to feel that whereas all mental illness involves spirit activity, not all demonic affliction is accompanied by mental illness. The cultural logic is that the devil is at work in any case of emotional or mental instability because the devil consistently preys upon people's weaknesses. According to one healer who was also in practice as a clinical psychologist, if a spirit is causally involved, its influence must be removed in order for psychotropic medications to be effective. It is also claimed in some instances that ritual healing allows the dosage of medication to be decreased. Even when evil spirits do not play a part in causing a psychiatric disorder, however, the more severe the illness the stronger the spirit activity surrounding the patient. Given that occult spirits are the most virulent, mental patients are most likely to be afflicted by them,

196

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

and there is said to be a higher concentration of evil spirits in mental institutions than anywhere else. It is worthy of note that, although unelaborated, the latter notion implies that the severely mentally ill have some responsibility for their own condition, in that one becomes engaged with occult spirits only through one's own free will. There are two reasons that spirit activity is not in all cases psychopathological. First, demonic harassment is not necessarily aimed at taking control of a person. Second, one can be engaged in occult activities, and hence with occult spirits, without being in a psychopathological state. If this is the case, deliverance is expected to result in a complete remission of symptoms without psychiatric intervention. Some Charismatics would take exception to the latter position, however, holding that spirit activity always implies some degree of psychiatric difficulty, perhaps a difficulty that would lead a person to become involved in occult activities to begin with. In any case, the only "objective" criterion is a negative one: because evil spirits are subject to obedience to the divine will, if the symptoms disappear following prayer for deliverance, the cause was purely demonic. If prayer over several sessions is not effective, psychiatric difficulties are implied. In some instances it is acknowledged that prayer can be no more than a "Band-Aid" for a problem that requires medication and/or psychotherapy. There are three ways in which evil spirits can be implicated in physical illness. The flrst is through the action of a generic spirit of inflrmity that may weaken or debilitate a person, but may also "condition a person to whatever medical problem they may have." We should point out that this latter idea is essentially an indigenous recognition that a person can become habituated to what we have described as a narrow margin of disability (cf. chapter 3). The spirit Inflrmity may be active in cases of hypochondria, but also in legitimate ailments where ''the doctor can't fmd the problem." Removal of such a spirit may allow a chronic illness to be stabilized by medication. Because Charismatics respect the efficacy of conventional medicine, when it is ineffective and doctors declare an illness incurable, the presence of an evil spirit may be ipso facto assumed precisely because the problem is beyond the power of human means, and therefore subject only to divine power. A second, more explicitly "pneumopsychosomatic" understanding holds in cases where a speciflc spirit is discerned to stand in the way of physical healing. Thus the spirit Greed (materialism) might be implicated in a woman's inability to conceive. The spirits Unforgiveness, Resentment, Bitterness may be implicated in problems such as arthritis,

DEMONS AND DELNERANCE

197

backache, or headache. Anxiety may contribute to hypertension, or grieving to a throat ailment. Finally, some Charismatics acknowledge the existence of evil spirits specific to discrete diseases: the spirits Cancer, Diabetes, Emphysema, and so on. As with mental illness, only if a spirit is acting independently of a natural disease process will deliverance result in a cure. One renowned Catholic healer explained: Now, we've got two things. We've got, if the infirmity or whatever it is, Cancer, Leukemia, Convulsive Disorder, or whatever, came in and caused the physical illness, if you remove the spirit the person will heal. But if the sickness was there first, if the person had ulcers and got the spirit lodging in the ulcers, it would aggravate it. It would make it worse. It would almost make it unbealable, medically.... But taking the spirit out doesn't necessarily heal it. If the physical illness was there before the spirit, removing the spirit will open the way to healing, but won't necessarily heal. If the spirit was there first, then you generally can get a healing by removing the spirit. That seems to be a distinction that we've discovered [in practice]. Depends on which was there first. Does the physical ailment invite [through vulnerability] a spirit, or does the spirit cause a sickness?

What is distinct about this conception is that evil spirits are understood to inhere in the physical substance of the body, whether in the body as a whole or in discrete organs. This mode of aftliction operates on a model distinct from that described above for the more typical ministering, cardinal, and occult spirits. Those spirits are understood to act internally or externally to the person, "latching on" to an "emotional wound," but it is usually not a question of precisely where in the body such spirits may be "lodged." Indeed, two of the most experienced practitioners of deliverance were sufficiently struck by this fact when it came out in our interview that they were led to speculate on whether spirits associated with physical illness constituted a distinct category. Interestingly, this anecdote both suggests the persuasiveness to healers of the Cartesian distinction between person and body, and shows the pragmatic and flexible nature of their cultural logic of demonic classification. To be sure, the localized and substantive presence of evil spirits, though not highly elaborated, is a possibility in the Charismatic ritual system. 12 Aside from demons associated with physical illness, our data occasionally include reports of spirits departing a person as an amorpholls, shadowy mass that is explicitly noted not to appear as an image, reports of sexual demons inhering in the genital area of the afflicted

198

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

person, and reports of unexplained disruptive incidents in a particular locale. Spirits can inhabit objects, animals, houses, scenes of death or tragedy (the site of an Indian massacre or a rape), places where occult or sinful acts are carried out (cemeteries, brothels, public buildings), towns and cities, and countries. In this connection we fmd Charismatics occasionally dealing with what the popular imagination-again since at least the Renaissance-understands as "poltergeists." Healers may be called to a home in which children in particular are under demonic harassment, discernible as either a generalized "sense of evil" or evident in reports of shakings, moving objects, or foul stenches. In such cases the notion of vulnerability created by trauma, sin, or negative emotion is applied to a place rather than a person. In an interpersonal "atmosphere" conducive to demonic presence, a spirit may have subsequently taken an opportunity to, for example, "hide in the walls when the bathroom was redone." As there is no clear distinction between the spiritual and physical aspect of persons, neither is there an absolute distinction between the spiritual and material presence of evil spirits.

Ethno-ontology of Evil Spirits We must reiterate that the Charismatic demonology is a pragmatic one which is improvised, and thus variable, in practice. Moreover, there is some disagreement over what we might call the "ethno-ontological status" of particular spirits or categories of spirits. Some dispute the legitimacy of ancestral spirits as agents of affliction, or of spirits named for specific physical illnesses. Particularly controversial are spirits such as Alcoholism and Smoking, which some Charismatics fear can be too easily invoked to avoid responsibility for one's addictive behavior. Instead, say some, if there is a spirit behind alcoholism it is Selfishness. Again, despite their exceedingly conservative sexual morality, Charismatics do not uniformly insist that Homosexuality is an evil spirit-though some say that demonic activity may have "led to it." Likewise, Charismatics might debate whether there is a spirit Nationalism; perhaps it is the "spirit Pride with an aspect of nationalism." One healer stated that he was "95 percent sure" there is a spirit Hypnotism, because when hypnotized one surrenders one's divinely given free will to another human rather than to the deity, and because he had observed a prominent Protestant healer cast out such a spirit.

DEMONS AND DELIVERANCE

199

If, he reasoned, such a spirit did not exist, how could it have been cast out of someone? Nevertheless, he was aware that some apparently worthy Christian psychotherapists use hypnotism, so he was unwilling to make a definitive judgment. The Charismatic demonology appears to be constructed along two separate but related ethno-ontological continua. The first is between the human and the demonic, and there is considerable ambiguity regarding the point along that continuum at which one locates the threshold between the two. As we have seen, though accepting the existence of occult spirits, some healers may prefer to see ministering and cardinal spirits not as demonic, but as aspects of the "human spirit." Someone may have an angry spirit or be mean-spirited without being affiicted by the spirit Anger or Meanness, and healers may differ as to when and/or whether the threshold between them is crossed. The second continuum is that of the degree of concreteness, and/or personification attributed to evil. For example, whereas one healer (a priest) said that it is possible to "see demons holding onto people like monkeys or monsters," another (a psychiatrist) stated that demons are "animistic intellectual constructs for those who, like children, need pictures and parables." Some Charismatic critics go so far as to reject the validity of compiling a list of spirits such as the one we presented in table 7.1. They say that once one begins making such lists, "everything is a spirit," implying an inordinate deemphasis of the "human" element of suffering. Again, some will articulate a sense of evil not as the presence ofspiritual entities, but as a vacuum or absence of divine presence, power, and love, into which "other things" can come. For still others it is as if the spirit is not a preexistent entity, but something that comes into being. Instead of an entity that "latches on" to its host, one healer described a spirit as "something that the person has nurtured and clung to, so that it's become part of them and doesn't allow room for growth." Thinking like Pierre Janet, another suggested that spirits originate in thought patterns that create an energy that eventually allows them to become autonomous until they become an evil force in the person. Such a force is, to cite a disclaimer I heard more than once, "not a little red devil with horns," but it still requires deliverance. The cultural phenomenology of the Charismatic world presupposes that the spiritual and the human are inextricably mingled, and to this circumstance Charismatic healers have applied the resources of their culture to formulate a range of possible relations between the existence of evil and human being in the world.

8 Encounters with Evil

In this chapter we will flesh out our analysis ofdeliverance by examining texts that show how evil spirits are dealt with in the context of healing sessions. We highlight segments of ritual performance that reveal how Charismatics construe spirits as elements of their habitus and threats to the sacred self. In particular, our concern is to demonstrate the way in which deliverance constitutes a specific kind of emotional self process. We will conclude with a reflection on the phenomenology of control that will define the experiential specificity in the Charismatic encounter with evil. In all but the first of the five following cases our diagnostic interview determined that the patient had suffered at least one episode of major depression and/or serious dysthymic disorder. All were involved in ongoing processes of inner healing, and the topic of evil spirits arose differently for each.

The Woman Whose Cousin Was a Witch The healing team and patient are those described in the vignette of "the woman who merged with herself' (chapter 5). In fact, the event transcribed here occurred at the beginning of the same session, with the discernment of demonic presence by the team leader: 200

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

201

H: There's a lot of occult surrounding you. . . . See, everybody's yawning. s: Well, I have had vicious headaches, I'm even considering going to a doctor. H: [Begins arm- and leg-straightening maneuvers; see chapter 6.] Renounce Satan. S: I renounce Satan. H: Accept the Lord. Spirit of the occult, we renounce you and send you to the foot of the cross where you'll be dealt with by Jesus Christ, your Lord and master. Forgive H [husband]. Forgive yourself. [Vigorous praying in tongues by team-yawns-healer dispenses holy water on hands of all.] What's your daughter up to? S: It's [her cousin's daughter], she's come back ... two doors away. [The neighbors] have seen her going to a church locally. And my cousin's worse than she ever was. I think that's what it is. [Loud tongues.] H: In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.... Okay, how's your head? s: Feels fme. H: There's still something right here. [Touches base of skull.] We claim her for yours, Jesus .... Lord Jesus, we come against all the occult that has surrounded her life, and that presently surrounds her life. We come against anything and everything that is not of you, Lord Jesus Christ. Spirit of Darkness, we cast you out. We bind you. We send you to the foot of the cross where you will be dealt with by Lord Jesus Christ, your Lord and master. Over here, right in the back of your head, yes or no? S: My neck. H: Right here. [Base of skull; shifts hands from her back and chest to the back of head and forehead.] You're loaded [with evil spirit activity], you know it? And the headache keeps going from here to here [forehead to base of skull] because I've got it. HA [assistant]: I envision St. Michael battling with Satan; he's available [to help in the deliverance]. H: It is a battle. [Tongues.] In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! S: I could envision St. Michael sticking his sword in the Devil. H: It's gone. Is it gone? S: Yes. [Several sighs, prayer of thanks by H.]

The opening exchange establishes the causal connection between occult spirits and the patient's headache, but it appears that the symptom is invoked to explain the cause rather than vice versa. As the performance

202

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

unfolds we see the integration of practically a full range of ritual techniques. The team laid hands on the patient's head and shoulders throughout; tongues were used both in "authority" for deliverance and for praise to the deity; discernment of demonic presence was exercised by the principal healer, as was word of knowledge when she identified the location and persistence of the patient's headache in herself, and when she spontaneously inquired about the patient's daughter; demonic manifestations were evident in the "deliverance yawn" of the healing team; the technique of "leg-lengthening" was applied; the patient was instructed to forgive several people and to renounce Satan; the powerful archangel was not only invoked, but made present in imagery; and the prayer of command was uttered against specific evil spirits. The familiarity of all participants with these ritual elements allows a performative fluency and an almost-telegraphic quality that would doubtless mystify the uninitiated observer, and the patient is disposed to say that her head "feels fme" before even the healer is ready to acknowledge that the pain is entirely gone. Knowing that a profound emotional experience occurs later in this session, we might be tempted to conclude that this episode is merely what Dow (1986) would call a "therapeutic prelude," the function of which is a spiritual "show of force" to enhance what we have called the patient's therapeutic disposition, what in religious terms might be called faith, or what in psychological terms might be called suggestibility. Indeed, the healer's later comment that she suspected something important was going to happen that day might support this interpretation. Though there is doubtless some merit to such a view, most anthropological analysis stops short at this point. It is only in subsequent experiential commentary that the full significance of the episode becomes apparent: My cousin's involved in the occult very heavily. And we brought up our niece, who's also involved. And I just found out that she's back in my neighborhood, a couple of doors away. Okay, so I really feel, you know, ah- I had an uqqodly headache (a good term, huh?) [we both chuckle] and pain. Oh, I just couldn't stand it, in my chest, and then here, then here and here and here [gestures] it was just like metal crushing me .... And I've come to fmd out that's the source of it. And when they were really intensely praying, I saw St. Michael come and take the sword and stick it in the devil. This ugly thing with dark-dark figure, and he just stuck it right in him. I've seen St. Michael before, but I saw that at that moment. Then it starred to break up, the headache and everything.... I saw my sister screaming, like "You'll never be free. I have this curse on you, and you'll never get rid of that headache. You'll never be free, and I have more power." And all of this screaming and everything. That's on the tape [of the

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

203

session], that's when I saw her. Then I just saw Jesus come, and his light, and I saw the metal thing break up, that was around my head and neck just like chains, just break. The headache was from her . . . through a curse, I believe. But then Christ's light came into that, and then that's when they're praying intensely, and it went, broke it.

Instead of the apparent anomaly of the symptom (headache) being invoked to explain the cause (occult spirits) that we formulated above, it now becomes evident that there is a reason behind the presence of the spirits themselves. Their presence is a result of a curse by the patient's cousin, which is understood as the true cause of the headache. Once again the episode is played out in an embodied imaginal performance, invisible to the observer of the overt ritual performance. St. Michael, whom the patient avers to have seen in other settings as well, here carries out the very specific performative act of sticking his sword in the devil. The patient's cousin is then seen and heard to scream in threatening protest. Finally, Jesus enters with his divine light which, in concert with the team's intense prayer in tongues, succeeds in breaking the imaginal chains that bound the patient's head and neck in the crushing pain of spiritual bondage. The thematization of control and freedom is elaborated in the bodily idiom of uncontrollable headaches, which notably were bad enough that the patient had considered seeking medical care for them. The element of interpersonal control is vivid in that the headaches are interpreted as a means for the cousin to control her. The coincidence of these headaches with the return of the niece to the neighborhood corresponds with the sisters' competition for control over this young person whom they had cooperated in raising, but who had herself become "involved in the occult." In our language of therapeutic process, for this strongly disposed patient the entire sequence was a vivid experience of the sacred, the alternative elaborated was freedom from interpersonal control, and the change actualized was relief from the headache.

The Woman Who Wanted to be Protestant The healer was a woman aged sixty-one, whose professional training was as a bookkeeper/accountant. She had been involved in the Charismatic Renewal for eighteen years. She began praying for healing as a prayer-group leader to whom people would come for advice.

204

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

In addition, through work as a religious education teacher she had become interested in psychology and had recently returned to college to complete her bachelor's degree, hoping to continue training in pastoral counseling. She conducts private sessions in a Charismatic counseling and healing center, in a room where she and the patient sit facing one another. Sessions last approximately an hour, with the first forty-five minutes usually devoted to conversation and counseling and the fmal fifteen minutes to prayer, during which the healer sometimes holds the hands of the patient. The patient was a housewife and mother of two sons, aged forty-two, and with a high school education. She had been raised as a Catholic, but partly due to the snobbishness of a church where most parishioners were economically better off than her childhood family, had rejected that religion. She had for the last three years considered herself a Protestant Pentecostal, and was at first wary of working with a Catholic Charismatic healer. Clinically, she had suffered from episodes of major depression and was dysthymic. She reported having had a problem with alcohol until she was "born again," and was under medical consultation for what she described as a chronic fatigue syndrome. Her chief complaint was a severely strained and uncommunicative marital relationship, including a lack of emotional or sexual intimacy with her husband. As we have already seen in the healing of memories, however, and as is the case in much conventional psychotherapy, the healing process had turned toward the autobiographical past. The patient had recently begun learning about deliverance from evil spirits from a Protestant perspective, and felt that this genre of healing would be helpful for her. The following excerpt is from the fourth of five sessions I followed with her. It begins with discussion about a tape recording of a public deliverance service that she had listened to:

s:

I listened to a tape of mass [i.e., large group] deliverance, and the minister had people read the prayers [listing spirits to be discerned] over three hours each. H: He does that to help you identify within yourself, your blockage. S: God brings it to mind. He needs something and God brings it to mind. This is meant to be. H: And it's part of the everyday life as a Christian, do you realize that? I realize there is mass deliverance, but that's a particular situation; we used to call it an examination of conscience brought to prayer. It's a matter of identifying and prayer for what it is the blockage within you. Maybe we can do some of that today. I believe you have a blockage-pain or resentment in

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

S: H: S:

H: S:

H:

S:

H:

S:

H:

S:

H:

S:

H:

205

some way. It could be several small blockages. They're usually caused by pain and resentment. Even lack of forgiveness in yourself. The devil has a way of condemning you. The Accuser. Self-deception. He will deceive you. I think of the devil coming and reminding you constantly of something you've done-digging up the grave. "Old photographs." Whatever, but that's different than going back to something in your childhood or life, where you may have gotten hurt or need to look at something and bring it to the light of the Holy Spirit. It's different. The devil is condemning, and he'll keep reminding you of something that God has already forgiven you of. Something may have psychologically affected you in your life, and may still be influencing your thinking. It's not condemning you. It's looking at something that may be affecting you psychologically, and you want to bring it to the light of the Holy Spirit and just heal it and clear it away, so you don't have to go back.... But if you beat yourself down and say I'm no good, you'll never get anywhere. Well, that was my childhood, the way I was brought up. This is what I'm talking about, how the past has affected you psychologically. So what do we do? We bring alive the Holy Spirit in your childhood, and we do that in prayer. That in itself could be a deliverance, to let go of that picture, all that has caused in you psychologically ... caused by other people set into you; but they have to be forgiven, nevertheless. We're often injured psychologically by our parents, but we don't know where to judge them because the Fourth Commandment says honor Dad and Mom. There's a reason for that; they may be crippled and can only give what they have. You have to forgive. Is there a particular area in your childhood that you would like me to pray for? I could never pick an area, no. In prayer, and looking at yourself, try to visualize yourself in a particular place in childhood-a home-and allowing Jesus to bring forth to you a picture. Visualize. You have a hard time visualizing? All right, you don't have to see it, but you can feel it. You remember what you felt at a particular time when you were young. You know you've been scarred. In prayer, feeling, recognize an area you remember being hurt, and allowing Jesus to just heal that. You don't have to name it if you don't want. Just pray and let Jesus point something out to you to heal. This you can consider if you want, deliverance. I consider it's a deliverance, but it's a deliverance in that the negative effects of it will leave, Okay? What would you name it? You could name it just-see it's not a sin. A lot of times you need to be

206

S:

H:

S: H:

S: H:

s: H: S: H: S:

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

delivered of pain, of maybe a resentment of being cheated out of a happy childhood. Whatever. If I'm talking to somebody that I've just met and talk and they tell me that they had such a happy childhood, there's a feeling. Of resentment. No, of envy. Not that they shouldn't have had it, but I wish I had had it too. So in that sense it's in the form of a little bit of a resentment. It's a scar. For your sake you need to forgive and accept with faith that Jesus lived to do something with that. Remember most of all that Jesus loves you. He died that we might be able to receive these healings. Try if you can; I'm sure you will be able to remember. Go back. Walk back with Jesus to the years when you were just a young child, whatever age you chose. Cleanse your mind. Allow him to walk with you. I would suggest he walk with you at the very time of your conception. Feel yourself walking with Jesus, walking down through the years. Jesus, heal the conception. Heal her, Lord Jesus. Bless her life. Bless the nine months, Lord Jesus. Heal, Lord, any negative effects that she may have received within the womb. Fed yourself, S, nine months, going through the birth, and Jesus the physician receiving you. Lord Jesus, heal the mother and the father, and most of all the child. Allow Jesus to heal and to furnish and nourish you with nurturing that your mother and your father should have given you .... Think of your mother and your father and allow Jesus to heal them both. See them in their own weakness, their own blindness. See them with compassionate thinking and with compassion. Allow Jesus to replace love that you need, the security that you need. . . . Allow God's love to heal the fears, screaming and yelling; the needs-financial. We ask you, Lord Jesus, to give S the grace to forgive, the grace to let go, to let her parents go into your hands .... We ask you, Jesus, to heal S's memory of being shamed. Heal her memory of bondage to shame. She looks to your Spirit to make herself as competent [pause] to see herself as you see her, Lord Jesus .... Speak to Jesus, and through him forgive, love, any teachers, priests, anyone who has hun you that you feel might still have an effect on you today. [Whispers prayer in tongues.] Break the bondage, Lord Jesus. I bind every spirit of darkness. The spirit of resentment. Spirit of resentment, Lord Jesus. Lord Jesus Christ. And I send [you, spirit] to the feet ofJesus. [We send the spirit to the feet of Jesus so that it cannot control.] We bind and rebuke you, spirit of doubt-Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Send you to the feet of Jesus. To the feet of Jesus. Anything else that you want to [bind]? Please bring forgiveness. We bind, we rebuke in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

207

H: By his authority, the spirit of unforgiveness, we send you to the feet of Jesus. s: We send you to the feet ofJesus. H: We accept, Lord Jesus, the freedom that you have given us. S: This freedom that you have given us. H: Break-accept the breakage of these bondages. S: Breakage of all these bondages. H: And thank you for your kindness to S. Are there any other areas? S: I don't know. H: Okay. Lord Jesus Christ, we ask that any other bondages that S may be suffering from, we ask as time goes on, that in a short time, that you bring to mind any bondages. Give her, Lord, the strength and the authority, in your name, Lord Jesus Christ, to take authority for these bondages, these spirits, that control her body, that she might be totally free. We ask you to fill her in every one of those spaces with abundance. . . . Say with me now: [recites the Lord's Prayer]. We praise you, Lord Jesus. When you doubt, that's an area we need to concentrate on, binding the spirit of doubt, the spirit ofunforgiveness, send it to the feet ofJesus. We covered a little ground today!

Let us recapitulate the ritual action in this lengthy segment. The healer begins by formulating evil spirits not as entities, but in terms of their effect, namely "blockage." Faced with a patient she feels is too eager to attribute her problems to maleficent supernatural influence, she also construes spirits as an aspect of everyday life, as an internally operative self-deception instead of an external Accuser. She describes the process of discernment as a self-examination of conscience instead of a passively spontaneous revelation. Acknowledging the devil's role in maintaining negative effects of earlier memories, she equates forgiveness for traumatic memories with deliverance, apparently in an effort to satisfy the patient's evident desire for deliverance. The healer accommodates to the patients's concern about not being able to visualize, and repeats that freedom from the psychological effects of whatever memory is brought to mind can be considered deliverance. She appears to resist "naming the spirit" as Resentment, preferring to describe it, in the language of healing of memories, as an emotional "scar." She again invokes the imagination, and begins the healing-of-memories process of autobiographical review. Her prayer is for forgiveness, compassion, and allowing the deity to heal the patient's parents, themselves ''wounded'' by weakness and blindness. She briefly switches out of prayer to instruct the patient to forgive. She then prays in tongues in order to invoke the divine presence and gather spiritual power, and when she reenters her

208

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

prayer it is a prayer of deliverance. The patient knows how to take part in the deliverance and repeats each phrase after the healer. The healer concludes with a prayer that in effect sets the stage for the process to continue outside the healing setting, instructing the patient to "take authority" over any "bondage" that subsequendy "comes to mind." The entire sequence is integrated by an intimate conceptual linkage among notions of internal blockage, external bondage, and the binding of spirits. Following is the patient's post-session reflection on what happened to her:

s:

Te:

S:

Te: S:

Te:

S:

The resentment [is] that I was robbed of, of. .. a happy childhood. I can't say one incident or another. It's the whole thing. My father worked in a mill and was tired most of the time . . . sick. No affection, no, no guidance, no counseling. Only with friends or their parents, which is really awful. Affection turned to stray cats. Found in the woods, I'd take them home. I could love them and, and be affectionate. [My mother,] I guess she was involved with her own misery. She didn't realize that we had ... misery also. Or she didn't have the patience for her daughters. Mmhum. What else was going through your mind, and through your body too, when this was happening in the session? Well, that she [the healer] was ... hitting on something that is still in me that needs to be ... taken care of. I don't have a love for people. I never did. And maybe that's one part of the reason why [pause] as a child, I was always under ... I remember being excited and would get a backhand in the face. So I was afraid to get excited and afraid to ... to be bubbly or laugh or whatever. Fear of a slap in the face. So when I would see other people ... doing so ... I used to resent them. And so I guess that just built and built and built and I just ... am ... very, very choosy about my friends. And ... don't have a lot of people. Why would they give you the slap? Don't ask me, Tom. I was ... they were both, uhm, uneducated and, and brought up, you know ... ignorant and violent. And my father's parents ... were both alcoholics. And my mother's were from Austria ... I remember my grandfather just sat around all weekend, Sunday. My mother said that, oh, he used to just have his friends over and they would drink all day ... the moonshine that my grandmother had to make all day Saturday . . . after working in a mill all week. So, I mean, that's where they came from. So what did they know. Was there anything in particular that [the healer] said or did, or that you said or did that strikes you as particularly helpful ?r significant? [Pause.] The fact that I'm still carrying it around. I ... had to agree with her, you know. The resentment I feel toward my parents, I have to realize, like she said, that that's where they really bind us. Unless they knew. And to let God deal with them and not me carry all this around with me saying unforgiveness ... which is not good for me, and my personality.

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

209

TC: What do you think might be the result in your life? What do you think might be developing out of this, or what do you think might change? S: Getting rid of, of my blockage. [Pause.] That is ... probably hindering more of the Holy Spirit within me. More darkness that comes out of blockage, that comes out before the Holy Spirit . . . can work through me.

The substance of resentment as a controlling force returns us to the psychocultural themes of intimacy and spontaneity, as the patient traces her feeling of an inability to love people back to lack of an intimate parental environment, and to parental repression of her spontaneous childhood ebullience. When she acknowledges as especially significant that she is still "carrying around" her resentment, the "binding" to which she refers is one her parents, not evil spirits, exercised on "me and my personality." She must "let God deal with" her parents. Here we see a complex dynamic of control: the spirits are controlling her, but insofar as she clings to her emotions and is unable to forgive and thereby to "let go," she maintains a kind of control-she is in "possession" of her resentment and unforgiveness as much as they may threaten to possess her. This is the control that she must relinquish to the deity as her part in the deliverance, in order to remove the "blockage" and make it possible that the "Holy Spirit can work through me." The problem of reconciling cultural styles of healing is evident in the patient's attempt to understand the relationship between the kind of deliverance she had been learning about in the Pentecostal Church, and what she had just experienced with the Catholic Charismatic healer. The following is also drawn from her experiential commentary: S: The healing is related to deliverance. You're getting rid of something. [If I went to the Protestant] deliverance ministry. Okay, and he said to me, you have the spirit of envy, the spirit of resentment and unforgiveness. And he claimed it. And, ordered it in the name ofJesus, and by his authority, for it to c-c-come out of me .... It would have been different than, than what we did here. [Pause.] I don't know if I can make you understand spiritual things, Tom. Some of the spirits that were coming out of those people, I heard on the tape were screaming, they don't want to leave. They want, they like their homes, they don't want to leave. And they fight to stay. And some people gag and it gets caught in their throat, and they ah, vomit, they, they come out screaming. And this is what I heard on the tape. And I didn't experience anything like this. So this is, this is a different form. What she's doing is healing. She's asking me to give it to God in prayer, which we did. And, believed that, that he would do it. Or that he has done it. TC: In the prayer you were binding and rebuking those spirits.

210

s: TC: S:

TC: S:

TC: S:

TC: S:

TC:

S:

ENCOUNfERS WITH EVIL

I believe that's what she did, yeah. See, I would have done it differently. Well, I can't say that I would have done it differently, but, uhm, what I heard on the tape, it was done differently. She said it was a fonn of deliverance. Any healing is a form of deliverance. Right. But when she binds and rebukes the spirits and sends them to the foot of Jesus ... I guess my question is, was she doing deliverance, or ... ? No. That one's deliverance, this one's [inner] healing. When I first came to Jesus ... when I first became a born-again, that instant I was delivered of a few things. I think I've told you I was drinking alcohol. I was delivered from that; the desire was just gone, like that. In healing, you have to face ... like I did today. I did. And by facing it, you should feel free of it. But, it is painful. I don't feel free of it yet. Was the experience you had of being delivered of drinking more like what those people on the tape were going through? No. I didn't go through anything. It, he just ... took the desire out of me. Whereas . . . the next night I went for my regular wine like I drank every night for I don't know how many years, twenty years? Maybe more. And I didn't want it. That desire was gone. And I had a hunger ... for the Bible, which I used to call a bunch of fairy tales. I had a hunger for the, for the knowledge of God that was in there. And I was a, a swearer, [and] I couldn't do that anymore [either]. And anyone that did it in my presence, it was like a knife in my stomach. I couldn't-couldn't-it hurt. Mmhum. When you were delivered from either of those things, were there any manifestations? No. No, I just saw Jesus as real personal and ... No, I didn't have any manifestations. That's an interesting thing that you brought it up. Sometimes a person can have so many that they're all . . . they have to hold that person down. It takes eight men to, sometimes it takes eight men to hold that person down. Or he can hann himself. When they don't want to leave .... That's just what I heard . . . by people that I trust. I believe them. But I've never seen it. But this was, this was not a deliverance thing here [today]. It was, more or less, I faced what was in me. And we named it. You know, we claimed it to be healed in the name ofJesus. For them to leave. No. God has to manifest this. I have to pray as we did today and . . . believe ... that they can work. Okay. Now, you said that you named it and faced it and commanded them to leave. But when you say "them," are you referring to, to ... ? To the resentment that I have and the unforgiveness, the envy, the whatever ... that I ... carry around. [Breath.] And pushing it back . . . into the back of my mind. . . saying, that's not true. That's in the past. I, I don't feel that way anymore, whereas ... I still do carry it around I guess. Okay. So, for you those are not spirits, but they're sort of like feelings? I don't want to put words in your mouth. But. . . but, when you said "commanded them to leave," I'm not exactly sure whether ... The spirits. See, [the healer] could answer you better probably. She said it was a fonn of deliverance.

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

211

TC: Mmhum. Do you feel like it was? S: No, not from what I heard on the, ah, the tape. That's my idea of deliverance. You can't be delivered, I don't think. you can be delivered ... from everything. You have to take steps ... and ... and pray, and like she said, you have to want them to leave. You know, I've lived with them so long that this time I'm gonna hafta let them go. By God's grace. That's how I'll do it. Not by anything I can do. Are you confused or am I confused? I am frustrated because, you know, I ... I don't know the difference ... exactly, between the deliverance that I told you about, and what happened here. I don't quite know, Tom. And I want to know. And I'm groping and I'm searching my mind right now, but I will ... I'll find out. I want to know. I know that this was good, that, that I faced these things, even though it did bring pain, you know. Looking back now [on my past], he was with me ... I can see that now. But at the time I was lost. And now, I have the Lord.

Let us begin by considering the three "spirits" Envy, Resentment, and Unforgiveness. The first of these was "named" by the patient in the session segment transcribed above, when she distinguished it from resentment. It was not picked up by the healer in the deliverance prayer, however, where instead the spirit Doubt was included. The omission of Envy might be understood as the healer's attempt to resist what she sees as the patient's eagerness to entity and perhaps multiply spirits. The inclusion of doubt likely pertains to precisely the kind ofconcern for the legitimacy of ritual form that the patient expresses in this segment. It is not related to the substantive emotional issues dealt with, but is the kind of process-oriented metaspirit we identified in chapter 7. The patient draws a distinction between deliverance and inner healing: although in both one is "getting rid of something," deliverance occurs spontaneously whereas in inner healing one must face the situation in its painfulness and give it to God in prayer. In the former, resistance is expressed as behavioral violence on the part of spirits, whereas in the latter it is the patient's psychological inability to let go. However, when she cites her own spontaneous deliverance from alcohol and swearing, she is somewhat stymied by the observation that those instances were not accompanied by the requisite "manifestations." Yet she acknowledges that, whatever the difference, she and the healer had in fact confronted evil spirits. Let us briefly summarize with respect to our four elements of therapeutic process. Though this patient's disposition within the ritual-healing system is relatively strong, her therapeutic resistance-quite another thing-is rather high. In addition, partly because of her uncertainty

212

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

about the nature of deliverance as a ritual genre, the experience of the sacred is ambiguous. The elaboration of alternatives consists both in the juxtaposition of Protestant and Catholic interpretive models, and in the formulation of the psychological consequences of resentment and unforgiveness. As for the actualization of change, none is evident in this episode, and in fact the painstaking process of incremental change continued after the patient's participation in our research protocol was completed.

The Woman Who Was Withering Away This vignette and the one that follows show not the actual casting out of spirits, but the discussion between healer and patient of how ritual techniques are applied in everyday life. The healer in the first was a sixty-year-old Catholic priest who had conducted healing prayer since becoming involved in the Charismatic Renewal twelve years earlier. He holds a Doctorate of Ministries degree with concentrations in psychology and counseling. He conducts public healing services, healing-of-ancestry masses in patient's homes, and private sessions in a counseling room of the monastery where he resides. Such sessions, seldom lasting more than half an hour, begin with a period of light talk and counseling. The patient is then seated on a straight-backed chair in the center of the room, and the priest anoints her forehead with holy oil. He stands behind her with one hand on her head and another on her shoulder, praying silently for approximately five minutes. He then asks the patient about any experiences that emerged during the prayer, and following this second period of conversation the session ends. The patient was a twenty-seven-year-old woman, the third youngest of nine children, unmarried and living with her family. She is a practicing Catholic, and although she had ceased attending Charismatic prayer groups after only several months, frequently went to public healing services. For approximately two years she had been ill with what our diagnostic interview confirmed as panic disorder and major depression, for which she was under both psychopharmacological treatment with a psychiatrist and in psychotherapy with a psychologist. Her illness appeared related to life events including lack of success in nursing school (she dropped out); her feeling that she was "losing" most of her friends to marriage; "burnout" from a stressful job from which she had been

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

213

transferred two months prior to her first panic attack; and a family environment characterized by an authoritarian father, poor parental relationships, a falling out with a sister to whom she had been quite dose, and the presence in the household of a sister afflicted with chronic schiwphrenia. She had entered the ritual healing process after attending a public service conducted by this priest, during which his response to her request for prayer for "severe depression" was to command expulsion of a "spirit ofdarkness" and suggest that she come to him for private sessions. The following event was cited by her as the most significant of the session in which it occurred:

s:

I had thoughts like, you know, I'm slowly going to wither away. Almost like having some form of cancer. It doesn't leave me. It haunts me. It never leaves me. It won't go away. I can't get rid of it. I don't know how to get rid of it. It's driving me crazy. It's driven me crazy. It's overtaken my whole life. H: What did I tell you last time, I guess you forgot. About taking authority over these things within yourself You take authority in the name ofJesus Christ, and you command them to just get the heck out. They have to obey. S: I have said that to myself at different times. Like this whole past week while I was at mass. I had the tremors and the shakes real bad. You know, the fears around other people being there, whatever. And I kept saying you know, "In the name of Christ, leave me, leave me." Trying to force the way that I thought into another direction, more positive. And ... H: Let me clue you in to something. If you say for instance, "In the name of Jesus," right? There's an evil spirit that calls itself"Jesus" ... but it's a false Jesus. You got to remember that. Some people get caught up.... It's like conjuring up a spirit, and they're confronting the evil spirit [that] calls himself"Jesus." So I always use the name "Jesus Christ" or "Jesus ofNazareth," you know? That Jesus. Oh, yeah, hundreds of [Spanish-speaking] people call themselves Jesus.

In this episode the desperation of the patient's description of distress indicates both a powerful sense of lack of control and the distinct otherness of a depression and anxiety that "haunts" her and "won't go away." It is important that previously, when the priest instructed her in the technique of taking authority in the name of the deity, he had not identified "these things within yourself' as anything other than emotions. He had referred only to a generalized spirit of Darkness, although given his personal approach to demonology'it is likely that he himself associated specific emotions with specific demons. His directive in this episode to specify the name "Jesus Christ" was more than a move to cover the technique'S lack of success, but a raising of the rhetorical

214

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

stakes. The failure to command one's emotions indicates in the logic of the healing system that a more powerful force is at work, in this case a deceitful false (i.e., demonic imitator of) Jesus. Here is the patient's understanding of the relation of emotion and evil spirit in her own experience: [It was helpful] just to be told it's all in the way that you're thinking. If you can have the strength or get the strength up in you to force, or when the feeling starts to come over you, if you can get your mind quickly onto something else and say, "I'm not going to pay attention to it." And then just pick up something or put your mind right over to something else, you can get that feeling going. But the more you sit and the more you dwell on it, the more you feed into it. So I think that's what he was trying to tell me. Learning how to take charge of your own feelings .... [Commanding it in the name of Jesus means] the sense that God is always with me. And He doesn't want me to feel the way that I'm feeling. Just to bring it to mind that I should have the strength or have strOng enough faith to say in his name, "Leave." And it should go. It should go. Because I'm not thinking in a positive way, and that's why I'm feeling in the way that I'm feeling. And He does not want me to feel that way. So, that's what I think he was trying to tell me. And that you should get some source of, ya know, like an inner peace just from that, if you practice it all the time. That's what I have to work on. I didn't know that it could be like an evil spirit or whatever [calling himself by] that name, Jesus. I had never thought along those lines. God was God in that name ... in the name Jesus or in the name of Christ. But he said, "No. You would say 'first and last' or like 'in the name of Jesus Christ' or 'in the name ofJesus of Nazareth .... '" [Also], I had never thought that there could be some type of evil force over me or in me that's really pulling me down or causing me to feel the way that I'm feeling. Father calls it the spirit of Darkness, which I do believe is real. A real thing in the sense of an evil type of force. Because this is not of God. And I've always thought along those lines. So when he told me at the healing service, ''This is a spirit of Darkness," it really struck home. Yes, it very well could be. And that's a pretty creepy feeling. I guess I've always known along that this is not of God. This is not of health, of good health, whatever. That it has to be of something evil or something darkened. [What he said helped me] to know, and to give me courage and more strength, and more faith. Faith-wise, to know that this is not of God. And how prayer can build your faith. It can build your strength.

The patient pragmatically understands the technique of invoking the deity in order to control one's emotions as a reminder to shift her attention away from the negative and to cultivate inner peace. Her understanding is summarized in the statement that, when it is commanded to go in the deity's name, "It should go. Because I'm not thinking in a )'ositive way, and that's why I'm feeling in the way that I'm

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

215

feeling. And He [the deity] does not want me to feel that way." The priest never said it should go, but that it must go, which indicates that, perhaps for fear of frightening the patient, he was inducing her to use the prayer of command on herself without making her fully aware that she was casting out evil spirits. Yet she clearly got the message that an evil force was involved, acknowledging surprise at the subtlety of the technique for specifying the name of the deity, and acknowledging a sense of reassurance at the knowledge that there was a real evil force at work that was "not of God," and "not of good health." Despite the relatively high disposition of the patient, however, this cultural objectification of lack of emotional control was apparently not a viable alternative in the face of significant psychopathology. When she did not appear for one of her healing sessions, it was learned that she had been admitted to a hospital where she was scheduled to undergo a course of electroconvulsive shock therapy.

The Woman in Turmoil The healer and patient are those in the vignette of "the woman whose mother went to pieces" (chapter 5). It is safe to say that this patient had considerably more background in Charismatic ritual practice, greater self-reflectiveness, and was rather less severely disturbed than the woman in the preceding vignette. She had been experiencing considerable inner turmoil while she prayed, turmoil that she felt was related to her preparation to face the difficult issues of her marriage and relationship with her mother. The day before the session described in chapter 5 she realized, although she claims not to "get into the 'other force' very much," that the power of evil was nevertheless involved in her situation. During the session, and prior to the episode of imaginal performance, the healer questioned exactly how she conceives of this force, and she replied that it is Satan:

s:

I don't like to give him [Satan] much credit, but I have to be aware that he is a force that does work against you. And all of a sudden I realized a lot of my turmoil in prayer could possibly have come from him-well, within myself also, but there was something else that I needed to do. I talked to Father P [her spiritual advisor] for a few minutes yesterday, and he said "Have you been binding him?" And it was like, "Uuhh," I hadn't even thought of it. But it is a process that I believe in.

216

H: S: H: S:

H: S:

H: S: H: S: H:

S: H:

ENCOUNI'ERS WITH EVIL

Did it help when you did binding prayer? Yes it did, I was surprised. What spirits did you feel were harassing you? Absolutely, there was confusion, and an unsettling. My basic core was saying, "It's going to be okay and this is the way you go forward," but there was a lot of inner turmoil. You felt some of that turmoil, and the evil spirit added to the turmoil. Yeah, and that hadn't even entered my mind until he said that. He said, "I'm going to remind you of something again" [the possibility of demonic influence and the use of binding prayer], and I said, "Oh, God." It was funny because I was looking for a passage in one of my journals and I couldn't fmd it, but everything I opened to-and it didn't dawn on me when I was opening it-talked about another force. You know, just simple lines that I had quoted. Of evil spirits harassing you. That's what I call it. So I was very surprised. But it felt good, because it made sense. Then I had a good cry. And did your prayers to bind . . . ? Yeah, I bound, and I cried, and I felt better.... I guess what I'm hearing in terms of the process is you got in touch with the resistance, the sort of anxiety and fear at entering into looking more at the marriage. And at the same time, you really experienced God, sort of at the core of your being, saying it was okay to do that. Whatever the impact may be. I believe that. You know, just in terms of the whole spirituality dimension, 1 really feel that at moments when one is going to make breakthroughs in growth, or breakthroughs to freedom, there is a lot of harassment by evil spirits. And I guess my image is, sort of like they come and aggravate our weakness. So that the turmoil would probably be there without any harassment, from fear, from resistance psychologically-but just as you said, it can be intensified, made into a force that grabs you more deeply perhaps. The moment you say "I can't do it," to me that becomes the moment when the evil spirits are more active, in the sense of touching woundedness that might be there anyway. The fear and the resistance, the turmoil and the fear would be there, evil spirits or no evil spirits. But this dominates your consciousness more, and it leads you into unfreedom and discouragement about yourself. What you do to yourself is self-judgment. I just want to say that I think that happens to all of us when we are in the midst of that turmoil-you know, part of the way evil spirits work, I think, is lie. So the lie is that we don't see the lie. Part of the effect of the evil spirit, sort of adding salt to a wound, or sort of keeping an emotional turmoil sort of locked in, is by the lie of keeping us from seeing in ourselves, even though we're capable.

In this instance we fmd a patient attuned to what we will define below as a threshold of control, a point of distinction between emotion and

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

217

evil spirit at which a phenomenological criterion of otherness is met. Her Charismatic spiritual advisor affirms her sense by reminding her of the binding technique, which in turn suggests that perhaps divine guidance was operative in the fortuitous opening of her journal to passages in which she had quoted lines about "another force." Her Charismatic psychotherapist reaffirms her interpretation in several ways: by unhesitatingly asking what the specific spirits were; by reformulating the patient's turmoil as "therapeutic resistance" intensified by demonic activity; by congratulating her for simultaneously "getting in touch" both with the resistance and with the deity's approval of her commitment to the healing process; and by pointing out that demonic harassment is often timed to disrupt impending "breakthroughs." Throughout, the healer uses a standard psychotherapeutic technique of reformulating and "reflecting back" the patient's thoughts. In the patient's summary of the effect of the binding prayer, "1 bound, and 1 cried, and 1 felt better," we again recognize the relevance of SchefPs (1979) theory, according to which binding can be said to create an aesthetic distance that allows the "crying and feeling better" of catharsis. The patient's commentary is as follows: Well it sounds so strange. Logically, I mean sitting here, I do it because I really feel there's two forces. I feel there is good and there is evil. And I think [the healer] was right on target when she said there is going to be normal turmoil and normal fear. But there is a force that likes to feed in on that. I've really seen in the past and it's been so clear that when you become aware of it, it loses its power. "You have no power over me." And there's a fabulous movie, one of those rock stars, it's on good and evil. David Bowie-you ever seen that show? It's done with goblins. And there's a fabulous line at the end, and she turns around and she faces him and realizes he has no power over her. And she looks him in the eye and says, "You have no power over me," and he literally disintegrates. And this has happened more and more. And I really believe that once you have identified, yes you are in a turmoil, but it's extra. It's like all of a sudden you start saying, ''Well, I can't counsel, I can't mother," all these extra doubts start coming in that's extra than the turmoil. And that's identifying evil. When you turn around and say, "You have no power over me," or you bind-the charismatic word is "binding." It really is true. All of a sudden it lifts. You have really said, "I understand what's going on, I understand what wheels you've spun, I understand what tape you're playing, and I'm not going to buy into it any longer. Yes, I'm fearful, but there's another stronger force, and that's the force that's leading me into this pain, or leading me into this fear, because I'm going to be a better person." You'll see it particularly when someone is going to enter into something that's going to heal them. Whether it be even an eight-day retreat, or counseling, or spiritual directing.

218

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

This commentary lucidly describes the phenomenology of binding spirits. Recognizing the "extra" in one's emotions is identifying, or in other words discerning, evil. Binding is not a reassertion of control, but a refusal to be out of control that is available as a permanent alternative within the habitus. When that recognition is made and that step is taken, there is an actualization of change. The demonic oppression lifts suddenly-spontaneously-and therefore as an experience of the sacred.

The Gangster with a Lollipop The healer was the same as in the vignette of "the woman who wanted to be Protestant." The patient was a forty-threeyear-old man, the second of three children, who lives with his widowed mother. He described a childhood in a close-knit Catholic family, stating that he was very religious as a child. He rejected religion after his father "died a horrible death," for which the son blamed God. Several years later he had begun to read avidly in Protestant and Catholic religious literature, trying to reach a modus vivendi with the deity. He had attended at least one Charismatic healing service, but reported being somewhat put off by speaking in tongues as well as by his own inability to rest in the Spirit or to visualize in a guided imagery prayer. His relationship to the deity was troubled. He regarded himself as a hypocrite for "only going to God when he needed something," and by that reasoning concluded that he should stay away from the deity altogether. He had suffered for some time with chronic back pain derived from a work-related injury, and our diagnostic interview indicated that he had suffered four episodes of major depression. His chief complaint, however, was the inability to form a lasting, intimate relationship with a woman. A series of disappointing relationships of varying duratIon had left him frustrated and lonely. Several of these relationships were with married women, a circumstance that caused him considerable moral consternation in the face of his conservative Catholic background, and he was resentful toward God for not answering his prayers for an appropriate partner. He felt that although the women he met in nightclubs were initially attracted to him because of his "tough" appearance, they lost interest when they discovered his gentle and mild-mannered personality-as if "a gangster had offered them a lollipop."

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

219

The patient had been in psychotherapy for several months at a Charismatic counseling center. His therapist referred him for inner healing to our healer, also a member of the staff, and the following event is drawn from the third session between them: H: S is opening his heart to you in the only way that he can. 1 ask you, Lord, to fill him. Let your Holy Spirit touch his heart and his mind. Fill him, Lord, with the desire to be your son. Help him to experience the love that you have for him. Help him to know you.... There is a verse that comes to mind from 29 Jeremiah, where God says, "I will bring you back to your place. 1 have scattered you. You've lost everything. And 1 promise to bring you back. I'll bring back your fortunes. I'll bring back all that you had." This scripture 1 pray for you, S. That God will make you whole, that he will heal all the pain that you've received down through the years. That he will heal the pain that you now have. Know that God forgives you as the father went to the prodigal son with open arms and rejoiced, so God receives you.

S: Something in me says, "You're worthless. You're not worth a piece of shit." That's just what it says.

H: That's the devil saying that to you. That's the evil. That's the evil, that's not God. 1 don't care what you've done, and 1 don't care what you're doing yet, God loves you. You've got to believe that. [Softens tone.] 1 bind and 1 rebuke spirit of unbelief, in the name of Jesus Christ. 1 send you to the foot 00esus. Cover him, Lord Jesus, with your light. Protect him. [Returns to conversational tone.] You are going through a spiritual battle. 1 know it's not easy. 1 pray that you win over the evil.

S: I will bt."cause the evil's not strong enough to take me.

H: Okay. You want to sayan Our Father ... ?

The principal issue in this episode is what we have referred to as the patient's disposition with respect to the ritual-healing system: his feeling of betrayal by the deity focuses the healer's agenda on making him feel that God is on his side. The sense of worthlessness articulated by the patient is the experiential integument that connects his inability to fmd intimacy with the deity and his inability to fmd intimacy with a woman. When he casts this sense in the phrase "something in me says," the healer immediately construes the "something" as an evil spirit. Holding closely to the theme that she has addressed, however, she names not the spirit Worthlessness, but Unbelief. Marked by a distinct change in tone of voice, she casts out this spirit with a prayer of command. From the experiential commentary, here is what occurred from the patient's standpoint:

220

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

For every positive or negative thought I get-if it's an outward positive thought I get an inward negative thought, and if it's a negative outward thought I get a positive inward thought. I don't know if its a spiritual battle.... See, while she's praying with me, I'm battling inside, in my mind, and I'm talking inside, saying all the negative parts. I'm like praying with her, only against the negative parts that are going through my mind. Even though I'm just standing there and she's praying over me. Like I'm saying inside, like it's saying to me, "You'll never be nothing, you're a loser, you're a piece of shit." Right.... And I'm sitting there and I'm saying, "Fuck you, fuck you and your mother." That's what I'm saying to whatever it is. "I will not succumb to you. No way, I will not. You're not going to win over me, your negativity is not going to win over me. I'm not a loser." Then it goes like, "Well, look around you, you know who's winning. If God really loved you, why are you in this mess you're in?" Stuff like that goes through my mind. I don't hear voices, it's just a thought-how do you explain it-don't you ever battle with yourself? Something's telling me, "Don't believe that shit, just look around you. How can you believe this [religious] stuff?" And I say in my mind, "Why don't you screw it." I keep battling with that. So the positive part of me is stimulating [good thoughts]. In that respect, I'm fighting off the negativity.... It's my own negativity, really. It's my own negativity battling my positivity. They say the devil, I don't like to think of the devil, that scares me. I don't like "devil.» They call everything negative as being the devil, you know. The devil is anything that goes against positive. And I don't like to think that there is such a thing as a "devil." That really scares the shit out of me .... For example, I'll go into a nightclub, and I'll see everybody sitting there, who's drinking, who's talking, who's laughing, and I'll say to myself, "You're different than everybody else in here." And there's something in my mind that will say, "Why are you different from everybody else in here? If you were different, everybody would be looking at you like you're an oddball, which you're not." Things like that. It's like I'm constantly weighing every move I make, you know?

In this excerpt the patient offers a vivid example of the kind of "depressogenic" thought processes identified by cognitive therapists of depression (Beck et al. 1979, Ellis 1973). In this case: You are deserving of God's love/God loves you. If God loved me, life would be goodlI'd have someone to love. My life is a messlI have no one to love. God doesn't love me. Our immediate interest, however, is in the phenomenological conditions under which the patient rejects the healer's cultural objectification of this preobjective thought process as an evil spirit. Within the healing system, a spirit is present if the emotion or behavior is beyond the control of the afflicted. This lack of control is the foundational moment

ENCOUNfERS WITH EVIL

221

of the sense of otherness that characterizes the sacred in its negative aspect, the demonic. The healer's "discernment" was thus likely based as much on the spontaneous, uncontrolled intrusion of the negative thought upon her prayer, and the sheer fact that such incessant "battling" was going on, as on the linguistic depersonalizing of the thought process in the patient's reference to "something inside me." The patient, however, evidently did not feel a lack of control, precisely because he was constantly and actively "battling" the negativity. That is, the occurrence of the negativity was for him not in itself a lack of control, but on the contrary the battling against negativity was the preservation of control. Not only was he at home with this battle, but according to the examples he provided the characteristic process in which he made a spontaneous "inward" response to virtually any "outward" (i.e., overt or intentional) thought apparently occurred regardless of whether the initiating thought was positive or negative. As for the sense of otherness, the patient's pronominal usage in the experiential commentary does in fact exhibit a good deal of equivocation. The most telling instance is when he opens a sentence, "Like I'm saying inside, like it's saying to me ...." At times he refers to "it" or "something," and addresses the negativity as "you." At others he explicitly says "I say" and takes care to specify that "I don't hear voices, it's just a thought,"l and that it's "my own negativity battling my positivity." Thus, the phenomenological recognition of lack of control that is the cultural criterion for the objectification of otherness is absent. In addition, the patient is fearful of acknowledging the existence of the kind of "devil" he learned about in his conservative Catholic upbringing. Lacking these elements of disposition and experience of the sacred-far more than simply the "faith to be healed"-he was unable to elaborate a viable alternative to his "negativity." This patient did not return for another healing session.

Phenomenology of Control In the cases described in this chapter we have had an opportunity for a close examination of the way evil spirits enter into ritual performance as well as of the way dealing with them contributes to therapeutic process. We can now consolidate what the study of the Charismatic demonology and deliverance has taught us about those

222

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

issues-the behavioral environment, person, self, and human reality-that we identified at the beginning of chapter 7. Perhaps the clearest way (as well as the way most likely to contribute to a theoretical understanding) to achieve this end is a brief exercise in what we might call comparative demonology. The possibility of a comparative demonology rests on the ethnological commonplace that spirits attack humans, and on the scholarly consensus that the activity of spirits has something to do with the self. Once said, however, we must be concerned not only with ethnographic variation in what constitutes spirit attack, but also with the theoretical differences among anthropologists in the favored concept of self and with methodological differences in the kind of data presented. For the present purposes it will suffice to limit our exercise to one ethnological comparison case, with hopes that our discussion might offer a model for an expanded comparative demonology. 2 Our material is that of Sinhalese Buddhist demonic possession and exorcism, as described by Kapferer (1979b, 1979c, 1983). As in the Charismatic system, for Sinhalese, "demons are consistently associated with such desires, passions, and emotions as lust, pride, greed, cruelty, anger, violence, pain, sorrow, suffering, etc." (1979b: 155). However, unlike Christian demons, they are not conceived as powerful "fallen angels." Humans are in fact superior to demons in the Sinhalese cosmological hierarchy, but an afflicted person is understood to be terrorized by a demonic realm that distortedly appears far superior than himself. Ritual healing achieves its effect by dramatizing for the subject that demons are not to be feared, literally putting them back in their place. Kapferer understands demonic affliction as a dissolution and negation of the self, and exorcism as the ritual reconstitution of self. His notion of the self is attuned to phenomenological considerations, though derived from the work of Mead and Schutz rather than of Hallowell and Merleau-Ponty. He states a preference for the Meadian (1934) concept of self because, in his view, other approaches "seem to pass immediately from cultural ideas to the inner working of individual psychology, and back again, without much attention to intervening social interactional processes" (1983:198).3 The critical feature of the Meadian self is its constitution in an inner dialogue between the subjective "I" and a "me" that is a self-objectification derived from the way one is objectified by others in social interaction. Kapferer suggests that in demonic affliction the "me" is overwhelmed in a demonic reality, "caught in the gaze of demons." Insofar as it is thus withdrawn from the self-sustaining social interaction of human reality, it is deobjectified. The "r' and "me" col-

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

223

lapse into a terrifying immediacy, and the normal multiplicity of selves is reduced into a monolithic subjectivity, with the result that the self loses its essential capacity for reflecting on its own existence (ibid.: 198-201). The Meadian perspective allows some powerful interpretations, at least two of which are also relevant to the Charismatic example. In Sinhalese exorcism the self-reflective and social senses of participants who are not patients themselves are enhanced insofar as they are fused in the perspective of the generalized Other vis-a-vis the patient, that is, insofar as they are fused in a sense of being grounded in the commonality of social activity. This perspective of the generalized Other is evident in Charismatic deliverance in that, more than any other form of Charismatic healing we have discussed, deliverance is ideally performed by a team of healers whose efficacy inheres in the social complementarity of their "spiritual gifts." Furthermore, because the features of demonic activity are based on a shared orchestration of the habitus, in Sinhalese exorcism the healer may become possessed by the demon responsible for the patient's affiiction. Especially in cases where the Sinhalese patient does not become possessed and enter into trance, this behavior is explicitly taken on by the exorcist acting as a kind of surrogate. This phenomenon is related to the situation in those more "domesticated" instances of Charismatic deliverance where demonic manifestations can sometimes occur through the healer. The critical point in the last example is that although possession trance is a key element of Sinhalese ritual performance, ''The possession of a patient is not necessary for the symbolic presentation of the negation of the patient's Sl'!lf' (Kapferer 1979c:124). Here is the point where the Meadian analysis reaches the limits of its usefulness, for it is not able to discriminate between the actual experience of an entranced and an unentranced patient. This discrimination may be moot in the Sinhalese case, or at least in the Meadian level of analysis, where what is being treated is a collective representation of the self. However, as we will see in the next chapter, when Charismatic patients enter an altered state of consciousness in "demonic crisis," the experience is qualitatively distinct from that which we have described as typical of demonic affiiction and deliverance, and is regarded not as part of the performance but as a disruption of performance. Here it is a question not of collective representation but of cultural modulation of the self, and experiential specificity is necessary for adequate interpretation. To be precise, in the Meadian analysis of the Sinhalese case, what is at issue is the presence

224

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

or absence of the "me" which, since it is in large part a social construction, can be inferred from its social representation by others. In other words, Kapferer's analysis has to do with "demonic reality as it is understood to be conceived by the patient" (ibid.), not as it is concretely experienced by the patient. The episode of trance can be, indeed must be, made intelligible entirely with respect to its place in the structure of the ritual performance. For this reason the Meadian formulation of the self is not only useful, but is in fact required by the limitations of his data. To go farther, as Kapferer himself indicates, requires "more nearly complete determination of what individuals actually experience," which in turn "awaits other forms of analysis" (ibid.: Ill). With such a form of analysis in place with our interpretation of experiential commentaries, we have been able to examine not the wholesale presence or absence of the self as formulated in the rhetoric of performance, but the existential modulations in performance of the self as a series of indeterminate processes for engaging the world. To remain for a moment within the Meadian paradigm, if we understand Kapferer to be examining the self-objectifications that are formulated in the interaction between the "me" and the "Other," our analysis of Charismatic deliverance has focused on how self-objectifications are taken up from an intersubjective milieu into the dialogue between the "I" and the "me." To summarize using the analytic language that we have been developing for cultural phenomenology, we have attempted, beginning with the preobjective bodily synthesis that is the existential ground of self, to capture the transformative specificity of the self-objectifications achieved in ritual performance. 4 We are now in a position to define the phenomenological essence of this self process which, as we have already intimated, is an elaboration of the psychocultural theme of control. From the standpoint of embodiment, recalling our discussion in chapter 1, the problem of demonic affiiction appears not only as a problem of practice, but as one of perception: how is the activity of evil spirits perceived by healers and patients in practice? In general, healers say that it is relatively more common for them to discern the presence of spirits than for patients to come explicitly requesting deliverance. Those patients who raise the issue of spirits themselves are said to be of two quite different types: either they are "mature" enough to discern the activity of spirits, or they are "off the wall," mentally ill, or emotionally unbalanced. The latter situation appears to be rare among Charismatics and fits the criteria for what in psychiatry is sometimes referred to as a "demono-

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

225

logical neurosis."s Henderson (1982) argues that this neurosis can be understood, from the perspective of internal-object relations theory, as evidence for the psychodynamic processes of introjection and incorporation. However, the cases he discusses are ones in which the presence of a demon is the patient's chief presenting complaint, and hence part of that patient's pathology. Among Charismatics, even when the spirit names itself through the voice of the aftlicted person, it usually does so only on direct questioning by the healer. Thus care must be taken to distinguish between evil spirits as empirical signs or symptoms of psychopathology and as the religious equivalents of diagnostic constructs (Csordas 1992b). What is being perceived is not a thing but an experience. That experience, the essential phenomenological criterion of demonic aftliction, is recognition that an emotion, a behavior, a thought pattern, or an aspect of one's personality, is out of control-or perhaps more precisely, has become a controlling factor in one's life. In the words of one healer, there is a great difference between "fantasies about possession and the inability to get past something." We must return to Merleau-Ponty's concept of the preobjective in order to understand the self-objectification implicit in deliverance, that is, the self process that leads from the phenomenology of control to the evil spirit as a cultural object. If we ignore the methodological dictum that "our perception ends in objects" (Merleau-Ponty 1962:67), we begin with the already-constituted object, the Christian evil spirit. We have seen that a spirit is understood to be an intelligent, nonmaterial being that is irredeemably evil, under the dominion of Satan, and whose proper abode is hell. Evil spirits interact with humans by harassing, obsessing, oppressing, or possessing them. This cultural definition is the basis for the demonology described above and constitutes its link to the demonologies on the Renaissance. It is also the basis for a discourse on interiority/exteriority in which demons transgress body boundaries and are expelled. These are all late moments in the process of cultural objectification, however. The important distinction for our discussion is that between demons as cultural objects and as experientially immediate or concrete self processes in deliverance. Earlier we cited Hallowell that "culturally reified objects in the behavioral environment may have functions that can be shown to be directly related to the needs, motivations, and goals of the self' (1955:87). If, as we have shown, at a representational1evel the demonology is a negative mirror image of the culturally ideal person, we can now understand that at the level of being in the world the way these spirits as cultural

226

ENCOUNfERS WITH EVIL

objects are related to the self is to play a role in constituting that self through ritual performance. Preobjectively, patients do not "perceive" a demon inside themselves-they of their own accord sense, or with the help of a healer recognize, a particular thought, behavior, or emotion as outside their control. It is the healer, the specialist in cultural objectification, who typically "discerns" whether a patient's problem is of demonic origin. Also preobjectively, patients experience "manifestations" as spontaneous and without preordained content. The manifestations are original acts of communication in a highly specified intersubjective milieu. Although they are existentially original, these acts n~ertheless take a limited number of common forms because they emerge from a shared habitus, and it is participation in this habitus that allows the healer to recognize and objectify them as manifestations. In these acts of self-constitution Merleau-Ponty would distinguish a "primary process of signification in which the thing expressed does not exist apart from the expression, and in which the signs themselves induce their significance externally. . . . This incarnate significance is the central phenomenon of which body and mind, sign and significance are abstract moments" (1962:166). Here we have perhaps our closest glimpse of a common ground for semiotics and phenomenology. I would suggest that the "thing expressed" that "does not exist apart from the expression" is in this case not the cultural object, the evil spirit. What is ex. pressed is a threshold of intensity, generalization, duration, or frequency of distress that is transgressed-there is too much of a particular thought, behavior, or emotion. The phenomenology of the process defmed by discernment, casting out, and manifestation can be summarized by the formula, "I have no control over this. It has control over me. I am being released." It is a recognition of that essential "otherness" of the self that we have found to be grounded in our embodied existence, here magnified to cosmological proportions as the uncanny presence of evil spirits. In examining how this otherness is expressed in demonic affiiction across cultures, anthropologists are accustomed to attend to metaphors of interiority/exteriority. Spirits transgress body boundaries, taking up residence "inside" their hosts, and through ritual means they are again forced "outside." This kind oflanguage is certainly present among Charismatics, and it goes along with the conventional formulation of demons as cultural objects. Analysis that stops at cultural representation without asking about the cultural phenomenology of deliverance could easily miss an alternate but equally prominent reliance among Charismatics

ENCOUNTERS WITH EVIL

227

on metaphors of freedom/control. Instead of transgressing body boundaries, the spirit is described as latching on, hooking on or into, hanging on, grabbing, or grafting onto a person at the site of an emotional wound metaphorically understood as a kind of hole in the self. Demonic affiiction is thus described in the language of "bondage" to evil spirits, and through deliverance a patient is "released" from that bondage. The rather Foucauldian metaphor of bondage points directly to the concretely embodied preobjective state of affiiction as well as implicitly engaging the affiicted in the struggle to be free.

9 The Raging and the Healing

When anthropologists talk about the upright posture as characteristic of human beings, it is ahnost always with respect to the evolution of our biological organism. Upright posture freed our ancestors' hands for the use of tools, and by elevating our heads above ground allowed for a visual command of the surroundings necessary for a hunting way of life. Far more than being a biological fact of life, however, upright posture is an existential fact of life. The phenomenological psychologist Erwin Straus argued cogently that "upright posture pre-establishes a defmite attitude toward the world; it is a specific mode of beingin-the-world" (1966: 139). Standing erect is not a given for our species, but must be learned by every child, and constitutes one of the earliest experiences of mastery of self and surroundings. Even for adults, standing is achieved in opposition to the force of gravity, and constitutes a concrete symbol of the encounter of human will with nature. Perhaps most significant, the upright posture contributes to a sense of separateness of self by establishing three kinds of experiential distance. Straus (1966:144-146) summarizes these as follows: 1) distance from the ground-the closest we can come to secure contact with mother earth is to "keep our feet on the ground," and neither "lying down" nor "floating" represents an ideal of wide-awake humanity; 2) distance from things-unlike quadrupeds, we are not in direct contact with objects, but "confront" or "encounter" them, and can easily keep them "at arm's length"; and 3) distance from fellow men-we find ourselves not in intimate contact with others, but "face to face" with them, or, in Straus's words, "parallel verticals that never meet." 228

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

229

Given the above considerations, we might conclude that any deviation from the vertical has existential significance, and further that such significance is prime material to be thematized and elaborated in ritual practice. In our fmal set of analyses we will examine precisely such a phenomenon-the ritualization of that most striking departure of the body from the vertical, falling to the ground. Among Charismatics there are three occasions when a person may become prone in ritual circumstances. The first is prostration in prayer as an expression of submission to the divine will. This prayer posture does not result from falling, but is assumed voluntarily, and is practiced regularly only as part of the calisthenic spirituality typical in some covenant communities. More relevant to our immediate concerns are two patterned occurrences that are involuntary and spontaneous. The first is "resting in the Spirit," in which a person is overcome with divine power and falls in a semiswoon characterized by tranquility and motor dissociation. The second is what we may call a demonic crisis, in which a person aftlicted by an evil spirit falls to the floor, most often writhing but sometimes in stone-cold rigidity. The principal contrast between these two behaviors and prostration is that whereas the latter is a voluntary statement or representation of human relationship to the deity, the former are the spontaneous enactments of an existential condition. Prostration is an objective act of worship, whereas resting in the Spirit and demonic crisis originate in the preobjective experiences of well-being and aftliction, respectively. That is, the crisis is an aftliction indicating the need for profound spiritual and emotional healing, whereas being overcome by the Holy Spirit is an experience of well-being in the presence of the deity as well as an experience during which healing is reported to occur. However, if our attribution of a preobjective character to these phenomena is correct, it must also be recalled that the preobjective is never precultural. These two abdications of upright posture stand precisely in the relationship of good and evil as defmed in most literal terms by Christianity as a cultural system: one is "caused" by God, the other by Satan. One occurs widely in Charismatic healing sessions as a ritual technique of the body, whereas the other is rare, obscure, frightening, and disruptive of collective ritual. Good and evil in this sense are purely emic terms. They satisfy the requirements of accurate ethnography but only begin the task of cultural phenomenology. The two forms of falling are not only enactments of a symbol system, and not only a meaningful alteration of consciousness

230

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

for the individuals who undergo them, but are also experiences whose conditions of possibility defme a culture historical epoch. Perhaps more clearly than any of the material we have examined to this point, the divine and demonic falling of Charismatics allows us to pose the question of why their movement has become such a prominent feature of the contemporary cultural landscape. We will accordingly address these two phenomena of Charismatic ritual life not only as religious experience, but as particularly vivid exemplars of the cultural phenomenology of the self in late twentieth-century North America.

Resting in the Spirit as a Technique of the Body

Michel Feher has succinctly framed a fundamental question for this part of our study: what kind of body do people "endow themselves with-or attempt to acquire-given the power they attribute to the divine? A practical question, since it amounts to asking oneself what exercises to do to resemble a god physically or to commune sensually with him" (1989:13). To answer this question-specifically, what kind of body is the Charismatic one that falls under the influence of the sacred-we will draw on accounts of resting in the Spirit given by both Charismatic healers and patients. We will deal first with the behavior of falling and then with the experience of being down. Our analysis will show that the principal issues in falling are trust, resistance, and the play ofdivine power. Our treatment of being down will comprehend motor, sensory, affective, and spiritual elements of the sacred swoon. We then turn to the relation between resting in the Spirit and healing, identifying the self processes implicit in Charismatic accounts. We will conclude by examining the controversy among Charismatics over the authenticity of resting in the Spirit, a controversy in which the cultural dynamics of this practice are most transparent. Consistent with our analysis thus far, the discussion will point to the overarching relevance of the psychocultural themes of spontaneity, control, and intimacy. Like many Catholic Charismatic ritual practices, resting in the Spirit was adopted directly from Protestant healers, most notably Kathryn Kuhlman. It was popularized among Catholics in the early 1970s, espe-

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

231

cially by the Catholic healer Francis MacNutt. 1 Its occurrence probably peaked in the mid- and late 1970s along with the practices of prophecy and deliverance from evil spirits? Yet as a popular phenomenon extending even beyond the bounds of the Charismatic movement it has remained more widespread than these other elements of the ritual system. In the late 1980s resting in the Spirit appeared to have a renewed surge of popularity, partly influenced by the Protestant evangelist John Wimber's cultivation of "signs and wonders." Linguistic usage is an excellent starting point for unraveling the cultural significance of this practice. Received from the Protestant tradition, it was called "slaying in the Spirit," where "Spirit" refers to the trinitarian Holy Spirit. The preposition "in" reflects a common feature of Christian language that appears to connote communion with the deity, as opposed to being slain "by" the Spirit. A person slain in the Spirit is forcibly rendered "as if dead" by the power of God, and hence falls in the sacred swoon. Uncomfortable with this term, leaders of the Catholic movement promulgated "resting in the Spirit" as an alternative. Their intent was to eliminate the connotation of violence on the part of a deity conceived as intimately loving and gentle, another example of the domestication of ritual practice described in chapter 7. This change also has implications for the ritual constitution of self, in that it shifts the focus from the objective effect of being slain to the subjective affect of resting. At present, resting in the Spirit is the more popular term among Catholics, though slaying in the Spirit persists partly out of habit, and partly due to the continuing influence of Protestants. The terminological flux is evident in the coexistence of "resting in the Lord," being "overcome/overwhelmed/overpowered in the Spirit," and "falling under the power." This series expresses a continuum in which increasing emphasis on divine power corresponds to decreasing emphasis on personal experience. Some Catholic Charismatics in Great Britain use the theological term "dormition," analogizing the experience with the transcendent "sleep of the senses" of Theresa of Avila. These are all formal terms, however, and in colloquial Charismatic usage one most frequently hears the expression "going down" or "going over," as in, "As soon as the priest anointed me I went down." This expression singles out falling, the principal behavioral characteristic of the practice. Less frequent in informal usage is the expression "going out," as in, "The priest anointed me and I went out like a light," which refers instead to a subjective state. Finally, one occasionally hears resting in the Spirit

232

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

used colloquially as a verb, as in, ''The priest rested me in the Spirit," or in passive construction, "I was rested in the Spirit." The latter forms refer to the interactive dimension of the practice, insofar as the divine power that is said to cause it is typically "ministered" by one person to another. Resting in the Spirit is a technique of the body in the precise sense defmed by Mauss (1950b), and as such its contextual features and variations can be circumscribed. It may occur to someone in solitude, usually during prayer, but most often happens in interactive settings. These include one-to-one healing prayer; prayer for an individual by a team in a post-prayer meeting "prayer-room" session; in intensive conference, workshop, and retreat settings; in conjunction with the baptism of the Holy Spirit during the initiatory Life in the Spirit Seminar; and most notably in large public healing services. The phenomenon most often occurs in response to the laying on of hands or the anointing of the forehead with sacramental blessed oil. Especially in the case of healers high in the movement's hierarchy of renown, however, it may also occur if the healer only raises a hand, sprinkles holy water on the congregation, or in some cases merely passes in proximity to someone. Once fallen, a person may stay down for anywhere from several seconds to hours, and some have been known to remain on the floor during an entire evening's service. We shall see that this issue of duration bears its own cultural significance. The centrality of falling is highlighted by two variations that intentionally exclude it. First is having participants sit instead of stand when being prayed over, partly for their comfort, but also in effect drawing attention to the experiential rather than the behavioral dimension of the practice. Second is the practice, introduced by the evangelist John Wimber, of holding people upright so that they may feel successive ''waves'' of divine power sweeping over them. Substantial differences exist among individuals in the absolute number of times they have rested in the Spirit. In our survey of587 participants in public healing services, of 84 percent who responded to the question, 25 percent had never rested in the Spirit, 29 percent had done so between one and five times, 13 percent had done so between six and twenty times, 7 percent between twenty-one and fifty times, and 10 percent more than fifty times. 3 As reported in chapter 2, no striking difference is evident in the proportion of male and female resters. 4 Far more relevant was whether the respondent fit the criteria of being Charismatic or non-Charismatic. Whereas Charismatics accounted for 50 percent of those who had rested more than five times and only 15

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

233

percent of those who had never rested, non-Charismatics accounted for 48 percent of those who had never rested and only 17 percent of those who had rested more than five times. 5 Thus the practice appears to be fully integrated into the Charismatic ritual habitus, and we must proceed to determine the cultural phenomenology of that integration.

Going Down In the most characteristic setting for resting in the Spirit, the public healing service, some people fall when the minister walks among the congregation, in which case they collapse into their seats. Most fall during a point in the proceedings when, one by one, they approach the healer or healing team for a moment of personalized prayer, anointing, or laying on of hands. In most cases, working closely with the healers are "catchers" who, in anticipation of resting in the Spirit, stand behind each person in order to break a backward fall and ease the person to the floor. Catchers are supposed to prevent injury to people as they fall, but this is not enough to account for their presence, since it is said that if there are no catchers "the Lord protects people from harm." This issue leads to a rather complex chain of cultural logic. There are indeed multiple stories of people falling and "cracking their head" (typically on the "corner" of an altar step, a church pew, or a doorjamb) yet remaining unhurt, a result construed as additional evidence of divine power. At the same time it is acknowledged that people are occasionally hurt, and may even become angry enough because of it to speak against the Charismatics' good reputation. The solution sometimes given is that these people may not be deep enough into the experience for a relaxed (hence safe) fall, which implies either that God abdicates protection or that the person is responsible for the fall in this circumstance. The other solution is that even if God could protect them, he leaves it to others-the catchers-as a demonstration of the solidarity of Christian community. The act of falling is spontaneously coordinated in such a way that, following Bourdieu, it can be described as a disposition within the ritual habitus. Without explicit instruction, participants fall backwards into the arms of the catcher with knees unbent (see photograph 6). They do not collapse in place or pitch forward or sideways; the only reference in my interviews to someone's "knees buckling" was by a woman de-

234

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

scribing the single time the experience "ahnost" happened to her, and who had never witnessed it occurring to others. This disposition is constituted by the spontaneous coordination of kinesthetic, interactive, and symbolic dimensions of bodily experience. I will describe the kinesthetic dimension based on my own experience of being prayed with, in which, as an acknowledged outsider, I received explicit instruction. I was told to stand with arms at my side, feet together, and eyes closed while two healers laid on hands, one with hands on my chest and back, the other touching my forehead. As I did so my balance shifted entirely to my heels. Slight adjustments of the healers' hands as they prayed compounded the precariousness of this posture, and induced me to open my eyes. I trust that anyone experimenting with this posture could have the same experience, and I trust as well that if my attention had not been occupied by proprioception-if, for example, I had been praying instead-I may well have lost my balance and toppled backward quite spontaneously into the arms of the waiting catcher. The interactive dimension of resting in the Spirit includes the subject's relation with both healer and catcher. Both healers and patients vary in the degree to which they expect resting in the Spirit, in the characteristic language of spontaneity, to "happen" during the services of particular healers. Those who conduct large services mayor may not linger over an individual who appears unlikely to fall, and though most are quite aware of what proportion of participants typically do "go down," they insist that it is never required. A variety of styles of laying on hands can be observed: anointing the forehead; covering the forehead or face with a hand; a hand on a shoulder; one hand on the chest and back, or forehead and neck; a raised hand without touching; or a combination of these if a team is praying with the subject. Charismatics may attribute special "giftedness" to the healer and/or "openness" to the subject in cases of falling without being touched. Some Charismatics nonetheless suspect certain healers of literal heavy-handedness and "pushing" to encourage a fall. Given the above discussion of balance, it also appears quite likely that visually following a movement of the healer's hand may in itself have a sufficient effect, even when the patient is not physically touched. Likewise, when there is contact, any variation in pressure or touch may affect balance even though the healer has no intention of pushing. The interaction between subject and catcher is predicated on trust. In fact, the format of falling backward into invisible waiting arms is identical to the "trust exercise" carried out in other North American

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

235

settings where its purpose is explicitly to enhance group solidarity among participants. In the Charismatic setting this basic message of trust is overlaid with the dual symbolic meaning of support from the Christian community as embodied in the catcher, and falling into the invisible nurturant arms of the deity-or as one healer put it, "falling into the arms of someone you love." Between these two levels of meaning, the interaction between subject and catcher also addresses the affective tone of the broader North American behavioral environment, as shown in the following account by a healer of the first time he rested in the Spirit: Well, the first time it happened, it was really scary. I was in a pew with my friend that took me. And I was watching these people go up to get prayed over and I was watching them fall over. I had never seen that, either. And he was kind of egging me on, saying, "Go ahead. You're chicken." So I got in line and I went up, and when it was my turn I went to a priest and a woman .... I told him I needed some prayer and I forget what it was about. I looked at him and I said, "You know, I'm really scared. I don't really know what's going to happen." He took my hands, and said, "Hold onto my hands, and don't worry about it. Just close your eyes." And he started to pray. And I could feel myself going. I just grabbed a hold of him, grabbed on like "I don't want to go over." And fmally I did, and it was really peaceful. Unbelievable. I'll tell you why it meant something to me, too. One of the developmental crises there in infancy is trust versus mistrust, and I didn't learn to walk until I was twenty-two months old. So I know there were some things that weren't appropriate, or there were some voids in my life. After I got looking at that, I knew that struggle there with resting in the Spirit was partly related to my own fear of falling. My own struggle with trust versus mistrust. It was really helpful to me in terms of looking at me and beginning to make some moves to work on that, which I still am.

This healer, a practicing clinical psychologist, frames his account in terms of Erikson's (1963) developmental schema, which posits that in infancy a person forms an element of his subsequent stance toward life that is characterized by either basic trust or mistrust. The critical moment in the example is the transmutation of maintaining the upright posture-which, along with Straus, we have seen as a universal existential characteristic of human development-into a concern with trust understood as a developmental issue. The patient associates his early inability to achieve uprightness, and hence his prereflective fear of falling, with an inability to trust. This results not just in the "healing" of a specific fear, but initiates a reflective process in which allowing oneself to fall is thematized in religious terms as trust. Trust in turn is an instance of the larger psychocultural theme of intimacy, evident here not only

236

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

in the support provided by the catcher, but also in the gesture of holding hands with and holding on to the healer. Fear is not the only response to falling. Some quite enjoy it and describe it as a "letting go," abdicating the demands of remaining erect in what Straus refers to as "the voluptuous gratification of succumbing" (1966:144). The issue here is not one ofa need to retain control, but of overcoming "resistance" to an inability to relinquish control to the deity. Once again there is at work in ritual practice both a prereflective and a thematized meaning. Straus (ibid.:143) captures the former in the following passage: Upright posture, which we learn in and through falling, remains threatened by falls throughout our lives. The natural stance of man is, therefore, "resistance." A rock reposes in its own weight. The things that surround us appear solid and safe in their quiet resting on the ground, but man's status demands endeavor. It is essentially restless. We are committed to an ever renewed exertion. Our task is not finished with getting up and standing. We have to ''withstand.'' He who is able to accomplish this is called constant, stable.

As the very term "resting" suggests, the trusting intimacy of the ritual setting is supposed to offer an opportunity momentarily to cease resistance, to take time out from having to withstand. Much more is implied, however, because the resting is done "in the Spirit." The letting go is also described as "surrender" and "submission," and is understood as giving oneself over to the divine will not just for the moment, but in a moment that symbolizes commitment. Resistance is thus thematized as resistance to the power of God. With this thematization we move to the symbolic dimension of falling. An intriguing cultural contradiction emerges, which can be summarized as that between a definition of the person predicated on free will and a definition of divine power as absolute. It is divine power that causes a person to fall, and thus falling is a manifestation of divine power and as such can serve as a sign to encourage faith. This is the cultural logic behind narratives of persons who rest in the Spirit without expecting to, without believing in the phenomenon, and especially of those who resist it, who come to be prayed over with a determination not to "go down." The following narrative, recounted by one of my healer informants, is exemplary: There was a priest I know well. He came with a couple of friends to Father C's service, and we met as I was coming with a couple local people that I was seeking a healing for. We all came into the church together, and Father X sat

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

237

in the same pew with us. He was invited up to concelebrate mass, and after mass, before he came back to his seat, Father C asked him, "Do you have the gift of healing?" And Father X says, "No." "Would you like to?" "Oh, yes." ''Then I'll pray for you that you'll receive the gift of healing." So he dips his hand into the blessed oil, and anointed his forehead, and Father X went [loud smashing sound] and the catcher knew it would likely happen and was right there and caught him. Well, so much for that: Father X did not believe prior to that time in being slain in the Spirit. He was very outspoken, even in prayer groups; a holy man, but mistaken on this matter. He didn't believe in it and publicly said so lots of times. So he went down like a ton of bricks, and when he got up lined up with four other priests and people formed lines to come to them for a blessing. He would just raise his hands, and about half of them would collapse. Among these were two people who were also nonbelievers [in resting in the Spirit] and they went down. They had been, quote, slain in the Spirit, unquote, by a priest who had been a nonbeliever ten minutes before. Now there's an end to this story. Between the mass and the evening healing service the whole bunch of us that had come in two cars and met accidentally went out to a little place together for lunch. And Father X says, "That was a marvelous thing, wasn't it? You know, some of you know that I have not been a believer in this. I thought people were faking or putting on, or it was wishful thinking, or something like that, maybe psychosomatic or something. Being a nonbeliever and going down like that, I was totally out, I believe, because I saw Father C do this and I expected this, but I didn't feel it or see it because the next thing a couple of seconds later I'm on my back looking at the ceiling." And I said, "Father, did you say a few seconds? Group, how long?" We agreed it was somewhere between five and ten minutes. He could hardly believe it. He was out so totally.

Whereas other stories recount more of a physical resistance to falling, including staggering, this one goes a step further in singling out ideological resistance to the practice. The priest is overwhelmed by divine power in spite of his opposition, and indeed has no opportunity to resist physically. Since such a story has a lesson to convey about divine power, two narrative elements are essential. First, the hallmark of spontaneity must be exhibited in the way the priest is overcome-the subject of this type of story invariably "goes down like a ton of bricks" or "never knew what hit him." Second, he must undergo a kind of conversion even though he is in other respects already a participant in Charismatic activities. At the same time Charismatics, including those who relate such narratives, insist that the experience can always be resisted if a person so chooses. The deity has given everyone free will, it is said, and would never violate that by forcing himself on a person who was not open or did not consent-"God is a gentleman." This common statement has

238

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

the practical effect, regarded as positive, of encouraging people to be prayed over without feeling required to "go down," or without feeling guilty and unworthy if they do not fall spontaneously. Yet there is more than a pragmatic concern behind this formulation, for it is held in principle that in some circumstances (discussed below) falling against one's will is taken as a criterion of demonic attack rather than of divine overpowering. Here we encounter a situation in which cultural representations of power and person fail to coincide because they thematize psychocultural themes of control and spontaneity in contradictory ways. It becomes evident that it is all right to surrender control, but unacceptable for control to be taken. This specification clashes with the requirements of spontaneity insofar as God, the divine exemplar of the self, must have unlimited prerogative of spontaneous action at his primary locus of interest, the human self. I would suggest that behind this contradiction lies a fundamental uneasiness about a cherished Western value-integrity of the ego-in the face of an unsettling prospect raised by the ritual practice-dissolution of the self. The cultural climate of the late twentieth century does not guarantee whether the consequences of such dissolution would be transcendence, healing, and expansion of spiritual horizons, or passivity, narcissism, and eScape into authoritarianism. Yet this contradiction is in large part a contradiction of representations that is not necessarily confronted in the indeterminate existential situations inhabited by the sacred self. If, for example, Father X was "open" to receive the gift of healing, to what extent was he really resistant to resting in the Spirit? Most reports of resistance by Charismatics are either accounts of overcoming an initial resistance, or of a pragmatic need to remain erect if one feels the divine power while "ministering" to others or serving in some ritual capacity. Moreover, even in the latter situation it is conceivable for Charismatics that divine purpose could be served by an unexpected tumble. To better grasp the coordination between the symbolism of power/ resistance and the kinesthetics of falling, consider the following description by a healer of how power affects the body in light of the above description of balancing on one's heels as a precursor to "going down": Actually I think the best way I can explain it is when you're standing, you have equal weight on the whole foot from toes to heel. When you pray with people, the toes can go up. And then the person, they're just like lifted off their toes, and they're just on the heel, you see. And I've seen different times, people take a step back to solidify their stand, because they're not accustomed to stand on

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

239

their heel or their toes off the ground. You pray and their toes go up, and they solidify their feet, and they can do that two, three times, they're fighting it, so they probably won't fall. They're blocking it, but they know. It's clear from their reaction that they're blocking it. Many times, you pray with people and they just take off, that's all. . . . If you're standing, and your chest and head backs up with that power, the Lord, what's going to happen to your toes? They're going to lift. [emphasis added]

In this passage we see that analysis of the Charismatic practice is not complete with a description of "heel balance" as a precursor to falling, because "toes rising" is inserted as a precursor to heel balance. At this juncture semiotic and phenomenological language reach what appears to be an impasse. Is the attribution of "power" a bestowal of symbolic meaning on the practice or phenomenon, or is power from the outset essential to its existential meaning? There are certainly reports of people "resting in the Spirit" before they ever heard of such a thing, and labeling their experience only in retrospect. This would appear to support the semiotic viewpoint, except that such occurrences are already invariably embedded in religious settings. The experience thus presupposes some kind of contact with the sacred, even if it is not yet elaborated either behaviorally or as a set of conventional meanings for a particular person. We must be cautious here and note that the very question of symbolic meaning as representation may be an artifact of our own analysis of the phenomenon into kinesthetic, interactional, and symbolic dimensions. For Charismatics the experience is embodied and concrete and lacks the determinacy bestowed by our analysis. The chain of cultural logic ends in the divine: one naturally falls if one is balanced on the heels; one is naturally balanced on the heels if the toes rise; the toes naturally rise if the head and chest back up; and the head and chest back up with the force of divine power. Let us continue in a cautionary mode, however, and emphasize the following: to say that divine power is embodied does not mean it is "inserted" into or "imposed" upon the body, which is merely a more subtle form of the representational argument, but that it partakes of the bodying forth that defines the body as the orientational locus of self. This is the sense in which "power" is experienced as force backing up the head and chest. In a variety of equally concrete modes power is sometimes described as like electricity flowing through the body, like waves flowing over one, or as something that comes upon people so that they "never knew what hit them." Indeed, there is no need to limit description of the transcendent element of falling to Straus's phrase ''voluptuous gratification." Why not include electrifying thrill, surf-tossed abandon, or candle-blown extinguishment?

240

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

It is at this point, I would argue, that the Western cultural tendency toward nominalization (Keesing 1989) comes into play and transforms the experientially concrete into the conceptually substantial. 6 Thus, if divine power transmitted to a subject can be resisted, it follows that it can also be "blocked" (by a subject's fear of falling, of the unknown, or of unusual experience while down; by lack of instruction and knowing what to expect; by becoming unconscious) and can "back up" into the person laying on hands, thereby causing physical pain and heaviness in the arms. Several of the most prominent priests whose prayer causes others to rest in the Spirit are known never to have had the experience themselves, the explanation being that they are already so filled with divine power on a regular basis that the force of the influx does not overwhelm them and cause them to fall. Note that this could equally be phrased in terms of being so accustomed to being in the presence of the deity that one is not overcome. Two healer informants who had rested in the Spirit, but did so with decreasing frequency, did in fact offer an explanation in terms of habituation or conditioning. However, the substantive electric energy or hydraulic language of flow, overflow, surge, waves, and backup is prominent in the Charismatic discourse of power. Some healers mention that a particular mode of applying their hands, for example simultaneously on a patient's forehead and back, is especially effective because these are good points of entry for divine power. This reification of power establishes it as an autonomous feature of the Charismatic behavioral environment, at the same time as abstracting it from processes of the self grounded in the bodily synthesis of the kinesthetic, interactive, and symbolic dimensions of ritual practice. Divine power thus takes on its cultural character as a causal rather than a constitutive principle: the sacred is not inherent in the falling, but the falling is ~aused by the sacred.

In the Sacred Swoon Once someone is on the floor, what then? As we have seen to be the case in accounts of ritual healing, scholarly accounts of altered states of consciousness frequently rely on global, black-box mechanisms such as trance, suggestion, and hypnosis. Such accounts not only stop short of examining the meaning and process of altered states, but so much lack specificity that they at times conflate cause and

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

241

effect of the phenomena they are invoked to explain. Many authors appear to be relieved when they can report that the subject "has no memory" of what transpired once he or she emerges from the state. To be sure, cultural variations in dispositions toward self-analysis and reflexivity compound the difficulty of eliciting experiential accounts, 7 as does the frequently ineffable or inexpressible character reported of such experiences. Yet there is no good reason to presume the experiential muteness of altered states of consciousness. Our analysis in this section shows that even in this relatively obscure aspect of ritual performance there is an identifiable specificity of self process. Two observations about variability will assist us in circumscribing the experiential dimension of resting in the Spirit. First, a person may remain with eyes closed, face up on the floor for anywhere from a few seconds to several hours. Second, the degree of awareness reported by subjects ranges from total consciousness to complete unconsciousness. Charismatics familiar with the practice draw on these variations in duration and degree to conclude that there are "levels" of resting in the Spirit. Memory is typically retained, however. One healer reported that he had never known anyone to "pass out," but that occasionally some become "so peaceful they might not remember" what happened. Not entirely coincident with these variations is the variation in degree of experiential richness or elaboration. We will examine the more highly elaborated end of this continuum in the next section when we discuss the role of resting in the Spirit in healing. At the less elaborated end of the continuum is a repertoire of feelings and sensations, expressed as a series of adjectives, similes, and descriptive phrases, and epitomized by the terms peace and relaxation. It is arguably no accident that in English these words implicitly deny a dualism of body and self: for example, a body can be at peace in a state of physical relaxation, and a self can be peaceful and relaxed from the everyday stress of life. Like divine power, however, peace (and, for that matter, love) can be substantivized such that one might experience ''waves of peace" and even, in a near oxymoron, be "overpowered with peace." We will organize our description of the basic sense of peace and relaxation around groups of terms abstracted from Charismatics' accounts, and later address the methodological question of how we understand the relation between terms and the experience they represent. Our analysis shows that the "kind of body which comes in contact with the divine" in the sacred swoon is a particular synthesis of motorium, sensorium, affect, and spirituality.

242

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

The first element is best described as a motor dissociation in which physical relaxation is absolute. The relevant terminological series includes three related sets: 1) lighmess (sometimes like a feather), buoyancy, weighdessness, floating (sometimes like on a cloud); 2) weakness, numbness, heavy limbs; 3) restful, letting go of weariness, and a subsequent feeling of being energized. As with the ability to resist falling, a minor crisis of self is embedded in the attention given to whether a person retains the ability to move while down. This issue is invariably mentioned, and description ranges from being able to stand up immediately after falling, to being able to get up but not wanting to, to being unable to stand up, to being unable to move at all for the duration of the experience. The implicit cultural contradiction is between a conception of varying levels of the experience corresponding to varying degrees ofdivine action on the body, and a conception of the person as endowed not only with free will, but with agency or the capacity to act. The first of these conceptions is evident when someone says they tried but could not move, and the second when someone insists they could have moved if they had wanted to. Finally, even when someone in the sacred swoon is unable to move, it is typically because the self has been rendered passive by being deprived of agency and not because it was coerced while actively struggling. The reason the person cannot move is because the motor dissociation is absolute and one has no control of one's body. It is rare that someone attributes inability to move to being held by a force, and this despite the substantivized notion of divine power. In sum, in falling a person is moved by a force, but once down is not held, and resistance gives way to passivity. The series of terms used to describe the experiential modality of the sensorium during resting in the Spirit includes qualities ofconsciousness as well as sensations: 1) waves of peace or love up and down one's arms, feeling washed over from head to toe, things rushing through one ("probably ministering angels flushing through the body"), warmth, dizziness (absence of dizziness in one case of a woman who typically becomes dizzy iflying on her back); 2) removed from sensation, conscious but not aware of surroundings, inattentive to surroundings, not aware of one's body, unaware of pressure from the floor one is lying on; 3) like being in another world/another dimension/somewhere else, letting go of earthly feelings, forgetting one's self; 4) like being hypnotized, in suspended animation, massively tranquilized, under sodium pentothal but awake, lifeless. Once again in this domain of sensory disengagement and transport, the indeterminacy of self creates a crisis

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

243

for the defmition of person. Again the critical theme is that of control, posed as the question of whether one is "conscious or unconscious" while resting in the Spirit. There is culturally even more at stake here than in the issues of ability to resist falling or to move while down. Recall that the argument that one should be able to resist falling is made in terms of God being a "gentleman," or in terms of the implication that overenthusiastic healers sometimes give a little "push." The parallel argument that one should be able to move when down is made by attributing hysteria or attention seeking to those who claim they cannot move. However, the argument that one should retain consciousness holds that resting in the Spirit is supposed precisely to be a "person-to-person" experience of the divine. Unconsciousness separates one from one's own personhood, which should be sacrosanct since one is "created in God's image." Bad enough in itself, it also occurs at a moment when that personhood could presumably be fulfilled by direct interaction with the deity. Separation from one's own personhood and from the deity are serious matters, and accordingly unconsciousness while resting in the Spirit is often attributed to psychopathology, demonic attack, or both. Yet there are occasional instances of unconsciousness cited without negative attribution, and predicated on the common but contradictory ethnopsychological premise that the deeper the experience the farther removed from everyday consciousness one becomes. Thus one can go "out like a light" or be "completely gone." These references are especially likely in narratives about the manifestation of divine power in nonbelievers such as the priest we discussed above. I would argue that they are related to a cultural assimilation of the spiritual and the ineffable. Following the tripartite model of the person, one widely experienced healer defined resting in the Spirit as a state of minimum physical and psychological activity with maximum spiritual activity. The specific nature of this activity need not be perceived by the person who is resting. If part of the self is understood to be highly active at the same time as one's immediate experience is defined by the self-awareness of complete passivity, then the activity can be said to be occurring outside consciousness in a space of ineffability, the spiritual realm. In addition, Charismatics participate in post-Freudian popular culture and its embrace of the "unconscious," so that "unconsciousness" (i.e., where the unconscious takes over) may also be an element in narratives of "deep" healing. In such cases the deity "operates like a surgeon on an anesthetized patient," directly on the inmost being of someone who is resting in the Spirit. 8

244

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

The third, or affective, component of the sacred swoon is summarized in two series of terms: 1) pleasant, enjoyable, comfortable, well-being (like being held or rocked), calm, quiet, soothing, nonthreatening, being loved, being heard; 2) cleansed/washed, tension flowing out, release, freedom (like dying), joy, jubilation. I would argue that focusing on the report of "release" and translating it into the theoretical language of "catharsis" would be to risk a severely impoverished account of the self as culturally constituted. These terms can only be understood together with, and as mutually qualified by their sensory and motor counterparts. In addition, they are intimately connected with the fourth terminological series used by Charismatics, summarizing the spiritual dimension of resting in the Spirit: divine presence, closeness t%neness with the Lord, being ministered to by God. These spiritual terms are as descriptively concrete as those in the three other sets of terms. From among them all, the term "presence" can be singled out as performing a critical symbolic function as well, in that it condenses the embodied meaning of all the other terms. This is possible because the synthesis of motor, sensory, affective, and spiritual experiences constitutes divine presence as an experiential gestalt. 9 Thus "presence" plays a dual role as one among a series of terms for distinguishable, concrete feelings and sensations, and as the synthesizing symbol of the experience as a whole. We are due to reflect for a moment about where our argument stands on the shady ground between semiotics and phenomenology, representation and embodiment, abstract and concrete. I am claiming that the words used by our informants are not to be treated merely as terms but as experiences. They have a fundamentally different status than the terms that constitute the Charismatic vocabulary of motives, the demonology, or the repertoire of emotions we have discussed-they do not represent, they disclose. They are descriptions that give us access to the nondiscursive, nonrepresentational, preobjective element of cultural experience. Let us pursue this point with an attempt to formulate the essence of the Charismatic sense of divine presence in resting in the Spirit. Let me first point to two tropic features of the Charismatic descriptive language that can save us from an interpretive error. One is a reference to the experience as like being in another world or "somewhere else." Although Charismatics talk about a spiritual dimension or realm, there is no support for an interpretation that their spirits are "literally" transported to another world as, for example, is the case in shamanic ecstasy. It is true that such a meaning could easily be cultivated among

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

245

Charismatics by construing the distortion of temporality while resting (cf. the case of the non believing priest described above) according to the common schema ''where was I all that time?" This cultural elaboration is not made, however; when the experience ends it may "lift," or simply be over, and one gets up. Only one informant said, "I call it 'coming back,'" specifying that his own phrasing was idiosyncratic. In the sacred swoon the spirit remains with the body, the associated feelings and . sensations retain their phenomenological locus in the body, and divine presence is experienced as becoming manifest immediately to the patient. The cultural understanding that the person is "resting" or is "slain" contrasts with that reported by Fernandez (1989) in the Mrican Bwiti cult, where a markedly similar configuration of motor/sensory dissociation is understood as "disembodiment." That the dissociation of resting in the Spirit is not objectified as being "out of the body" indicates a concordance in the Charismatic habitus with the stance that such experiences are likely to be "occult," and with the theological conception of an "incarnational" spirituality. Another tropic feature of this descriptive language is in the term "oneness." This term apparently refers neither to a merging with the deity nor to an incarnation of the deity in the subject. On the contrary, it could be said that the subject is "in" the deity in the sense of being "surrounded by the intimate presence of' the deity. This sense of "in" is perhaps the one most accurate for understanding the prepositional phrase of "resting in the Spirit." Phenomenologically, substantivized divine power enters the person; the deity as presence does not. This understanding of presence conforms to healers' descriptions of the Holy Spirit "hovering" over the participants in a healing service, while they "breathe" (and thereby incorporate) the divine power that permeates the atmosphere of such an event. Likewise, the understanding of presence conforms to the cultural emphases on the deity as person and on the personal integrity of the experiencing subject. These emphases tend to model divine presence as a person-to-person encounter rather than as interpenetration or possession. We can hardly fail to strike a psychoanalytic chord in noting the "oceanic" (including wave oflove) passivity before an omnipotent paternal deity that characterizes resting in the Spirit. An examination of psychodynamic conflicts might seem especially relevant given the apparent frequency of childhood sexual abuse in the population with which we are concerned. First of all, however, resting in the Spirit would seem to tap into a much earlier stage of psychosexual development than that

246

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

at which the traumas of abuse typically occur. More generally, the psychoanalytic formulation tends to presuppose a precultural psychobiological universal. Whether or not one subscribes to the salience of such a universal, our primary purpose in the present discussion is to identify in contrast those respects in which a phenomenon like divine presence is culturally constituted. Finally, the psychoanalytic approach surely leads us to invoke that kind of mechanism such as regression in service of the ego, which, though broadly appropriate, remains the kind of psychological black box of which we are wary. From the standpoint of therapeutic process it does us little good to invoke regression in service of the ego unless we can specify what that service is and precisely how it is achieved. Let us then formulate our account from the standpoint of cultural phenomenology. If, as we have found, the experience is constituted in the bodily synthesis of preobjective self processes, this is to say that the coming into being of "divine presence" as a cultural phenomenon is an objectification of our embodiment itself. We can clarify by starting with the heaviness of limbs, an experience which is not at all metaphorical in resting in the Spirit. Quoting Plugge, Zaner points out that ''within the reflective experience of a healthy limb, no matter how silent and weighdess it may be in action, there is yet, indetectably hidden, a certain 'heft''' (1981: 56). This thinglike heft of our bodies in conjunction with the spontaneous lift of customary bodily performances defmes our bodies as simultaneously belonging to me and estranged from me, and hence is fundamental to the indeterminacy of embodied otherness. While resting in the Spirit, the heft that is always there for us preobjectively is made determinate, or objectified-its essential alterity becomes an object of somatic attention within the experiential gestalt defmed as divine presence. Reciprocally, the specificity of parts that we have described (motor, sensory, affective, spiritual) defines this gestalt as a whole such that, concordant with the psychocultural analysis we have been developing, presence is thematized as intimacy. The subject is loved, nurtured, ministered to, communicated with, held, healed. In short, the divine presence is an intimate presence in a way that, because it encompasses multiple modalities of the body-self, surpasses human companionship. Like the divine presence in imaginal performance, then, resting in the Spirit offers both a surrogate source of intimacy for the lonely and a prototype upon which human intimacy can be modeled.

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

247

Power, Presence, and Healing

In Charismatic ritual life, resting in the Spirit can serve the purposes of demonstrating divine power; of exhibiting the faith of those who are "open" to such power; of allowing a person to be close to, "touched by," or "spoken to" by God (sometimes via embodied imagery); of preparing a person to receive and exercise a spiritual gift; or of healing. 10 Healing is the most prominent among these, and we now turn to examination of its relation to the sacred swoon. The most general (and most often repeated) cultural precept is that resting in the Spirit does not always result in healing, though it is always a "sign of God working" deeply within a person. The corollary is that healing does not require resting in the Spirit, though the experience may augment or consolidate a healing achieved through other ritual means. These precepts have an explicit "pastoral" or social control function in warning those who rest in the Spirit not to overenthusiastically expect to be healed, and those who seek healing not to overemphasize the importance of a this particular ritual technique. Like any cultural formulations, however, these are subject to a variety of qualifications. Distinguishing among physical, psychological, and emotional healings, one informant stated that resting always includes at least a spiritual healing. Considering the closeness for Charismatics of "spiritual healing" and "spiritual growth" this statement might itself be reduced to the generality of "God working deeply." Another healer stated that divine presence is in itself healing, such that one's life should change if exposed to the kind of overwhelming presence that is said to constitute resting in the Spirit. Likewise, it is also stated that "going down" increases one's chances to be healed, because it allows divine power to work in a way it could not if one were "in control." Charismatics typically associate peace, relaxation, surrender, and tranquility with healing. A practice that ritually maximizes these feelings is thought to reduce "blockage" and "interference" to healing as well as to minimize the "disruption" created by chaotic feelings and circumstances. Someone who is resistant, rigid, closed, or afraid to let go of anger is regarded as closed to divine power, and the "closed" person who does not make herself "available" to the deity is not apt to be healed. Indeed, our study of 587 public healing-service participants shows that the more

248

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

frequently people have rested in the Spirit the more likely they are to report having been healed. 11 Let us take a look at resting in the Spirit's contribution to the ritual system and how it is supposed to work. First of all, it is stated that a healing attributed to resting in the Spirit is "real" if it occurs suddenly, with an immediately observable effect. One well-known healer, at different points within the same interview, described it as a "spiritual shock treatment" and as a "spiritual anaesthetizing." We might offer to reconcile the apparent contradiction by distinguishing the "electric" power that causes one to fall and the dissociation of the sacred swoon proper. More than this, I believe it implies the simultaneous operation of two metaphors of therapeutic process, one cast in terms of substantivized divine power and the other in terms of the personalized action of the deity "operating" on the immobilized subject. The personal metaphor is the more elaborated of the two, understood as a direct, unmediated "ministry" by God to a person, where "God decides how he wants to deal with someone" and the healer "doesn't have anything to do with it." Some healers say that barring unforeseen consequences (such as an onset of a demonic crisis) they cease prayer with a person and move on as soon as the person falls, leaving that person "with" the deity. They acknowledge the pragmatic importance of this approach when there is insufficient time for them to attend to individuals at a large healing service, or in cases where they are so fatigued from their work they just "let the Lord take over." Resting in the Spirit is said to be a state in which, since one's thoughts are slowed and one becomes calm and relaxed, one is most open and least resistant to divine healing. In colloquial parlance, healers say that the person can "get in the way," and the deity's message in the sacred swoon is, "Shut up and let me be God," or, "Shut up and let me do what I want [with you]." One told of a woman who always talked too much, but who always rested in the Spirit easily and for a considerable duration. This was "the way the Lord brought her under control so he could do something with her." Finally, because it is understood as a direct divine intervention, resting in the Spirit is said to speed up the healing process. Just as the healing of memories is often claimed to achieve in months what would take years in conventional psychotherapy, so it is claimed that resting in the Spirit can achieve in minutes or hours what might take a long time in the healing of memories. What is in question here is the role of what Prince (1980) has identified as "endogenous processes" in ritual therapy. It is entirely in order

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

249

to invoke the terms "catharsis" and "regression in service of the ego" as generalized descriptions of these therapeutic self processes. 12 However, let me restate the grounds of my mistrust for such concepts. First, as I have already indicated, they are too often assumed to be global mechanisms that explain phenomena through an assumed uniformity or generality of function ("Aha, it's catharsis") rather than as concepts that offer an opening for an account of the specificity of a phenomenon. Here I am inclined to concur with the Charismatics who state not that resting in the Spirit allows healing to proceed more generally but that "God can work inltouchlheal a person more specifically." Perhaps paradoxically, I would suggest that the specificity of endogenous processes may be less constrained when they are allowed free play within an indeterminate zone in which the self is free to construct a meaning from the repertoire of collective and biographical resources available at that discrete moment. It is critical, however, that the essential indeterminacy of self not be presumed to indicate a generality of process. This leads to my second concern, which is that mechanisms such as catharsis and regression appear to presuppose a structure of the self that is much more determinate than we are prepared to accept. It is our purpose to describe, not to presuppose the cultural constitution of the self. If catharsis is at issue, we must know what kind of process that is and what is being catharted; and if regression, how that process takes place and what service it does the "ego." It appears valid to say that the substance of therapeutic self processes that occur in resting in the Spirit can be arrayed on a continuum from simple to complex. These self processes may be described under three general types: inchoate, cathartic, and imaginal. The types are posited neither as ethnopsychological nor as ontological categories, but only as preliminary categories for organizing the data of cultural phenomenology. The categories of self process overlap with one another and may also be relevant to practices other than resting in the Spirit. We examine them here because this practice offers a kind of prototype for how the Charismatic sacred self interacts with the sacred, and thus can be expected to reflect the Charismatic healing system and the North American ethnopsychology upon which it is based. The inchoate is in this instance the same as that identified by Fernandez (1974, 1982; cf. chapter 1), but instead of being transformed by identity-creating metaphorical processes, it is preserved intact and thematized as a mode of the self. The subject resting in the Spirit, whether conscious or unconscious, may be unaware that anything is "happen-

250

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

ing," yet report a more-or-Iess specific result. Such results lack psychological content: if a specific request for healing is made, it will typically refer to a medical or physical problem, whereas if there is no specific request, the result will be understood as a diffuse spiritual healing. Children, whose identities are culturally conceived as less well-formed than those of adults, may experience the inchoate self process. Such is the case in a scenario of children of a manic-depressive father subject to fits of rage, in which the boy of ten remained unconscious for a long period and required additional prayer, until he fmally came to and "was healed of all the hurt." In general, Charismatics say that "the Spirit works when a person is not aware," or that ''what he's doing to me may be none of" my business." This presupposes a self that can be acted upon outside of consciousness (again, whether conscious or unconscious), such that significant things can happen to one without one knowing it. The frequent observation of eye movement beneath closed lids is culturally interpreted as confirmation of this presupposition. In Fernandez's terms, the metaphor that is predicated on the inchoate self is precisely inchoateness itself, which is subsequently thematized as "ineffability." The second ofour types, the cathartic, presupposes a double meaning for the self. One is the self from which stress and tension are "released," in line with the ethnopsychological schema of the self taking in or letting out stresses, or the schema of tension building up inside and being vented. Another is the self which can be released from the "burdens" that weigh it down or hold it "in bondage" to life's cares. The simplest version of the cathartic self process is that those who are "going through a lot" fmd that everything is more "peaceful" on returning home after resting in the Spirit. I will cite two examples. One is a woman who ''worried to excess and was always easily upset." This woman traced her chronic angst to a combination of childhood events. She reported discovering the Charismatic movement as a remedy for depression resulting from the death of both parents after caring for them out of strict Irish Catholic duty, and for the stress of bearing her own child late in her child-bearing years. She rested in the Spirit at the same time she was baptized in the Spirit, and reported that the subsequent peace "changed her life." The second example is a man who stayed down an hour and a half with "tension, anxiety, and stress flowing out the whole time," while he experienced images (imaginal self process) of "stressful things he was letting go of." The man subsequently felt healed of back pain he understood to be triggered psychosomatically by family and work problems. Finally, the experiences of "the gift oflaughter" or "gift

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

251

of tears" belong equally to the inchoate and the cathartic categories. That is, in these experiences of spontaneous laughing and crying a person may report not knowing why she was laughing or crying, but assuming that "the Lord was probably releasing something." Fundamental to the cathartic healings is that a person's stance toward the world is "healed," not the situation in which he fmds himself. This stance is reconstituted by passing through the liminality of the "voluptuous gratification of succumbing." In that succumbing there is both release through resignation to one's lot, and the sharing of a slice of heaven as the reward for devotion. This could be no more powerfully symbolized than with one's own body immobilized on the ground. Following SchefPs theory that catharsis is achieved through aesthetic distancing of the troubling emotion, we would argue that the fallen body achieves the necessary distancing by becoming a metaphor of resignation. Although this is more than the temporary reprieve suggested by "resting," there is no question that the person will rise again to the upright posture of "withstanding." In this connection it is significant that these healings seem to be neither conceived nor experienced as death and rebirth, even though it may be an occasion for someone to be "born again", or baptized in the Spirit. The person is, after all, just resting. We turn now to the third self process of resting in the Spirit. We have stressed that cultivation of imaginal processes is one of the most vivid features distinguishing the Charismatic self from that of fellow North Americans. Three subtypes of imaginal process are prominent in our data on resting in the Spirit: images of divine empowerment, of regressed dependence, and of biographical coherence. The first includes examples such as being healed of goiter upon experiencing an image (described in this case as a concrete apparition) of the Eucharist; a Protestant woman imaginally encountering the Virgin Mary and converting to Catholicism; and preparing a friend for the imminent death of her cancer-afflicted son by narrating an image of the son "dipped by the Lord in a chalice of His blood" in preparation for his "final union with God." In what I am calling regressed dependence, intimacy with the divine is experienced imaginally, and consists of being soothed, comforted, and nurtUred while held in God's arms or in his lap. This typical image renders concrete the inchoate "oceanic" feeling of omnipotent presence, elaborating the sensory component with the inclusion of position and touch, and the affective component with the compelling figures of divine parent and. infantilized subject.

252

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

Biographical coherence is the most complex subtype of imaginal self process in the sacred swoon. It occurs in an elaborate series of images, often during an extended period of "resting." The following is a prototypical case: A woman who had been the youngest and newest nun in an overseas mission convent provoked the jealousy of the other sisters by successfully learning the indigenous language. While resting in the Spirit for two and a half hours she not only forgave her fellow missionaries but "every single person who hurt me in my life came before me. And 1 would say, '1 forgive you one hundred percent in the name of Jesus Christ.''' When this was complete it occurred to her to say to God ''That's nice, 1 forgive everybody. Who's going to forgive me?" At that moment she experienced "the deepest sense of peace" she had ever had.

Related to this type of condensed biographical replay is the scenario recounted by one healer of persons who experience the suffering and cruciflXion of Jesus step by step, including vivid tactile images of the crown of thorns and scourging, and who are subsequently able to "forgive themselves" in a way they could not even in extended inner-healing prayer. A variant of this schema is evident in an account of a girl who when prayed with appeared to go into a seizure, then lay back on a couch and went through "clearly distinguishable" developmental stages. These stages went "through sucking her thumb, and ended in fetal position. From there she rested in the Spirit. When she came forth from that, the marked difference about her was an air of peace, a calmness, and she became part of our community." What these processes of biographical coherence have in common is the presupposition that the self can be substantively reexperienced and changed by internally produced eidetic imagery, understood as the spontaneous and direct action of the deity.

Resting, Genuine and Spurious

Anthropologists have understood for a long time that the principles underlying social life are nearest the surface in situations of controversy, and that cultural meanings become most accessible where they are most at stake. In spite, or perhaps because of its popularity, resting in the Spirit is a controversial phenomenon for Charismatics, and the heart of the issue is its "authenticity." More specifically, critics

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

253

challenge the authenticity of resting in the Spirit, whereas apologists argue for its beneficial effects in terms of healing and spiritual developmentY Both sides of this internal controversy invoke the same biblical scenarios, such as Saul on the road to Damascus and the apostles confronted by the transfiguration of Jesus, and the same Catholic writers, including the ecstatic mystics Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross, drawing opposing conclusions about whether these constitute examples of resting in the Spirit. They likewise draw opposing conclusions about the historical prototypes of healers known for similar practices, extending backward in time from Kathryn Kuhlman to Charles Finney, George Jeffreys, George Fox, John Wesley, and the fourteenth-century Dominican preacher John Tauler. These two sets of arguments constitute a rhetoric of validation by either analogical or historical precedent, respectively.14 To be sure, such analogies and precedents suggest that, just as a comparative analysis of demonology is possible, so it would be possible to examine the varying meanings of religious falling or swooning across historical and cultural contexts. Our purpose, however, is an ethnographic one-to show that the ideological/theological/pastoral debate about authenticity is predicated on the recurrent, constitutive North American psychocultural themes of spontaneity and control, and on the Charismatic cultural definition of the tripartite person. To begin with, there is a continuum of opinion among movement leaders with respect to resting in the Spirit. Critics range from those opposed to the practice to those who accept it with reservations and "urge caution" in its use. In any case, even apologists for the practice agree it can at times be inauthentic. What is meant by authenticity? Apologists would likely agree that genuine resting includes an "objective" energy flow of divine power and a "subjective" openness or responsiveness to that power. Resting is thus said to be caused by divine power, and the debate begins with the premise that other than divine causes can produce the effect of falling in a swoon. Consider the following series of possible causes commonly cited by Charismatics: fatigue or exhaustion from an overly long healing service, autosuggestion or self-induction, emotionalism or hysteria, group expectation or crowd psychology, simple hypnosis or suggestion by the healer, spontaneous hypnosis emergent from the personal or collective unconscious, occult mediumistic induction by a nonphysical being or spirit, temporary possession by an evil spirit or demon, resting in the Spirit through action of the Holy Spirit. 15 This series recapitulates the tripartite defmition of the person, since the causes are distributed over the physical, psycho-

254

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

logical, and spiritual dimensions. However, only the fmal member of this series counts as authentic. The first six are considered "human" rather than divine causes, with emphasis on the psychological. Mediumistic induction combines the psychological and spiritual, and suggests in effect that a disembodied human spirit acts as the "hypnotist." In temporary possession a demonic spirit is said to counterfeit the experience of resting in order to deceive and keep a person away from the deity. Some healers suspect this if a person "goes down too quickly" upon being anointed or laid hands on. The cultural logic is that since the healer immediately stops praying and lets God take over when a person falls, the demon (not the patient) may "fake" the experience in order to bring an end to the healer's prayer, which it by nature finds disturbing. In such a case healers might prevent a person from falling, or remain with him or her for a brief period of "soaking prayer" (cf. chapter 2) until the demon departs. It is critical to our argument that the members of this causal series, foremost among them the one regarded as exclusively authentic, all share the feature of defming the phenomenon as a spontaneous occurrence with a cause that lies outside intentionality. In addition to the causal criterion, the practice may be deemed inauthentic because a person feigns it and falls intentionally, either out of desire for the experience, desire for attention from others, or from peer pressure when most others are falling. Here there is no "experience" at all, as epitomized in the anecdote of a man who, seeing the persons standing on both his right and left "go down," did not even fall, but self-consciously lay down between them. Resting in the Spirit may also be regarded as inauthentic if people enjoy it too much or "seek the experience for its own sake." Some healers are suspected of using the practice to entertain rather than edify, such as one who merrily led an assembly to a sunny hillock behind a chapel with an invitation to go out to the "slaying hill" (punning slaying in the Spirit with sleighing), or one who announced that the evening session of an all-day healing event would include the "layaway plan" (punning on a cherished North American commercial institution). Leaders of two Charismatic communities reported temporarily banning the practice from their healing sessions because of too much "emotionalism and expectation" in an "unspiritual circus atmosphere," including some people who would r~ from the floor and go immediately to another healing team in order to fall again. Finally, Charismatics observe that the practice waxes and wanes in different periods and different groups. This fact has no agreedupon interpretation either, with critics citing it as evidence that the

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

255

practice is faddish, and apologists arguing that the presence of the Holy Spirit flows as the deity determines the needs of particular people and groups at particular moments. I must emphasize that none of the eighty-seven healers interviewed rejected the possibility of "authentic" resting in the Spirit, and the majority reported having the experience themselves on at least one occasion. It is the case, however, that there are not only multiple cues that one may look for to "discern" authenticity, but that there is no clear cultural consensus on how to interpret these cues. One healer stated that in observing a person, one "can tell if it's real, but can't be sure if it's not." Another said, in contrast, that it is precisely the inauthentic that one can identify, by a person's looks, stance, nervousness, heavy breathing, depression, or preoccupation. Once again highlighting spontaneity, "the ones you don't expect are authentic." Two healers ventured coincidentally to cite 75 percent as the proportion of spurious resters, those who "bring it on themselves" or "yield to expectation and desire." Authenticity is questioned not only, as we have seen, in a person who "goes down" too quickly, but in a person who goes down too many times (such as every time they are prayed over) or stays down for too long or short a period. It is thought by some that resting is characteristic of a phase of, as it were, spiritual adolescence, and that one should become more accustomed to withstanding the experience of divine power as one matures. The exception is that, if otherwise considered to be "spiritually mature," someone who falls frequently may be said simply to be consistently "open to the Spirit." A person who stays down too long is suspect of attention seeking or escapism, but again there are exr:eptions and, as we have seen, some of the "deepest" imaginal healing processes are said to occur in swoons of long duration. Finally, a person who stays down too briefly is suspect of having experienced nothing or of not having remained long enough to benefit appropriately from the experience. Such a person either "faked it" or was insufficiently "open to the Spirit." Eye movement behind closed or semiclosed lids is frequently cited as a sign of activity in the spiritual component of the resting person while the body and mind are tranquil, but this is again ambiguous since such eye movement can also be cited as evidence of activity by evil spirits. Falling without injury is a sign of authenticity, whereby injury must imply inauthenticity. The fact that children occasionally rest in the Spirit is cited as evidence of authenticity, based on the ethnopsychological premise that the psychic structure of children is different from

256

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

that of adults, particularly in being relatively guileless and immune to social pressure to conform. Likewise, the willingness of infirm elderly people to risk a fall, especially an unnatural backwards fall, is taken to support the authenticity of resting in the Spirit. The strongest appeal to authenticity by apologists, however, is that the practice "bears good fruit." They point to reports of beneficial effects and healing. Yet this too remains contested. Critics argue that short-term feelings of peace and closeness to God are inadequate if they do not bring lasting change, whereas apologists respond that resting in the Spirit may be a steppingstone or an incremental part of a healing process that may be going on before and after resting. Even long-term positive results do not satisfy some critics, who argue that positive results may still accrue from inauthentic experience, and that positive results may originate by other means and only mistakenly be attributed to resting in the Spirit. These experiential vagaries of authenticity point to what we have called the perceptual indeterminacy of embodied existence (see also Csordas 1993). In practice this indeterminacy is an integral feature of the bodily synthesis and the habitus in which it is embedded. It allows people both to take a stance and act in the world, and to relinquish that stance in hopes of fmding a new one. Charismatic healers appear to have an intersubjective awareness of the bodily synthesis as an experiential gestalt composed of all" the ambiguous elements of resting in the Spirit that we have identified. This gestalt defines the propriety of bodily comportment including the appropriate number of falls, their duration, extraneous (i.e., sudden, violent, lewd, agitated) movements, the manner of falling (e.g., the question of authenticity is not far out of mind in the case of women who fall with their "skirts up"), and susceptibilities of children and elderly people. The healers' intersubjective awareness is precisely what is objectified as the spiritual gift called "discernment." Yet this awareness is possible because the bodily synthesis is not a matter only of individual perception, but is predicated on shared dispositions in the habitus of contemporary North America. These dispositions, fmally, are coordinated for a distinct ritual purpose by the existential project summarized in the motives of "spiritual growth" and "Christian community." The theoretical formulation in the preceding paragraph gains support from two further observations about indeterminacy, or at least about the experiential shadow it casts in ritual practice. Let us return once more to the self-perception of the patient in order to see how existential indeterminacy is thematized in terms of spontaneity and control, and

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

257

thus to complete a cultural phenomenology of "authenticity" in the sacred swoon. The observations come from our study of 587 participants in healing services whom we asked whether or not each had rested in the Spirit during that particular service. Of the 493 people who responded to the question, 50.7 percent said yes and 37.5 percent said no. Our first observation is that fully 5.3 percent (N :::: 26) of respondents reported they had "almost" rested in the Spirit. We can safely say that these people experienced some of the constellation of feelings described above and almost fell down. What is of interest is the indeterminacy of self-perception implied in this "almost," whether it be a certain precariousness of balance, a certain lightheadedness, and so forth. Does the possibility of an "almost" -rested mean that ritual practice excludes or neglects a certain range of preobjective experience, leaving subjects straddling a fence of symbolic ambiguity in a phenomenological noman's land? I would argue instead that almost is a necessary ritual possibility because indeterminacy is essential to ritual practice. What is distinctive about resting in the Spirit as a self process is that the very indeterminacy of self processes is thematized by notions that the self characterized by free will varies in its degree of "openness" and is capable of "resistance," that the more spiritually mature may not be overcome or may be more easily overcome, or that the deity chooses which people should fall. Of even greater interest, 6.5 percent (N :::: 32) of respondents reported that they were "not sure" whether they rested in the Spirit. Certainly this does not refer to an inability to report whether or not they had fallen. Neither does it seem to reflect lack of familiarity with the term resting in the Spirit. In the first place, unfamiliarity with the terms or the practice is likely accounted for by the 16 percent of respondents who did not answer this question. And in the second place this uncertainty was also found among 6.9 percent (N :::: 6) of healers interviewed about their own experience of resting in the Spirit. Beyond the pastoral and theological debate summarized above, these interviews thematize the indeterminacy of self-perception as actual self-doubt about the authenticity of one's own experience. In these cases the self-reflective questions include whether it happened because the subject felt like it should, likes the experience, or was conforming with everyone else who fell. The core question, however, is whether it was authentic if the self played any role in initiating it: "Since I allowed it to happen, was it real? Maybe I just gave in; maybe I was just letting go; maybe I just

258

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

relaxed too much." The following, from a healer who is also a priest, epitomizes this uncertainty: I would almost say the one time I really thought it was authentic was at Kathryn Kuhlman's service. I don't know if the other times were authentic. . . . I felt myself swaying. Now, did I want to fall or not fall, and if I did, I did, and if I didn't, I didn't. I'm not going to get scrupulous about it because it makes no difference. I was being prayed with and I was swaying back and forth and I wasn't being pushed, so I let myself go. . . . See, if I'm standing up and I'm starting to sway, I'm feeling myself sway, it's sometimes easier just to let myself go. The time at Kathryn Kuhlman's, I wasn't swaying. I was standing and then I wasn't standing.

What finally becomes clear in these cases is that resting in the Spirit cannot be a spiritual act, but must be a spiritual effect whose origin outside the self, and hence its authenticity, is ascertained by the phenomenological criterion of spontaneity. The fall must be spontaneous, and the transformation of consciousness unaccompanied by deliberation or any act of will. It is at this juncture that our second psychocultural theme of control enters, for genuine resting must at the same time be spontaneous, and not be controlled. Someone who falls on purpose is not judged to be performing a physical act of faith or performing an embodied metaphor of trust in the community, but to be feigning. Someone who yields control and allows herself to fall is not judged to be performing a psychological act symbolic of surrender to the divine will, but to be influenced by suggestion or conformity.16 The first conclusion we can draw from this analysis is that while Charismatics profess to a definition of the tripartite person whose components interact in a "pneumopsychosomatic" way, the self processes of resting in the Spirit are structured more along the lines of the "mind! body/spirit trichotomy." More precisely, this reduces to the readily recognizable Western dualism of natural (psychophysical) and supernatural (spiritual). Authentic resting in the Spirit cannot be incarnated as either a physical or psychological act. It cannot originate in either of these domains, but only in, the spiritual. Paradoxically, and this is our second conclusion, the suspicion of surrender and the criterion of spontaneity bring to the fore a powerful ambivalence that surrounds the psychocultural theme of control. Because its source can be inauthentic, spontaneity carries a danger, as is evident in the following passage from a Charismatic writer: Of all the psycho-physical experiences [healing, miracles, emotional release, and trance states] it is in the last, the one in which the falling phenomenon is found,

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

259

that the subject loses control of his or her body, and therefore can no longer rely on consciousness to protect him- or herself from unwanted and unwarranted influences. The fact oflosing physical control places this experience in a category unique even among psycho-physical phenomena, and it alone makes the experience as potentially dangerous as it can be potentially helpful. (Dobson 1986: 45)

This prominent Charismatic author implies that to be out of control is acceptable and even beneficial if the experience is caused by divine power. While, as we have seen, some Charismatics debate whether a person authentically resting is really out of control, the issue remains central. What is culturally at stake is precisely the potential consequences of losing control, and it is to one of the most dramatic of these consequences that we now turn.

Demonic Crisis in Its Behavioral Environment What we are calling the demonic crisis is not a named practice like resting in the Spirit. It is also less easy to document, both because of its relative rarity and because it is regarded as a manifestation of evil. As we have seen, Charismatics encounter evil spirits in a variety of ways that do not include episodes of crisis such as those that concern us here. We have already distinguished the practices of formal Catholic exorcism and Charismatic deliverance with respect to the criteria of degree of symptomatic severity, degree of demonic control, and degree of ecclesiastical involvement required in therapy. Cases of exorcism typically include the demonic crisis, but nevertheless are exceedingly rare and are largely outside the scope of Charismatic practice. Yet although demonic crises are rare even among cases of deliverance in Charismatic healing, they are far more common than the total number of exorcisms that occur, and unlike exorcism they often occur in large group settings. In addition, narratives of demonic crisis defme the nether pole of a cultural continuum of severity in deliverance. Thus demonic crises occupy a more visible position on the cultural horizon than do the torments of exorcism. 17 Also relevant here are the process of domestication and the cultural innovation of "binding spirits" which accompanied the diffusion of deliverance from Pentecostal to Catholic circles. A demonic crisis may be defined as a situation in which the "manifestations" rage

260

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

out of control, and the domestication of deliverance occurred partly in response to such crises. Although their frequency has doubdess declined over the past decade, they remain a constant behavioral possibility in the Charismatic world as well as a vivid symbol of evil incarnate. D nlike the situation in some societies for which "crises of possession" are reported (Bourguignon 1976b), the Charismatic demonic crisis almost never occurs in a civic setting or in the course of daily life. The afilicted only rarely runs wildly through the streets, or falls writhing on the floor in front of her spouse and children. Typically, such a crisis will occur within the religious milieu itself, in a private session of healing prayer, at a public healing service, or during one of the large periodic regional or national Charismatic conferences. It is probably safe to say that demonic crises are less common in local prayer groups where the healers are experienced and where sessions are carefully prepared and conducted in a supportive atmosphere. In addition, patients in these sessions are most likely to be members of prayer groups with relatively high levels of therapeutic disposition, and already socialized into Charismatic practices such as "binding" of spirits. At a public healing service, on the other hand, the person afilicted is relatively more likely to be someone "off the street," since typically only half of participants at such services are active in the Charismatic Renewal. The most vivid accounts are often from regional and national conferences or specialized workshops where, perhaps not coincidentally, the most-renowned Charismatic healers are likely to be in attendance. Such events usually last several days, during which both healing ministers and the potentially afilicted are part of a highly charged spiritual atmosphere where dramatic incidents are expected. The exercise of spiritual gifts and the concentrated presence of sometimes thousands of Charismatics are understood to invite attack and harassment by the "enemy," Satan, who resents and is threatened by such a concentrated demonstration of power and unity within the "kingdom of God." Participants in these events often report the sounds of "loud deliverance behind closed doors," and these events subsequendy serve as the source of prototypical narratives about demonic crisis. Given that demonic crisis and resting in the Spirit occur in the same ritual settings and share the essential feature of falling, it should be no surprise that there is some overlap between the two phenomena. Healers occasionally observe that a person who falls upon being anointed will go through a slight writhing, a twitch, or an incipient contortion before setding into a peaceful swoon:

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

261

A man came up to me [after a prayer meeting] and said he wanted to be prayed over. So I put my hand on the man and out he went, in the Holy Spirit. But the minute he hit the floor, his whole body distorted, and turned and twisted almost in an arc shape to one side, with a very bad look on his face, a very painful look.... And I prayed a little bit more and all of a sudden his whole body relaxed and eased and he stretched right out again. Something was released from him and it was in that side of his body, so strong that it twisted and contorted him as it was going. Then he straightened out and was fme.

An occurrence like this is interpreted as a spontaneous deliverance (or less frequently an inner healing). It is felt that the same "openness" that allows some people easily to rest in the Spirit also allows them to be influenced by demonic forces. However, if it occurs within the event of resting, any "negative manifestation" such as thrashing, crying, twitching, writhing, or change of facial expression is taken to indicate that healing is in process. A person who falls with these negative manifestations is said to "go into deliverance," consistent with the notion that healing occurs spontaneously in resting in the Spirit. Conversely, a person prayed with explicitly for deliverance sometimes responds to the prayer by resting in the Spirit. The semiotics of manifestations is thus pragmatically dependent on context. Because resting in the Spirit is by defmition an influx of divine power, negative somatic signs indicate that an evil spirit is leaving, displaced by that power. The demonic crisis, however, is an occasion in which all signs indicate that a spirit is present or on the attack. The principal behavioral elements of the phenomenon include the emphatic rejection of religious symbols or themes, falling and writhing on the floor, growling or hissing, shouting or other changes in vocal quality ("guttural" tones that signify a demonic speaker), profanity, threats, and physical violence (hitting, biting, breaking and throwing objects) accompanied by "superhuman strength." The nature of these signs points to a profound phenomenological contrast: whereas resting in the Spirit is characterized by peace and healing, the demonic crisis epitomizes violence and rage. These affect-laden behaviors, or behaviorally constituted emotions, go well beyond either the disruptive manifestations or the manifestations of successful deliverance discussed in the preceding chapter. Because the demonic crisis is behaviorally more complex than the sacred swoon, the best way to convey a sense of its chaotic gestalt (I plead the legitimacy of the oxymoron upon the narratives that follow) is to recount several vignettes culled from our healer interviews: 1. We had one particular woman who was living in one of our [covenant community] households. She wanted to go through the Life in the Spirit Semi-

262

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

nars to fmd out what they were like. I was teaching the seminars at the time, and it came time for each individual to be prayed over [for baptism in the Holy Spirit]. She left the room with the speed of lightning. I almost got pneumonia, she went out so fast. And my inner spirit said to ask to see her with Father R. So we asked to see her, and we were praying the "Hail Mary," and we prayed with her for deliverance, and when we got to the name of Jesus, she would begin all kind of obscenities. It was spontaneous shouts, something that she almost seemed shocked herself to have happen that way. And she would begin to pray the "Our Father" backwards, and pray the "Hail Mary" backwards. And begin to thrash around on the floor and at one point, she was only like eighty pounds, she picked up Father R and threw him clear across the floor. And she admitted to having been in a cult, and had given her soul to Satan, and that was another time we just-I knew what I knew and I knew I was over my head. And we all did. And we talked with her about the presence of evil, and then she began to talk about her relationship with the occult. We discussed with her the danger of what she was pursuing in the occult. She needed to make a decision whether she was going to stay in this occult, or whether she really wanted out of this kind of business. So she made a free choice. She made a lot of free choices. The main evil spirit was that ofIdolatry. And there were a lot of other things like a real spirit of Greed and Power. Spirit of Control. There was a real spirit ofDestrucrlon going on within herself and you know, defacing church property or stealing or taking the Eucharist and . . . not swallowing, but just taking it until she got to a place where they were worshiping Satan and they would defecate on the Eucharist. Things like that. Father C and Father R and I went to the bishop, and she needed obviously to get some good spiritual direction. The bishop didn't really call it an exorcism. He thought there was a real obsession, and she really needed, she needed to relinquish all ties to that cult. And she did, and by that time we were a little bit wiser and smarter, and she lived with us [in the community] for about eight years, and we offered her a lot of support systems. I think some of the dangers are that it's so difficult because there are a lot of psychological problems too, in that particular individual. So not being qualified, not being competent, you know, it needed further attention than we were able to give her. We certainly could offer some good sound advice, and we certainly offer her support systems. But we weren't the be-all and end-all of this deliverance, this deliverance process needed to go hand in hand with some good counseling and some good spiritual direction.

This prototypical case includes nearly all the ritual elements relevant to demonic crisis, including spontaneous loss of control and "manifestations" of rage and violence, involvement with the "occult," a cluster of "evil spirits" constituting a negative objectification of the self, cooccurrence of "emotional" difficulties requiring professional mental health intervention, and the therapeutic intimacy offered by the support systems of "Christian community."

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

263

2. We got a call at 5:00 A.M. in the morning from this priest, and he said, "If you don't come pray with me now, I'm going to kill myself." So my husband [also her healing partner] woke me up and we traveled from here to C-town and in that time we prayed three entire rosaries. We didn't have much experience then. We brought our Bible. And we got a reading in the Bible: "Whoever cannot say that Jesus Christ is Lord is the anti-Christ." Like that, he's the antiChrist. He's the anti-Christ. That's all I got [by way of inspiration]. So we started praying with this man. And he started manifesting. He was bouncing in the chapel, and he started manifesting on the floor, physical manifestations. He was really bouncing like he was having a seizure, but he wasn't having a seizure. He was just bouncing up and down. He fell to the floor, and it was like he had a seizure, when you twitch allover, but it wasn't really a seizure. He wasn't foaming or anything like that. And we started praying and I guess stuff started coming to me. And I told my husband, "That looks like he's got this [spirit names]." And I didn't know I had it [discernment of spirits]. And then he had learned the binding prayer, so he started binding it off. It took about an hour or so. And then the priest quieted down and he said, "It's all gone now." But my husband's spirit knew there was something wrong, and the scripture passage came back to him. He said, "Repeat after me. J. c. has come in the flesh." He said, "I can't say that. I will die if! say it." So then we knew from reading the Bible, we bound off the anti-Christ, cause he had a spirit of anti-Christ. He was heavy. He had everything. He had Deceit in him, Self-hatred, Rejection, Denial. [After that] we were so weary, we put him in the charge of some priest in his own order there. They didn't take good care of him. The poor guy went downhill really bad. I told you we hurt a few people. You don't know what you're doing; you learn. We went through a three-hour deliverance with the guy, but then we left him. We talked with him about the [healing power of the] Eucharist and stuff, but he wasn't stable. So we put him in the hands of another priest there. They nurtured him and they loved him for a little bit, then they sort of just let him go. And he went back to where he was, and first thing he was up in St. M's hospital with a breakdown in the psychiatric ward. And they medicated for a while. Then he came out, and he got prayed over for some inner healings by a nun over there. He's doing okay now as far as I hear.

Again in this vignette we see the characteristic spontaneous loss of control, specifically in response to religious content, and the accompanying violence and rage. The suicidal state that we would associate with major depressive disorder is summarized as a constellation of evil spirits objectifying the affective constitution of the self. The healers acknowledge in hindsight the cooccurrence of psychiatric disorder, without denying the validity of their deliverance and stressing the eventual resolution of the psychiatric afiliction through Charismatic inner-healing prayer. 3. I knew this person. And she asked me that afternoon to pray with her. I could only feel startled. I never refused to pray with someone, unless I had this

264

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

feeling not to pray with her. Well, it was a good thing, because she had gotten in [to a retreat for healers] under some kind of a false pretense. Really beautiful person, but wanted so badly this healing-or else someone made the mistake when they screened her, I don't know. Father M was a little upset. That evening after having some teachings, we were having some ministry [healing prayer], and I don't know who started praying on her first, because I was working with someone, but they started praying on her for a pain in her back. And oh, everything broke loose. I'll tell you. First of all, when they prayed on her, she ended up on the floor. In all kinds of commotion, all kinds of actions, something in her really fought that prayer. They just started praying on her, in this thing. She was having voices come out, this was really, voices come out, screaming, and making all kinds of noises. They would pray with her, they wouldn't even talk to this thing, they were calming her, they were very nice with her. And then later on, at the very end, they started dealing with deliverance. She went through five hours of deliverance. The woman had tremendous bitterness. She had seen her husband and son killed in front of her, and her husband decapitated. In an automobile accident. She had become very, very bitter. She tried to forgive the man who did it, but couldn't, and became very bitter, having what we call "rooted bitterness" in her. That's what they dealt with for five hours. Then they spent the rest of the next four days doing inner healing with her. Most of that was done in private.

In this vignette of a woman who gained "inappropriate" access to prominent Charismatic healers, a single dominant evil spirit is associated with a discrete emotional trauma. An implicit understanding of a psychosomatic connection between the trauma and the woman's back pain is embedded in the cultural reasoning that the woman's spontaneous loss of emotional control was a response to prayer that was ostensibly for her back. The narrative is independent, however, of reference to psychological or psychiatric themes, although these doubtless emerged during the intimate and intensive inner healing subsequently carried out. As we also observed with resting in the Spirit, although falling is quintessential of the demonic crisis, it is not its necessary criterion. Narratives of demonic crisis suggest that an important variant is characterized not by falling, but by an attempt to flee. We have already encountered this flight scenario in the first vignette and it is elaborated in the following account: 4. One night we were at the church, and this girl brought her friend with her. She asked me if I would pray with her friend, and I said, "After the service." Because it was time for mass to begin. All through mass, this young girl had her head down, half-way down on the bench. And I prayed for discernment all through mass. I just felt that this girl had been a long time into drugs, and the whole scene, and was going to require a lot of help and prayer in that night. So I motioned to a couple of the men who also pray with us and in what we

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

265

call "catch," when we have people going down in the Spirit. They came over with me and started to pray. And all of a sudden, she looked up and she looked at me and it was like I actually saw flames coming out of her eyes. I'll never forget it. And these five men, none of them much under six feet, big, strong men-one's like a meat cutter and all that-could not hold her. So 1 knew that. . . . And she went leaping out of the church. At that time, the police happened to be going by. They came. She was leaping along the street. They came over to her and grabbed her and took her, because she was leaping in and out of traffic. They could tell there was something wrong. So 1 immediately followed them to the police station, and took two of the boys with me to pray who had been previously on drugs and had been delivered. The people in the church stayed there and prayed. And we're outside praying in tongues-see, when we pray in tongues, the Holy Spirit prays in us according to the needs of the children of God. So we don't know how or what he does. And all of a sudden, the ward maid came out to us and said, "I can't believe the change in this girl. All of a sudden she's as quiet as a lamb." That girl began a program.... .She came back the next day. We prayed with her. Began to come to church. And got delivered from drugs. And began a new life.

Although no evil spirit is named in this vignette (a spirit of Addiction is implied), it can be identified as a demonic crisis by the constellation of features including flaming eyes, flight, superhuman strength, and spontaneous "release." The existence of two variants of demonic crisis, one characterized by grappling on the floor and the other by an attempt to flee, suggests its essential similarity to the classic "fight or flight" response. This observation leads us once again to demur from hastily labeling demonic crisis as simply "trance" or "catharsis." Although catharsis may be an end result of the deliverance process, the crisis itself can be understood as a stress response that combines emotions of fear (of one's own distress or perhaps of intimacy itself), and rage (against intolerable existential circumstances or perhaps against intrusive behavior by well-intentioned healers). This interpretation is strengthened insofar as it allows us to account for one of the more curious features of the phenomenon. The stress response includes secretion of adrenalin, which stimulates the central nervous system in preparation for strenuous effort. The effects of this stimulation are doubdess what is being described by participants' attribution of "superhuman strength" to the affiicted. 18 At this juncture let us ask whether the debate over "authenticity" extends to the demonic crisis. Does cultural logic allow that people might feign the crisis, or that there can be causes of such behavior other than the demonic? I will present two final narratives by means of which we can answer this question:

266

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

5. We had a woman, when we had one of these masses at the house, and when she came in, she fell on the floor and she started screaming and everything, and my fIrst thought was, "This is not going to be allowed in my home." And there were two priests that went to her and started doing a deliverance and I was just graced [inspired] in that moment, so I went over to her. I asked them to be quiet, please. And then I had to discern what was her and what was the spirit. So I bound off [the spirits] and then I spoke with her and told her that she had complete control here. She has her free will. She walked in this house. And then I would come in with the gentle love [in my speech] and keep loving her and then I asked her if she would please get on her feet and walk right up those stairs. I can't remember what the spirits were. But there were three. I think it was something like to cause commotion, interference. But I bound them off and upstairs she went. And when I went upstairs everybody came, because that was frightening everybody. I had a talk with her and she just wanted a lot of attention. And she wanted that. And she was upset because'it was ... the attention, you can't give it just to one person. Everybody's coming in, ya know. Then I also had my own family to think of, and what was going on in my household. And I couldn't allow this stuff. And then I went and I sat with the priests afterwards and talked with them and told them how wrong it is, cause you get so caught up in the spirits when that is a person there, too. And they also have control. And you have to discern which is which. After that we had the mass, and my concern was, ''What's going to happen at the mass?" But she came down to the mass, and she was fme, and seemed to be fme after the mass. Later we took her upstairs when we had time. She slept overnight that night, and we worked with her, and just brought her into inner healing.

Two key points can be drawn from this vignette. First, the class habitus is soundly dominant over spontaneous ritual enactment. The healer cites a series of reasons, all having to do with domestic decorum in a middleclass social event, that add up to the conclusion that a demonic crisis in someone's home is simply not appropriate. Second, the narrative identifies social circwnstances in which ethnopsychological notions of free will and control of the self are strategically invoked. The healer cites the fact that the subject walked in under her own agency in order to delegitimize the spontaneous fall. She adds emphasis by pointing out that after the fall the woman had enough free will to stand and climb the stairs, an act she was made to perform perhaps as much as a Strausian symbolic statement of uprightness as it was a means to remove her from the gathering. The very onset of the crisis is also construed as willful-this is the import of the healer's remark that the woman wanted the attention, as opposed to requiring attention because of a spontaneous loss of control. Yet in the end the episode is not entirely disauthenticated, as the healer distinguishes between "what was her and

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

267

what was the spirit," and in due course gives her considerable healing attention. Our fmal vignette is related by the healer as a crisis judged to be spurious: 6. We had one come from E-burg, where she had applied to the bishop for exorcism and all this stuff, and she supposedly went through these uncontrolled rages and she'd kick on the floor and go into a fetal position and scream and everything. The psychologist phoned, then the diocese called and they called the cardinal. They always end up here. So we had mass, but she didn't come to the mass. She showed up later. And we saw her in the dining room. And we said, "Gee, you don't have a spirit." She said, "Yes I do. Yes I do." And then began to throw herself on the floor and kick and rage and do all her little thing there. And we continued to drink coffee and wait for her to fmish. And as soon as she realized she wasn't getting any attention for this thing [we said], "Come on. When you're ready, get up." Her boyfriend came in then, and he immediately went to run over because then she started going into convulsive thing. And it's very hard to tum around and say to her .... It was almost like looking at something of a psychotic episode or something, ya know. And it was very hard to say to the boyfriend, "Just let her be. She's fine. She has to withdraw because she can't handle something right now." And try to be present to her and not be present because of the negative behavior. It's just a terrible position to be in. The psychologist said that at one point he thought that she had all these psychological problems, but as he started going into dream therapy with her, whatever it is, and kind of hypnotizing her and putting her into her childhood, it came out that she was severely sexually abused from infancy. It sounded like a fairy tale story. And as a result of that, she had all these manifestations, physical manifestations. This is the way she'd behave. Then she was also involved in the occult. And that made him now take a whole new perspective. So, of course, I questioned him. I said to him, ''Well, how long have you been seeing her?" And he said, ''Well, ten years." And I said, ''Ten years?" And he was getting upset because she was becoming very affectionate towards him type of thing. I don't know, I just didn't like it that time from the beginning. Because I felt like saying, "I don't know anything about the profession, but anybody that would keep somebody on for ten years that wasn't growing and was going backwards, I would question just on the normal level, ya know, myself as a human being, as a parent if it was one of my kids. What's going on here?" He was not a Christian psychologist, just regular, but he was convinced somewhere along the line that he had a possession here. But the other thing that I had said was, "You've been seeing this girl for ten years. And this possession has only surfaced in the last two years, eighteen months. You mean you missed it for eight years?"

In addition to portraying the healer as more "reasonable" than her secular counterpart, this narrative returns us to the manner in which the notion of mental illness itself is an integral part of the healing system.

268

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

Healers state that psychiatric disorder can cause such an episode, and that anyone who would feign the crisis is likely to be emotionally unstable as well. According to the cultural logic of the healing system, the crisis can originate from a combination of the "self," "mental illness," and "evil spirits." Distinguishing the proportions of these contributing factors in a particular episode is one of the meanings of "discernment," which like the ability for differential diagnosis among psychiatric clinicians, is ultimately regarded as a "gift." In summary, as we saw with the sacred swoon, spontaneity and loss of control are criterial for the demonic crisis. In stark contrast, however, demonic crisis is a rejection of the cultural ideal of intimacy. This is doubly true in that violence, rage, and flight are in opposition to intimacy with others, and in that rejection of religious symbols (epitomized by an inability to say "Jesus" or to pray) is in opposition to intimacy with a "personal" deity embodied in the sacred swoon. That these are indeed embodied oppositions is a principal claim of our analysis. Consider the following statement by one of my healer informants, in a description of a large service she attended: "One man was thrown down and he was creeping in the aisle like a snake, and the team came and prayed over him and performed the deliverance." As a case vignette this scrap of data is quite flimsy, but in other ways it says a great deal. The observing healer was able to recognize from a distance precisely what was happening, with no equivocation about whether the behavior constituted resting in the Spirit or a demonic crisis. The immediacy of this recognition is based on two precise structural contrasts: that between fallen/thrown, where the distinctive feature is the presence or absence of violence; and that between immobile resting/creeping like a snake, where the distinctive feature is the absence or presence of peace. 19 It is critical that these structural oppositions are discovered in this instance not in mythic texts or predetermined ritual action, but in spontaneous somatic behavior. The structure we identify is the structure of, following Bourdieu, spontaneously orchestrated dispositions within the habitus, and its recognizability is based on the religious objectification of those dispositions as good or evil. Again in contrast to resting in the Spirit, however, the crisis is not only caused by supernatural force, but the violent actions are dissociated from the self and attributed to the evil spirit. The structural disjunction is a statement about the self: in the sacred swoon the self is resting, but in the demonic crisis the evil spirit is acting. The ideal of a tranquil self is protected by a cultural rhetoric that replaces the experiential language of resting in the Spirit

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

269

with a behavioral language for the demonic crisis. That is, the subject in the sacred swoon feels peace and relaxation; the subject in demonic crisis is not described as feeling anger or rage, but in terms of doing things like yelling or writhing. This behavioral language renders the "inner" self opaque until emotion is reintroduced as the name of a particular evil spirit and reintegrated into the subject's biography.

Self, Control, and Embodied Existence We would be remiss to go further without comparing our discussion of bodily control with that of Douglas (1973). She argues that cultures that allow for occasions of diminished bodily control, epitomized by religious possession rituals, will also have less tightly integrated social structures. There are two critical moments of abstraction in her argument. The first is construing ritual possession not in its culturally defmed experiential specificity, but as a lack of bodily control; the second is when the degree of bodily control is taken not as a substantive theme, but as an index of social structure. Control is a natural symbol, but as such it refers to something other than itself. In contrast, our analysis has been doubly concrete. We have shown that control is a substantive psychocultural theme in North America, and have also shown how the specific technique of the body enacts or "thematizes" that theme. Douglas'S method is grounded firmly in the order of representation, whereas ours is grounded in the order of being in the world. Methodological differences aside, we might consider putting the phenomena described in this chapter forward as empirical exceptions to Douglas. After all, is not North America a tightly organized society where we have discovered two clear instances of bodily control being relinquished, and that among otherwise mainstream, middle-class citizens? The answer depends on whether one sees our society as actually integrated or entropic. Perhaps the postmodern condition in which all structural possibilities are copresent renders Douglas's scheme inapplicable. In fact, at the end of this chapter we will touch on an example that supports Douglas'S thesis with respect to different segments of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal itself. For now, what we can say is that resting in the Spirit and demonic crisis stand in vivid contrast as deeply corporal thematizations of control in Charismatic ritual life. Let our question then be why these phenomena stand in such clear-cut opposi-

270

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

tion. Certainly we have discovered a far richer structural and phenomenological nexus than could have been anticipated merely by observing that both are ritualized modes of spontaneously abdicating the upright posture. Can we conclude that resting in the Spirit and demonic crisis are essentially opposed as good and evil? This makes eminent sense from the indigenous viewpoint, but to stop there would be the same as if we had been content to describe the theological debate over "authenticity" without reference to the psychocultural themes by which it is motivated. I would suggest that what motivates the embodiment of good and evil in these two forms of ritual enactment is implicit in the following passage from Heidegger: With healing, evil appears all the more in the lighting of being. The essence of evil does not consist in the mere baseness of human action but rather in the malice of rage. Both of these, however, the healing and the raging, can essentially occur only in Being, insofar as Being itself is what is contested.... To healing Being first grants ascent into grace; to raging its compulsion to malignancy. (1977:237, 238)

By my interpretation, Heidegger suggests that behind the superficial opposition of good and evil as supernatural forces lie the "raging" and the "healing" as modes of human being, characterized respectively by states of malignancy and grace. If we consider the demonic crisis and the sacred swoon as embodied modalities of the raging and healing, where does this lead our cultural phenomenology? The two parts of Heidegger's characteristically cryptic comment about the raging and the healing are separated by a page of discourse about how the juxtaposition of these two modes of being reveals "nihilation" and the "nothing" as intrinsic to Being itself. We will not complete a cultural phenomenology, however, if we are satisfied to attach metaphysical labels to ritual practice. If demonic crisis and the sacred swoon embody Heidegger's raging and healing, our interest is in how they do so in a culturally specific way. Levin (1987a,b) offers us a lead by taking up Heidegger's themes in a cultural analysis of the current age as an epoch of nihilism characterized by self-destruction, or more precisely by a struggle "in which the very being of the Self is contested" (1987b: 481). The Charismatic sacred swoon and demonic crisis are precisely phenomena of the contested self. Because they reveal the kind of body-self that must exist in order to come into contact with its ultimate mirror, the sacred in both its faces, the two phenomena count as defmitive

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

271

cultural statements about the sel£ Specifically, they define the space between an absolute wholeness of divine healing and an absolute nihilation of demonic self-destruction. Yet the space between may not be so broad, and we must recall the thesis of Girard about the essential identity of violence and the sacred. In particular, Girard understands rites of exorcism as historical innovations preeminently suited to fill a cultural gap created by the obsolescence of sacrifice in religious practice-exorcism is violence directed against the devil (1977:123). In our case, the violence of the demonic crisis is answered by the unanimity of collective violence against evil spirits, but the spirits are not forces external to the community. They are forces that inhere in, and are named for, characteristics of the self; spirits of Depression, Self-Destruction, and Deceit. The self in a rage is also the sacrificial victim, though in ritual practice the violence is ostensibly caused by the demon, and deliverance is directed against the demon. The sacred swoon itself, however, is not exempt from association with violence. The subject is overpowered and overcome, and no matter how gently he is laid down by the "catcher," ends up flat on his back on the floor. The message is about the puniness and vulnerability of the self, a message that is increasingly more threatening for a beleaguered and contested postmodern self to hear. Thus the attempt to domesticate "slaying" into "resting" in the Spirit, like the attempt to domesticate the demonic by "binding" evil spirits, represents not only a transition from a Protestant to Catholic ritual style, but a ritual innovation sensitive to the decreasing resilience of the self in the face of cultural violence at the end of the twentieth century. The need for divjne nurturance may yet lead to a redeployment of gender symbolism such that, as in the Middle Ages, Jesus once again assumes the possibility of being cast in the role of a divine mother (Bynum 1986b). If we accept resting in the Spirit and demonic crisis as exemplars of the raging and the healing, then their common relation to violence defmes the grounds on which Heidegger's contest over Being itself, or Levin's contest over the being of the Self, take place. Yet there is still more to be taken into account in the culturally situated specificity of these experiential modalities. Why is the healing, which in resting in the Spirit is the closest the average Charismatic can come to being in heaven itself, embodied as mute passivity? Why in contrast does the raging, where the other face of the sacred appears unmasked, take the form of active nihilism? We must acknowledge in resting in the Spirit that healing is culturally formulated as the "voluptuous gratification of succumbing" rather than as an energetic striving for wholeness. We

272

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

must acknowledge in demonic crisis the possible presence of not only the rage of malice, but also the rage of protest. Let us touch first on demonic crisis. Levin (1987a,b) argues that the contemporary epidemic psychopathologies of narcissism, schizophrenia, and depression are not confmed to the occurrence of discrete psychiatric disorders, but are ontological characteristics of our civilization. Evidence for this "ontological hypothesis" is readily at hand if we examine the ethnopsychology implicit in the threefold Charismatic categorization of evil spirits, all of which are thought to be capable of provoking the rage and violence of demonic crisis. In the life-numbing trauma (especially that of sexual abuse) that provides "ministering spirits" with their purchase on the self, we see a reflection ofdepression as an ontological condition of civilization. In the uncontrolled preoccupation with self-gratification implied by the action of the sin-based "cardinal spirits" we hear the echoes of narcissism. In the bizarre manifestations consequent to flirtation with the darkly evil "occult spirits" we feel the realityshattering chaos of schizophrenia. These are not mere etiological or nosological categories in an ethnomedical system: their relevance to an existential malaise is evident precisely in the Charismatics' ambiguous ethno-ontological view of demonic origins in cosmology, psychiatric disorder, and the self itself (cf. chapter 8). Finally, our understanding of their salience in the North American milieu is completed when we observe that the three pathologies and the three classes of demon map onto the psychocultural themes at issue in Charismatic ritual life. A dominant phenomenological element of the depression associated with ministering spirits is suppression of spontaneity, of the narcissism associated with cardinal spirits is retreat from intimacy, and of the schizophrenia associated with occult spirits is loss of control. 20 These considerations suggest that, in principle, Charismatic demonology and deliverance constitute an indigenous set of resources ranged against the forces of nihilism. Nevertheless, the cultural significance of the behavior we have labeled demonic crisis is not exhausted by this account. In particular, elements such as the mocking spirit, flight, rejection of religious symbolism, and the emergence of repressed sexuality suggest the possibility that the crisis can be a protest against an oppression whose source is the patriarchal Charismatic reality itself. By this interpretation, the process of domestication we have described would be seen less as an effort to harness the forces of nihilism than as a movement for social control and the suppression of protest. In addition, to label the forces at work "evil" is relatively safe when that evil is

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

273

attributed, as it is by the religious system, to an external cosmological force. If we remove the veil of cultural representation, evil appears as the abject aloneness in which the very alterity of the self has become malignant. What appears as rage is in fact the horror of the self as nothingness, that is, the crisis of a failed effort at orientation ending in the horror of existential vertigo. If the embodied alterity of the self is the phenomenological ground of the sacred, so it is the ground of alienation, abjection, and evil. On the side of healing, the increasing passivity of the Charismatic ethos can be demonstrated by tracing the changing relationship between the sacred swoon and two other Charismatic ritual practices, speaking in tongues and prophecy. The problem of "authenticity" never arose with speaking in tongues as it did with resting in the Spirit, primarily because in the former the abdication of control could be thematized as either surrender or spontaneity. Glossolalia cannot be inauthentic if accompanied by an intention to pray, but one cannot have the intention to rest in the Spirit. In addition, whereas a person who first begins to speak in tongues is said to "yield to the gift," it is also said that the neophyte should "step out in faith," actively uttering whatever nonsense syllables she can formulate. This combination of activity and passivity in one practice, I would argue, is the concrete operator that allows experiential communion of human and divine in the speaking body. In contrast, resting in the Spirit emphasizes the subjective passivity of "resting" and the objective passivity of being "overcome." There is neither an act of will in falling nor is there a willful act of speech-the practice is both mute and passive. What makes this comparison significant is that whereas at the beginning of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the late 1960s speaking in tongues was the characteristic initiatory experience, after its introduction in the mid-1970s, resting in the Spirit began to share the same niche in the Charismatic ritual ecology. Resting in the Spirit began to occur in "Life in the Spirit Seminars" when people were baptized in the Holy Spirit, sometimes replacing or preceding the experience of speaking in tongues. In the increasingly conservative 1980s resting in the Spirit occurred (and glossolalia did not) at healing services attended by large numbers of the religious public who did not otherwise participate in Charismatic activities. The Charismatics who typically lead these services refrain from glossolalia for fear of alienating participants. This ritual change in the movement at large was paralleled by the incorporation of resting in the Spirit into the aggressive spirituality of

274

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

some Charismatic covenant communities. The most important ritual practice in these groups was utterance in the genre of prophecy. In one community dominated by the active authoritarianism of prophetic utterance, an informant in the late 1970s was able to state with some disdain that the passive sacred swoon "doesn't happen here." Our earlier analysis notwithstanding, this contrast between the tighdy organized covenant community and the loosely organized membership of the larger movement can be taken as evidence, albeit framed within the microcosm of the Charismatic world, in support of Douglas's (1973) thesis about the relationship between social structure and practices of relinquishing bodily control. Resting in the Spirit did not become popular in covenant communities until about 1985, a decade after it had become popular in the Charismatic Renewal at large. When it did begin to occur, it apparendy achieved greater popularity in a segment of the community that eventually decided to modify its commitment to the highly "masculinized" authoritarian vision, a change that led to a major schism (Csordas in press). Moreover, its introduction roughly coincided with a decline of prophecy. To qualify this analysis somewhat, however, the practice entered the community under the influence of Wimberite teachings, which placed it among other dramatic and "masculine" manifestations of divine power in contrast to the broader movement's perceived cultivation of a passive and "feminine" experience of nurturant divine presence. This inflection of meaning supports, again within the Charismatic microcosm, Benedict's (1934) argument that the same ritual feature can take on different meanings within different cultural configurations. It redirects Douglas's representationalist concern with social structure toward an analysis of specific dispositions inculcated by a ritual technique of the body. Against the North American cultural background, the rise of resting in the Spirit tells us not so much about social structure as about the existential enactment of the psychocultural theme of control qua control. Does the encroachment of resting in the Spirit on the ritual turf of tongues and prophecy in these two different segments of the movement constitute the relative abdication of wide-awake, upright religious thought, or the liberating removal of potentially authoritarian utterance? Is even "authentic" resting in the Spirit an escape into self-indulgence, or a reprieve that allows the self to renew and reassemble its forces? Is what passes as healing really a more insidious form of narcissism, or is it truly a moment when the cultural ideal of what Smith (1985) has

THE RAGING AND THE HEALING

275

called integral selthood is attained? If this is "the healing," is it what the late twentieth century really needs? Is the raging of demonic crisis the only possibility for active protest against intolerable existential circumstances, or is it a dangerous form of rebellion that must be domesticated? Is it angst or evil, a cry for freedom or a luxuriating in bondage? What if the passivity of resting in the Spirit is nihilism in divine disguise, and demonic crisis is a howl against oppression disguised as a bloodchilling howl of destruction? What if they are both forms, more and less benign, of nihilism? We can go no further in answering these questions, but we can say that the two faces of the sacred self revealed in resting in the Spirit and demonic crisis are very much twentieth-century faces searching for salvation in an epoch of nihilism.

10 Envoi: The Sacred Self

In what sense can we claim that we have elaborated a cross-culturally useful phenomenological theory of the self, and in what sense have we produced a cultural phenomenology of healing? The answer to both questions is that our success depends on whether we have adequately identified process and transformation in their experiential specificity. Yet if healing is the creation of a sacred self, it might be objected that we have never said what the sacred self "is." Our answer must be that if the self is elusive, it is because there is no such "thing" as the self. There are only self processes, and these are orientational processes. We have been fortunate to have in the Catholic Charismatic healing system an empirical case in which such processes are explicitly elaborated, culturally distinct from the "mainstream" yet recognizable in the context of North American culture. We have documented these processes in the rhetoric and semiotics of ritual language, in the engagement of problematic emotions with psychocultural themes, in revelation and imaginal performance, and in autobiographical commemoration. The Charismatics who experience these self processes are not only oriented with respect to certain cultural domains, as Hallowell (1955) supposed, but their "being in the world" is integrated and coordinated within a habitus. Whereas Hallowell's idea of a behavioral environment presumes the environment to be a condition external to the self, the notion of habitus suggests that self process and habitus are mutually constitutive. This notion of self is cross-culturally useful as soon as it is granted that the existential condi276

ENVOI

277

tion of the habitus, embodiment, is generalizable as the ground of culture, the self, and the sacred. In his fragmentary but influential discussion of the person (1950a), Mauss suggested that all humans have a sense of spiritual and corporal individuality. At the same time, he argued that particular social conditions are associated with qualitative differences among the totemistic personage, the classical persona, and the Christian person. It is of empirical concern to our argument that he saw the development of the individualistic person played out in the arena of sectarian movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, since our data come from their twentieth-century equivalent, the Charismatics. It is of theoretical concern that he saw the problem of the person to be associated with the distinction promulgated by Descartes and Spinoza between the world of thought and the material world, since this is precisely the kind of duality with which we have been concerned. Mauss himself had already reproduced the same duality by elaborating his concept of la notion de personne quite independently from that of les techniques du corps (1950b). These parallel formulations implicitly identify our recurring issues of perception and practice as domains of the culturally constituted self; but writing nearly two decades earlier than Hallowell, Mauss was even less able to treat them together. l Hallowell himself built his theory on self-awareness and, following Boas, on the observation that the personal pronoun is a linguistic universal. For anthropologists wary of projecting our own ethnopsychological assumptions onto ethnological method, self-awareness in itself is no longer a convincing starting point. To equate self with self-awareness is to confuse it with an aspect of the already-objectified person, and perhaps implicitly with our own specific ethnopsychological notion of person. By the same token, the linguistic argument that appeals to the evidence of the grammatical person begs the question of how representation is related to being in the world, the same question that generates semiotics and phenomenology as apparently divergent methodological stances. Fogelson (1982:83) notes that Hallowell did not adequately address the relation between his concepts of person and self. It may be that he was stymied by not following out a phenomenological analysis that distinguished between the preobjective self and the objectified person. As we have discovered, the very possibility of reflexivity is grounded in embodiment.' We can reflect on our own experience because of the essential alterirr that allows us to experience our own body as an object, an "other."

278

ENVOI

In other words, we must start not with self-awareness, but with the problem of how self-awareness is produced; not with the self as an object of awareness, but as the processes of orientation and engagement in which the person becomes objectified. Given the preobjective indeterminacy of perception and practice, such objectification must occur, for it is implicated in the very process of recognizing reality as real: the recognition that is the end of orientational processes must be recognition as some kind of cultural person, object, or state of affairs. Objectifications in the social world do not necessarily create enduring objects or immutable persons, but they do create real objects and persons. Our point is that the dualities between preobjective and objective, self and person, or being in the world and representation are not given outside the existential self processes that constitute them, and those processes are what we must continue to study. The ontological status of our inevitable dualities is not such that they are "there" to be discovered, but that they are consequences of embodiment as the condition of existence. To be sure, there is an important movement in contemporary scholarship in the human sciences to collapse dualities such as those we have been discussing. For some it is motivated by an almost moral objection to "Cartesianism"; for others it is motivated by curiosity about the results of a nondualistic method. The body is deeply implicated in this movement. However, the goal of collapsing dualities is less likely to be achieved by writing about the body in its individual, social, or political aspects (B. Turner 1984, Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987), thanfrom embodiment as the preobjective condition of social life. It is in the immediacy of lived experience that we come face to face with that indeterminacy in which troublesome dualities are collapsed, but also out of which they are generated in the first place. It is then the function ofideological critique to observe how objectified dualities are clung to and manipulated, generating "ontological" distinctions between, for example, natural and supernatural in the domain of religion, or between body and mind in the domain of medicine. An approach beginning with embodiment thus reveals that cultural objectification is a necessity that also inevitably generates duality, and at the same time that there is among us a resistance to objectification intent on collapsing duality. The coexistence of this necessity and this resistance is part of the enduring existential issue of "otherness." It also helps account for the necessity at times of theorizing in oxymorons, as is evident in Bourdieu's description of the habitus with phrases such as spontaneous dispositions, regulated improvisation, intentionless inven-

ENVOI

279

tion, intentionality without intention, knowing without awareness (connaissance sans conscience). As Bourdieu notes, to mistake the oxymoron for a contradiction is to misrecognize that one of the dualities challenged in the notion of habitus is that between the conscious and the unconscious (1987:20-23). Attached to any of these dualities as we may have become, they are theoretical and not ontological distinctions. The phenomenological paradigm of embodiment reminds us of this precisely because in beginning with preobjective indeterminacy it slices through the analytic terrain at an unfamiliar angle, unfamiliar, that is, to the spirit of positivism. This last observation introduces a reflexive note into our theorizing, for we must not only study cultural patterns ofobjectification, but monitor the extent to which our own theoretical objectifications are cultural artifacts. For example, we have encountered a Euro-American tendency to substantivize divine power in our discussions of embodied revelatory imagery and Charismatic "anointing." Keesing (1989) has pointed out how this same tendency among early anthropologists was implicated in the linguistic error of mistranslating the Malaita stative verb mamana as a noun-an error that resulted in our enduring understanding of mana as substantivized spiritual power. Although the linguistic evidence does not answer the question of whether power is experientially substantivized in the Solomon Islands, it does show how our theory may be shaped by our cultural patterns of objectification. A similar point can be made with respect to our tendency to entify the self. Even though the North American self is accurately described as a bounded entity for purposes of ethnography, there is no reason to suppose that it is any kind of entity for purposes of comparative research. Obeyesekere (1990a, b) has repeatedly cited the Buddhist doctrine of nonself (anatta) in admonishing anthropologists for the ethnocentricity of theorizing the self as an ontological entity. Anatta is an understanding of self in terms of indeterminacy and nonentity (Conze 1975:36-39, Spiro 1982:84-91). That anatta is itself a theoretical concept is apparent in a reminiscence by Spiro (1987), who tells of being surprised in his early work to fmd that the concept was not salient in the everyday life of ordinary Buddhists. Buddhists objectify the self, thematize self processes, and represent the person as much as anyone. However, it is precisely as a theoretical concept that anatta is of interest for a comparative cultural phenomenology. For while it recognizes self processes as efforts to achieve a sense of entity, it holds the resultant self-objectifications to be illusory precisely because of the indeterminacy of existence.

280

ENVOI

This is at least roughly parallel to the phenomenological notion of self we have been developing. It will also be recalled that effort is included in the defmition of the self, an effort to become oriented and hence self-objectified (cf. chapter 1). This is the same effort or existential striving that Buddhism finds so problematic. It is due to its evaluative stance, however, that the Buddhist concept becomes one of theology rather than of theory, and thus its intent parts company with our own. We do not aspire to nonself, but to an understanding of self processes in their specificity. As with the concepts of power and self, a certain limitation has accrued to our accounts by the anthropological habit of analyzing religious and ethnomedical phenomena under the concept of "belief." In discussing the role of this concept in anthropological theory, Good (1992) points out that in our analyses beliefs are presumed to be erroneous and stand in contrast to knowledge presumed to be true. Belief is not understood as a concrete act of commitment (with the same etymology as to "belove") but as adherence to an abstract proposition. To study belief is thus implicitly to study the consequences of adherence to erroneous propositions. It should hardly be a surprise, then, that the notion of belief has not figured in our cultural phenomenology. Indeed, the notion of belief, insofar as it stands apart from and passes judgment on reality, militates against the dialogue between theoretical notions and empirical data that has been one of the driving forces of our method in this book. Perhaps myth is a better term for what we have been studying. This is presuming, of course, that myth is understood not (with respect to rationality) as a set of beliefs, or even (with respect to textuality) as a cosmological narrative, but (with respect to embodiment) as a milieu that is inhabited, in the same sense in which Leenhardt (1979) described the mythic world of the Canaques of New Caledonia. The principal characteristic of myth is that it constitutes reality, and it is the constitution of reality in perception and practice, rather than of either belief or knowledge, that has been our underlying concern. Bypassing the notions of belief and knowledge, we have found the existential ground of the sacred in the alterity of the self, and the criterion of the sacred in the experience of spontaneity. In our attempt to maintain a close dialogue between theory and data, each of the concepts we have introduced has been a locus of experiential specificity: person and self, embodiment, otherness and the sacred, genres and motives of ritual performance, postural model, somatic mode

ENVOI

281

of attention, margin of disability, the psychocultural themes of spontaneity, control, and intimacy, the distinction between image as sign and image in consciousness, imaginal performance, commemoration, and the raging and healing. Our analyses of phenomena under these concepts has allowed us to identify the modes of orientation and engagement in the world that transform a suffering self into a sacred self as well as to identify the patterned correspondences between the minute particulars of experience and broader psychocultural themes. For the patients whose experience we examined most closely, we have shown how therapeutic process is constituted of disposition within the ritual system and the Charismatic habitus, experience of the sacred, elaboration of alternatives, and actualization of change. In reflecting on these cases, it appears likely that each of the elements builds on the previous one, such that it is easiest to document disposition and least easy to specify the nature and scope of change. Insofar as the locus of therapeutic process is the indeterminate self, analysis must be incremental and inconclusive. Perhaps paradoxically, it is at only at this level where existence shows its essential indeterminacy that we have been able to achieve the specificity that we set as our goal. Nonetheless, our eschewal of global mechanisms must also be an eschewal of either global psychiatric "cure" or global religious "conversion." We have embraced SchefPs (1979) theory of catharsis as an advance, but it retains the weakness of being founded on an incomplete theory of emotional expression that does not account for cultural objectification and hence therapeutic specificity. Scheff holds, for example, that laughter always indicates embarrassment. This is adequate to a theory of global emotional release, but cannot account for why Charismatic laughter in ritual situations is typically thematized as "joy" (cf. Csordas 1990a). We can take this step by reminding ourselves once again that one of the essential features of embodied existence is its alterity. We have found this alterity to be the condition of possibility for that otherness thematized as sacred. In laughter the alterity of the self is "exposed" in a double sense; that of its spontaneity, and that of the self-observing reflexive posture necessary for the experience of embarrassment. Thematization of laughter as joy is a self-objectification of this double alterity as sacred. 2 If embarrassed laughter is a distancing from uncomfortable emotions, joyous laughter is a distancing from embarrassment. Motivated by spontaneity as the criterion of the sacred, alterity is transformed into its opposite-self-presence-and self-rejection is transformed into its opposite-divine acceptance.

282

ENVOI

The manner in which emotions like embarrassment, sadness, or joy are objectified is critical for the self. By beginning with the preobjective field of embodiment, that field of immediacy where (among others) the analytic dualities of subject and object, conscious and unconscious 3 are collapsed, we have been able to acquire a sense of the emotional dimension of self processes. To the extent that this sense is valid, I would reiterate my argument against those who say that experience is never accessible, but only inferred from language. On the contrary, I would say that we can identify how emotion is objectified and taken up from experience into language. There is a real sense in which the "texts" on which we rely-reports, interviews, narratives, or observation-can be construed as giving us access to experience. Language is not only "about" itself: it can be the source of a genuine communication in which the existential situation of others is disclosed and recognizable. As a method of recognizing what is thus disclosed, the cultural phenomenology that we have elaborated should not be construed primarily as a microanalytic approach in contrast to other macroanalytic ones, nor as a subjective approach in contrast to other more objective ones. It is above all a methodological starting point in concrete immediacy rather than in abstract structure. 4 I emphasize the notion of a starting point, for immediacy and structure are not alternatives, but complementary methodological moments. Thus, if we have expressed our concern with collapsing-or at least suspending and problematizing-conceptual dualities, we must also insist once again that the opposition between semiotics and phenomenology is a false opposition. I would argue for the immediacy of embodiment as a starting point only because I am convinced that it is easier to abstract from experience that to arrive at experience from abstraction.

Notes

Preface 1. A discussion of Charismatic covenant communities in the context of theories of charisma, revitalization, metaphor, and the creativity of ritual language will form the substance of a separate volume (Csordas in press). 2. I have chosen the term self from among a large set of related and nearsynonymous terms. Zaner (1981: 112) has done us the service of defming this terminological set, including both colloquial and technical terms: self, spirit, soul, psyche, subjectivity, subject, inner man, person, mind, consciousness, mental substance, ego, monad, transcendental unity of apperception, Da-sein} poursoi, etre-au-monde, agent, transcendental ego. In addition, one should not forget identity and the individual. I am satisfied that the term self has, at least for our purposes, less connotational and theoretical baggage than any of the alternatives.

Chapter 1 1. For a more detailed discussion of these emphases in the study of therapeutic efficacy see Csordas and Kleinman (1990). 2. My intent is not to deny the possibility of nonspecific effects (cf. Shepherd and Sartorius 1989). Still less is it to deny the importance of ambiguity in certain symbols of healing (Laderman 1987). In fact, ambiguity and paradox may be elements of specifiable self processes. 3. We are concerned not with whether religious participation in general 283

284

NOTES TO PAGES 4-9

has a therapeutic effect (Ness 1980, Levin and Vanderpool 1987), but with a culturally elaborated healing system that interacts with other sectors of the society's overall health care system (Kleinman 1980). 4. Although their relation has never been worked out in practice, intimations of this complementarity can be seen in the presence of an implicit phenomenology in the pioneering semiotic work of Peirce (M. Singer, personal communication), and the presence of an implicit semiotics in Merleau-Ponty's (1964a: 39-97) explorations in the phenomenology of language. 5. We will not follow the strategy of analyzing the self into components, as has been done fruitfully by a number of theorists (James 1983, Mead 1934, Bailey 1983, M. Singer 1989). Such analyses specifY critical functional aspects of self. They serve as aids to thought much as do theories of multiple souls among peoples typically described by anthropologists. However, they lack the phenomenological immediacy that we require for present purposes. Neither is our aim primarily to apply concepts of self developed in the contemporary discussion among psychologists, ranging from Smith's (1985) attempts to define the conditions necessary to the ideal of an "integral selfhood" to Lifton's (1976) analysis of the fragmentation and mutability of a "protean self." Such analyses are cultural critiques, implicitly prescriptive and therapeutic in intent. As such they also must be excluded as conceptual starting points for an cultural phenomenology. An additional element of complexity is added by the fact that Charismatics themselves participate in and contribute to this cultural discourse. A Jungian analysis of the self in contemporary culture, for example, would have to take into account the not-infrequent reference to Jungian ideas by Charismatic healers. Finally, we must be cautious about the principal characteristics we atttibute to the self, for these bear methodological consequences. Such consequences are evident in Descartes's understanding of the self as a substance, or the early Christian understanding of self as a kind of entity, the soul. No less consequential are contemporary theories of self that defme it as consciousness (Devos, Marsella, and Hsu 1985), self-awareness (Hallowell 1955), states of mind (F. Johnson 1985), systems of signs and bundles of habits (M. Singer 1984), or a locus of experience composed of intrapsychic structures and processes (Harris 1989). 6. Charles Taylor (1989) has also taken up the notion of orientation as critical to the self, particularly with respect to orientation in "moral space." 7. A more complete exposition of embodiment and indeterminacy can be found in Csordas (1990a, 1993). 8. The concept of habitus was introduced by Mauss in his seminal essay on body techniques to refer to the sum total of culturally patterned uses of the body in a society. For Mauss it was a means to organize an otherwise miscellaneous domain of culturally patterned behavior, and received only a paragraph of elaboration. Even so, Mauss anticipated how a paradigm of embodiment might mediate fundamental dualities (mind-body, sign-significance, existencebeing) in his statement that the body is simultaneously both the original object upon which the work of culture is carried out and the original tool with which that work is achieved (Mauss 1950b:372). That is, the body is at once an object of technique, a technical means, and the subjective origin of technique. With

NOTES TO PAGES 11-13

285

intriguing implications for the analysis we undertake in this book, Weber too invoked the concept of habitus, suggesting that religions of ethical salvation create a sacred self through a "self-deification" achieved by transforming "the average habitus of the human body and the everyday world" (1963:158-59). 9. The denial of radical disjunction between normal and pathological experience is consistent with the conception of mental disorder held by Harry Stack Sullivan (1953). 10. In his ethnography of the Kabyle people of northern Mrica Bourdieu (1977) gives the examples of how the conceptual distinction male and female is applied in variable ways to the organization of domestic space and to characteristics of domestic utensils. 11. This theoretical difference is reflected consistently in different aspects of the two arguments. Merleau-Ponty's analysis begins with the lack of bodily synthesis evident in cases of perceptual pathology and aphasia, and against it discovers the transcendence and indeterminacy of normal existence, epitomized as a human "genius for ambiguity." Bourdieu's analyses begin with enduring bodily dispositions in stable societies, and discover indeterminacy in a logic of practices that allows cosmology and the quotidian to endlessly mirror one another in agricultural cycles and cycles of daily life, the structure of domestic space and structured judgments of taste. Merleau-Ponty focuses on the motility of the body in the world, whereas Bourdieu focuses on the structured space in which the body moves. As a generating principle for perceptual and social existence, intentionality is the hallmark of the preobjective for Merleau-Ponty, whereas improvised adjustment to objective conditions is the hallmark of the habitus for Bourdieu. For Merleau-Ponty the result is to understand the body in terms of its perceptual synthesis, whereas Bourdieu understands it either in terms of the orchestration and harmonization (1977) or the dassifiability (1984) of practices. 12. This appeal to behavior in no way makes Merleau-Ponty a behaviorist. Behaviorism is essentially dualistic, choosing behavior over the representations of "inner" experience the existence of which are acknowledged, but which in the theory's strongest form are dismissed as epiphenomenal. Merleau-Ponty's example relies neither on the empiricist paradigm of stimulus and response (display of emotion causes perception of emotion) nor on the intellectualist paradigm of inner representations compared to one's own inner experience (when I behave like that I am angry, therefore she is angry). 13. Gergen (1990) is uncomfortable with the concept of intersubjectivity, apparently because he understands it as a relation between two isolated subjectivities or intentionalities. This presupposes a Cartesian formulation of subjectivity, from which starting point intersubjectivity could only be construed as mutual representation of each subjectivity by the other. As is evident in the notion of the copresence of another myself, from the phenomenological standpoint intersubjectivity is a socially constituted singularity from the outset. The intersubjectivity to which Gergen objects is not that of phenomenology. 14. For additional analysis of the necessity of the other to the constitution of the self see Zaner (1981: chapters 9-11), whose analysis draws on the phenomenological work of Scheler, Schutz, and Heidegger.

286

NOTES TO PAGES 15-27

15. Metaphor theory is a rapidly expanding field for which numerous sources could be cited. I restrict mention here to the works of Fernandez (1986, 1991), which are especially useful for a textual approach to metaphor, and to those ofKirmayer (1990,1992), which examine metaphor from the standpoint of embodiment. 16. For a discussion which takes up suffering as an explicit phenomenological theme in the cultural patterning of experience see Kleinman and Kleinman (1991). 17. The most comprehensive social science treatment of Catholic Charismatic belief and practice to date is McGuire (1982). The book is useful as a general introduction to Charismatic ritual language and ritual healing, and includes a thorough bibliography of scholarship on Pentecostal-Charismatic phenomena through the beginning of the 1980s. Detailed analyses of specific aspects of Charismatic ritual life appear in several of McGuire's (1975, 1977, 1983) other writings. For an analysis of the Charismatic Renewal as an international phenomenon, see Csordas (1992a). 18. Self is to be understood here in the popular, emic sense of an authentic, discrete, individual rather than in the theoretical sense we have elaborated above. 19. We must point out the difference between any of these three as a potential phenomenon and as an elaborated cultural theme. Spontaneity, for example, is a phenomenon that is discussed by Ots (in press) in a contemporary healing movement in China, but has a substantially different thematic significance in the predominantly authoritarian Chinese culture than in North America. Likewise, intimacy cannot be said to be absent from Japanese culture, but it is not a theme in the cultural patterns associated with marriage as it is in North America (DeVos 1985). 20. Varenne (1986) also offers an example of how the themes we are discussing interact with one another, in the American predisposition for the kind of spontaneous intimacy evident in attitudes about friendship and community. 21. A European colleague tells of an encounter in front of a sluggish elevator in a high-rise dormitory during her student days. While the rest of the students waited resignedly for the overused car, the sole American among them suddenly began pounding on the door, and when admonished that such behavior would not help matters, justified it by stating he would go crazy if he didn't "do something." 22. For a more detailed examination of the genres and motives of Charismatic ritual language in performance see Csordas (1987a). 23. This hypothesis could be empirically tested by examining the role assumed by each of the divine persons in prayerful interaction, the texts of prophecies, and in healing imagery.

.Chapter 2 1. Healing ministers were recruited from an initial list of twenty-five individuals and eleven prayer groups provided by the movement's coordinating office for southeast New England, with additional informants being recommended

NOTES TO PAGES 27-31

287

by earlier participants. Interviews lasted from one and a half to four hours, and focused on a range of biographical, conceptual, pragmatic, and experiential issues. 2. All of these ten worked in pairs: three priest and laywoman tearns, one nun and laywoman team, and one husband and wife team. 3. Of these, thirteen were priests, two nuns, four laywomen, and two laymen. 4. On professionalism and Charismatic healing as well as for a discussion of healers' views on the relation between psychotherapy and ritual healing see Csordas (1990b). For discussion of psychiatrists who also integrate Christianity into their practice see Gaines (1982a). 5. ALANON is a support organization for relatives of alcoholics, parallel to Alcoholics Anonymous and loosely based on Christian principles. The implication was that the ALANON experience prepared her to be supportive to others in need of healing. 6. We adopted attendance at prayer meetings and speaking in tongues as two practices suggested by ethnographic experience as valid criteria of Charismatic identity. Based on their responses, attendance was divided into weekly and less than weekly (including never), whereas speaking in tongues was divided into often and never. These two practice variables were cross-tabulated and the analysis showed defmitively that people clustered predominantly into groups, one that attended prayer meetings and spoke in tongues (Charismatics) and one that rarely if ever attended prayer meetings and never spoke in tongues (non-Charismatics). The analysis that shows the consistency of association between attendance at prayer meetings and speaking in tongues is as follows (N = 587, missing = 108): Attendance Weekly < Weekly

Tongues Often 144 (30.6%) 79 (16.8%)

Never 84 (17.8%) 164 (34.8%)

The chi-square value with 1 degree of freedom was 44.32, and the statistical probability of these results occurring was .00. The proportion of active Charismatic and non-Charismatic are virtually identical across gender. 7. The only other factor that indisputably indicated whether a person was likely to report having been healed is the number of times he or she had been prayed with for healing. Thus, of those who had been prayed with 1-5 times 51.5 percent reported having been healed, for 6-15 times 76.3 percent, and for 31-50 times 87.9 percent. There is no limit to the number of times someone can receive healing prayers. Some weekly or monthly services attract regular devotees who like the style of a particular healer, and in our research locale the diocesan Charismatic newsletter publishes a calendar of healing services. 8. This is, however, in sharp contrast to the more even gender balance in Charismatic covenant communities. Membership in these intentional communities is generally younger, more highly educated, and favors a more militant ideology rather than one oriented to healing. The polysemic nature of gendered symbolism in religion (Bynum 1986) is doubtless of relevance: the male deity

288

NOTES TO PAGES 32-35

when he heals and when he wields a sword requires different modes of orientation on the part of the sacred self. 9. With regard to the latter, the vexed debate about why this might be the case has invoked factors ranging from gender oppression to nutritional deficiency. Lewis (1971) has put forward the classic argument that "ecstatic religions" provide a sense of empowerment to women who are in other ways dominated by men. Even if this is the case, there will likely be variation across specific instances in whether participation is the basis for an illusory sense of empowerment where the hope for divine intervention is accompanied by a lack of all other resources, the basis for legitimating demands by women on men where husbands must satisfy the spirits who possess their wives, or the basis for creation of a separate domain of interaction that in itself constitutes a social power base (cf. Monfouga-Nicholas 1972 on the latter possibility). Valuable critiques of Lewis have been offered by Kapferer (1983) and Lambek (1989). On the nutritional (calcium deficiency) hypothesis, see Kehoe and Giletti (1981). Bourguignon (1982) has presented a comparison of approaches to the sameMrican possession religion (the Hausa bon) by a male and a female scholar, suggesting that gender differences between observers matter a great deal, and I have suggested that differences between French and Anglo-American approaches may also be implicated (Csordas 1987a). 10. Eight percent of women and 13 percent of men failed to respond to this item. 11. An equivalent 15 percent from each gender failed to respond to this item. 12. The first two categories included a variety of specific items from our original survey, and only the category of "spiritual renewal" remained distinct and uncombined with any other. The categories included the following items from a list of eighteen problems constructed after pretesting the instrument at two earlier healing services. Each category was supplemented by the coding of written responses to a nineteenth option labeled "other problems." Physical illness: heart ailment/disease, cancer, AIDS, diabetes, results of medical tests, successful surgery, physical pain. Emotional/relationship: alcoholism, drug abuse, nerves, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, marital problems, fmancial problems, problems with children, job problems. Spiritual: spiritual renewal. 13. See Csordas (1983) for a case of Charismatic healing of the habit of masturbation. 14. In this analysis, the category of those who brought physical/medical problems alone contained 138 individuals, and that of emotional/relationship problems contained 125. The robustness of the analysis is somewhat mitigated by the inclusion of 54 individuals who reported both categories. In addition, the survey did not determine whether or not the respondents remained or intended to remain under the care of any alternative healing system. 15. There are three principal schools of thought about performance in anthropology, each of which approaches the problem from a slightly different angle, and which taken together constitute an adequate theory of performance. These are the cultural performance approach of interpretive anthropology (M. Singer 1958, 1972, Peacock 1968, Geertz 1973), the performance-centered

NOTES TO PAGES 36-46

289

approach from sociolinguistics (Hymes 1975, Bauman 1974, Fabian 1974, 1979), and the performative-utterance approach which spans both (Ahern 1979, Bloch 1974, 1986, Tambiah 1985, Rappoport 1979). All share a hermeneutic sense of the importance of context, but complement one another in that the first formulates performance as event, the second as genre, and the third as act. The importance of performance in the process of ritual healing is supported by a small but influential body of literature (Tambiah 1977, Kapferer 1979a, 1983, Schieffelin 1985, Roseman 1988, 1991, Laderman 1991). However, in most of these works the methodological distinction among event, genre, and act is present only implicitly. 16. This is the only instance of ritual clothing among Charismatics aside from the mantles and veils of the Word of God and related covenant communities. I am not aware of any ceremony in which members of a healing ministry are invested with this ritual garb. 17. Healing practice in covenant communities takes on a different complexion, partly due to the existence of ongoing everyday relationships, and partly to the fact that the significantly younger membership is not affiicted with as great a proportion of physical illnesses. In the early 1970s some covenant communities made the deliverance from evil spirits a mandatory part of becoming a community member, institutionalizing the premise that everyone is in need of healing. Later, the directive, ongoing relationship of pastoral-leadership ("headship") counseling tended to replace formal healing sessions as the preferred setting for healing and spiritual growth. This system is felt to be consistent with the relatively masculinized ethos of covenant communities that regards much of Charismatic emotional healing, with its imagery processes and biographical review (see below), as too "feminine." Covenant-community leaders or "coordinators" have responsibility to pray for those in their charge, and there are informal opportunities for persons to ask one another for prayer for a variety of issues in addition to healing, but private sessions for individual supplicants take place infrequently. 18. The latter practice is associated primarily with the Protestant healing evangelist John Wimber. A Catholic Charismatic healing service in the Wimberite style is described in Csordas (1990a). 19. In response to questioning about the activities of evil spirits, for example, healers often make statements such as "Spirits don't act that way," or "That does happen, but it is rare." This usage of "empirical" to mean "experientially concrete" is also employed by Hufford (1982) in his interesting examination of the "old hag syndrome" in Newfoundland. 20. However, some Protestant healers acknowledge that they deal with all the same issues that their Catholic counterparts do, simply dealing with inner healing problems under the aegis of prayer for deliverance. 21. See McGuire (1983) for a comparison of Charismatic verbal acts of empowerment in healing with those in a variety of other North American healing traditions. 22. According to Gossen (1976), the Chamula Indians of highland Chiapas also regard language as a kind of ritual substance. It is difficult to ascertain the fine line between metaphorical and literal meaning in a usage such as "soaking."

290

NOTES TO PAGES 46-76

I would argue on principle that Charismatics are no more or less literal than Gossen's Chamulas, although as a native English speaker I can understand it either way. In fact, as we will fmd in later chapters, Charismatics do appear to substantivize divine power. 23. According to Bynum (1989), the embodied imagery of being covered with divine blood was common in the spirituality of the Middle Ages, when it appeared to include a much more vivid tactile dimension than it does among contemporary Charismatics. 24. Montagu (1978) cites scholarly literature on the therapeutic value of touch for skin disorders, asthma, and even schiwphrenia. My discussion here does not include medical uses of touch, but is restricted to its performative efficacy within the Charismatic ritual healing system.

Chapter 3 1. For a more thorough discussion of procedure, process, and outcome, see Csordas and Kleinman (1990). 2. Confirmation of this hypothesis would be furthered if leg-lengthening could be observed closely enough to determine whether the adjustment occurs in minute jerky movements as it does in Schilder's experiment. 3. The variability of this habitual engagement in the world is captured from the theoretical standpoint of embodiment in G. Frank's (1986) account of the sense of bodily wholeness in a woman born without legs and with only partially formed arms. 4. For an additional empirical elaboration of the four elements of process see Csordas (1988). Adequate comparative studies of specificity in therapeutic process must begin with a comprehensive account of performance including event, genre, and act. Kleinman (1988) has proposed a valuable comparative framework that takes into account institutional settings, characteristics of interpersonal interaction among participants, characteristics of practitioners and patients, idioms of therapeutic communication, definitions of clinical reality, and therapeutic stages and mechanisms.

Chapter 4 1. Quite aside from whatever may be covered in the literature on therapeutic countertransference, I am aware of only one study of spontaneous imagery and its possible therapeutic use among psychotherapists (Adler 1981). From the other side, as an anthropologist working among the Navajo, whose traditional healers have been tirelessly scrutinized to the neglect of their patients, I took several opportunities to inquire about people's experiences as subjects of ritual

NOTES TO PAGES 79-90

291

healing. I was rewarded with reports that imagery does occur, on the order of experiences such as the appearance of the traditional deities (Holy People) who tell a person they will become well. 2. Apparently most common among children, eidetic imagery. is neither evenly distributed within populations nor evenly elaborated among the world's cultures and religions. 3. For important discussions of scientific approaches to imagery research see Ahsen (1987), Casey (1976), Giorgio (1987), J. Singer (1981), Ward (1985), and Warnock (1976). 4. For alternative perspectives on the relation between body and text see Berger (1987) and Kirmayer (1992). 5. On presentation and representation in the metaphoric constitution of bodily experience, see Kirmayer (1992). 6. In fact, Casey (personal communication) has acknowledged that his account of imagination is less embodied and allows for less engagement than is probably the case in daily life. 7. See chapter 2 for definitions of these forms. Anointing is included among these revelatory forms insofar as, like the "word gifts," it is a manifestation of divine power in a sensory modality. 8. This analysis is not the same as Avicenna's distinction between representative and active imagination, or Kant's between reproductive and productive imagination (see Casey 1976:131-132). It refers not to types, but to aspects of imaginative activity, specifically that any instance of imagery can be understood both as representation and as being-in-the-world. 9. It may be objected that our attempt to align the notions of image and sign strains to juxtapose two very different orders of phenomena: an analogical representative is necessarily an "appearance" (Husserl 1964:133-136) of an actual or fantasy object which it attempts to approximate or imitate, whereas a representamen is necessarily something other than the object for which it stands. Thus the imagination of warmth must have as its object the sensation of warmth, whereas warmth as a sign may have divine power as its object. In other words, while "warmth" is an image of warmth it is a sign of divine power. This objection immediately begins to break down when it is realized that as a cultural phenomenon, the sensation of warmth is isomorphic with divine power. That is, in a given cultural context, and phenomenologically speaking, to experience warmth is to experience divine power. 10. The practical result was the inclusion of a variety of somatic experiences described above as "anointings," suggesting the arbitrariness of distinguishing between ''word gift" revelation and other experiences attributed to divine power. 11. Heat is also frequently reported by supplicants who either feel heat within them or feel it in the healer's hands. There is no strict coincidence of both healer and supplicant feeling the heat at the same time, and I have included in the tabulation only those instances in which the healer reported heat in his or her own hands. 12. Although the auditory modality plays a limited role in the imagery of healers, to fully appreciate its place in Charismatic imaginal life we must recall

292

NOTES TO PAGES 91-96

its frequent occurrence in prophecy, which is uttered predominantly in settings other than those of ritual healing. 13. One healer was reported by devotees of her ministry frequently to exude a floral scent detectable to those in her presence, indicative of her own closeness to the deity. Skeptics suggest that this healer is herself a devotee of inexpensive perfume. 14. So that the reader can assess my judgment that Charismatic healers do in fact deemphasize dreams as a source of revelation, I will review my criteria for excluding seven healers whom I considered classing as revelatory dreamers. Five of them reported revelatory experiences either in a half-sleeplhalf-awake state, or being awakened from sleep with some kind of revelation. These hypnagogic experiences must be distinguished from true dreaming, primarily in that they tend to include auditory imagery so vivid as to be described in one case as "audible" and in another as "almost audible." Another was excluded who, although reporting two possible instances of dreaming about supplicants, stated uncertainty as to whether their contents actually were relevant to that supplicant or only to himself. Another, trained as a psychotherapist, was excluded because he described his dreams specifically as countertransference dreams warning him away from attraction to a female client. 15. Gaines (1982b) would take this as evidence of the difference between assimilated Anglo-American or North European spiritual culture and that of the Mediterranean region. 16. On the other hand, concordant with the powerful psychodynamic influence on North American ethnopsychology, a number of healers reported having dreams that were relevant to themselves. The dominant attitude was concisely summarized by the healer who stated that, "My dream only works for me." Attitudes toward interpretation of one's own dreams varied from those who were quite suspicious to those who eagerly attended "Jungian" workshops on dream life. 17. As one healer succinctly stated in response to the question as to whether something she told an anonymous man during a healing service was a revelatory gift, "If it comes, it's word of knowledge, because I didn't know him-why would I tell him that?" 18. It may be argued that dreamers are sometimes able at least partially able to control the course of their dreams, or at least to "redream" a disturbing sequence as well as to terminate dreams, but these abilities are neither essential to everyday dreaming nor possible in the same degree as in imagining. 19. Elsewhere (Csordas 1993) I have discussed the manner in which revelatory imagery brings to the fore the indeterminacy not only of embodied existence, but of boundaries between analytic categories such as imagination, sensation, perception, intuition, and countertransference. 20. In addition to M. Singer (1984, 1989), see Munn (1973) and Daniel (1984) for ethnographic applications of Peirce's semiotics. 21. There is without doubt some overlap between these two broad categories of revelatory images. In particular, because the image-in-consciousness is necessarily constituted by an "analogical representative," there is necessarily at least in some sense a degree of iconic relationship even between the symbolic ' image-as-sign and its object.

NOTES TO PAGES 101-111

293

22. Forgiving the perpetrator of a trawnatic event is an essential component of Charismatic healing of memories, a topic that we will take up in the next chapter. 23. Of the 147 total symbolic signs, 21 were excluded either because the data did not allow clear identification of an interpretant, or because the image was part of an imaginal performance and thus shared its interpretant with others in a complex sequence. 24. This conclusion would be reinforced if we had the opportunity to discuss what we could call compound images occurring simultaneously in more than one modality, of which our data include fourteen examples. 25. Healers working as a team may also experience this phenomenon. Although what we might call complementary imagery appears to be relatively rare, our data include five coherent examples.

Chapter 5 1. Certainly it is relevant that the goddess Mnemosyne, or Memory, was for the Greeks the mother of the Muses. In Locke's formulation great emphasis was placed on memory in the form of mental representations as the mode of constitution for our ethnopsychological notion of the bounded, individualistic self. 2. On the other hand, I have heard of Charismatics attempting to verify revelations of childhood memories and even revelations of events in ancestral generations. 3. This is evident in the contemporary popularity of techniques for "past life regression," in which life experiences from previous "incarnations" are retrieved and interpreted with respect to their meaning for the self. 4. Research diagnoses were established using the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (SCL-90), a self-report paper and pencil instrument, and an adapted form of the Schedule of Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS), an interview instrument. Both are in standard use in psychiatric research. Major depression and dysthymic disorder were most common among those who made diagnostic criteria for any disorder. Full discussion of the diagnostic status of the entire set of supplicants will be reserved for a future work. 5. The method is an adapted form of the Interpersonal Process Recall method (Elliott 1984, 1985) used in psychotherapy process research. Sessions are audiotaped, following which the client is asked to rate the efficacy of the session and to identify the most significant event within the session. That event is played back for the client, and a commentary about the meaning of the event is constituted by responses to a series of standardized questions. This method is the basis for the analysis of the cases presented below in chapters 5, 6, and 8. Comprehensive analysis of significant events from the full set of sixty sessions will be undertaken in a separate work. 6. There are in this strategy necessary methodological choices that constrain

294

NOTES TO PAGES 112-132

the nature of our discussion. Clearly the presentation of life histories, a progression of healing sessions, the process of a single session, and the single most significant event within a session represent increasingly narrow contextual fields. Likewise, the occurrence of imagery processes varies from session to session, from patient to patient with the same healer, and across healers. Finally, although problems of intimacy are very much foregrounded in healing of memories in contrast to other domains of Charismatic life, not all such healing has directly to do with intimacy. It is important that the central or presenting problem and its corresponding diagnosis do not preclude the emergence in any session of a variety of "memories" from different aspects oflife experience. Thus whereas the intimacy of a marital relationship may be the fundamental problem, a particular session may focus on an imagery sequence having to do with the supplicant's relation with her mother. 7. Von der Heydt (1970) makes a cogent argument for the congeniality of a Jungian approach in the psychotherapeutic ?reatment of Catholic patients. 8. Note that the imaginal performance is inaccessible in the data recorded within the healing session itself, but only as part of the retrospective commentary on the session. This method is rarely used in anthropological studies of ritual performance, and since it remains undocumented to what extent imagirial performance occurs in other healing forms, it is thus entirely open to question. whether a critical dimension of healing process is typically absent from our accounts. Among Charismatics, healers themselves often remain unaware of the details of imaginal performance that occur in silent prayer. 9. Note that the presence of the Virgin and Jesus are intentionally introduced by the healer. Thus it is correct to say that although divine presence is an element of religious experience, introduction of the divine figures into imaginal performance is an element of technique. 10. In response to my observation that some cultures placed the seat of emotion in other parts of the body than the heart, such as the "gut," the healertherapist suggested that a physiological connection could be present between emotions and other body parts, and that cross-cultural research to that effect would be very intriguing indeed. II. Obviously because of its theological unorthodoxy. 12. For a brief period during her outpatient treatment she was given what was apparently an antipsychotic medication that had a bad effect on her "nerves" and proved ineffective: "It did something to my mouth. I had to lock my jaws together till it wore off'cause I couldn't control my facial muscles. It was really strange." 13. As a child her mother was in terrible accident, and a playmate was killed by a car. She had only after many years learned to drive herself. 14. This session took place before the disgrace of Swaggart due to a sexual scandal. A Protestant Pentecostal television evangelist, he was quite popular among Catholic Charismatics. IS. A 1950s television character portrayed as an always-smiling "supermom" and housewife.

NOTES TO PAGES 142-160

295

Chapter 6

1. The notion of judgment has been subjected to a lucid phenomenological critique by Merleau-Ponty (1962). 2. If there is to be a methodological dialogue between cognitive and phenomenological perspectives, it may well begin by comparing the notions of schema and habit. In my view these are parallel concepts, occupying the same methodological niche and filling the same intellectual function in their respective perspectives. 3. For a critique of theories of efficacy including the homology model, see Csordas and Kleinman (1990). 4. For example, one practitioner "sat down with a fresh student, hadn't the faintest idea what to say to the girl, so just came out with, 'So you want to be an auditor!' The girl burst into tears" (Whitehead 1987:215). For the Scientologist this is coincidentally "pushing a button" that taps the Bank; for the Charismatic this would be a divine inspiration that tapped a memory in need of healing. 5. We exclude the third case since it begins with a memory already formulated by the patient, which is then carried into imaginal performance. 6. Pandolfi shows that among Italian village women, "speaking about oneself by way of the inner parts of one's body" is a culturally elaborated form of narrative discourse about "how each woman suffers history, as sense of suffering transmitted from generation to generation and one that is experienced exclusively by women" (1991:62-63). 7. Gartner also contends that the inability to forgive marks the operation of the psychological defense mechanism of splitting, as formulated in psychoanalytic object-relations theory. We will examine the relevance of this theory to healing of memories immediately below. 8. Casey also notes that when we remember "we get a different past every time." As Husserl o">served, any essence is indefinitely repeatable, but though it is always essentially the "same," this is not to say that it is "self-identical" in those repetitions (Casey 1987:285). 9. The most comprehensive discussion of the cultural meaning of the Virgin Mary as ideal mother remains Kristeva's (1986) classic article. Even here, however, there is less attention to the mother-daughter relationship than appears warranted by the kind of data we have presented. 10. One healer reported the inverse eroticization of a supplicant who was unable to go into the intimate embrace ofJesus during a guided imagery session precisely because "he is a man, and I was sexually abused by a man." 11. When speaking of the self as constituted of memories, the reader should be reminded that we are using the indigenous meaning of "self." In our own definition, we reserve the term self for the cultural elaborations of those indeterminate capacities for engaging the world such as imagination, memory, or intimacy.

296

NOTES TO PAGES 161-178

12. H. Whitehead (personal communication) has raised the issue of whether the relative thinness and thickness as well as the indifferenCe/disengagement offered by Casey suggest that imagination is less embodied than memory. I would argue that whereas both are thoroughly engaged and embodied, there is a relative difference in their modes of operation that is reflected in how they are experienced as phenomena in consciousness, and that corresponds with the description given by Casey. 13. On the notion of "appearances" see chapter 4, note 8. 14. This is the point of convergence between object-relations theory and the phenomenology of embodiment. 15. As in any healing system, everything does not always go according to plan, and Charismatic healers often observe potential pitfalls of their own practice. Thus, revelatory imagery can be experienced as intrusive or violating, and even as traumatic if the supplicant is not emotionally prepared to face a memory. Supplicants who have difficulty imagining may feel unworthy or slighted by the deity, thus increasing vulnerability and decreasing self-esteem. When forgiveness is used as a ritual technique in a mechanical fashion and without adequate preparation it may be false and self-righteous. When healing through imaginal performance is undertaken too soon, it may result in turning attention away from a problem and thus may undennine or preempt an emotional coming to terms or resolution. Some of these issues are discussed with respect to mainstream Charismatic healing in Csordas (1990b). For a discussion of the kind of pitfalls that may occur when Charismatic healing is attempted by healers marginal to the healing system, see Csordas (1992b).

Chapter 7

1. There is some disagreement among Charismatic healers as to whether these are properly to be considered prayers at all, since they are not appeals to the deity but direct commands to the evil spirits in the name of, or under the authority of, the deity. 2. This is the same metaphorical process that is used in the naming of communities and prayer groups, though in that case the metaphor is taken from the positive domain of the vocabulary of motives, and the inchoate pronoun is a "we" rather than an "I" (Csordas 1987a:459-461). 3. Analysis of deliverance is relevant to the question of locus of control in religious healing. Popular and clinical criticism typically assert that attribution of a problem to spirits precludes "owning" one's feelings and thus relinquishes control and responsibility for one's life. Yet the positing of a demon may be

NOTES TO PAGES 180-197

297

less an abdication of control than an acknowledgment that there already exists a lack of control. Thus, though healers acknowledge that particular individuals may use demons to escape responsibility or may expect a "magical," painless solution to their problems, this may be more an abuse of ritual healing than a feature of the healing system itself. 4. Included in the repertoire of precautionary strategies employed by healers are fasting and praying beforehand, the necessity of working in a team and with additional people praying for spiritual protection and support on the outside, carrying the Eucharist and/or sacramentals for protection, postdeliverance prayer to self-deliver spirits "picked up'? from supplicants in the process, renewal of energies by refraining from formal deliverance for a period of time, and making "visits to the Blessed Sacrament" in church. 5. Such a name is "Andronius," a spirit that appears in an atypical case of Catholic Charismatic deliverance documented in Csordas (1992b). 6. Although Protestant Pentecostals, these healers have had significant influence on Catholics who practice deliverance from evil spirits, and the characteristics of their classification are compatible with more partial demonologies I have collected from Catholic healers. 7. The concern with witchcraft is evident in the classic Renaissance text of the Malleus Maleftcarum by the Dominicans Kramer and Sprenger (1971). 8. It might be asked why we choose to describe the demonology as a collective representation rather than as a cultural model (Holland and Quinn 1987). My understanding is that the two concepts pertain to rather different levels of analysis. Cultural models are models of cultural knowledge, and insofar as we are describing the organization of the Charismatic demonology qua demonology-that is, as knowledge of a cultural domain of evil spirits-we can indeed be said to be elaborating a cultural model. A collective representation, however, is defined in relation to a symbol system, and the components of symbol systems may be related in ways that are not explicitly articulated as cultural knowledge. For this reason, to say that the structure of the person is represented in the symbol system by a terminology that overtly identifies a class of spiritual beings is necessarily an interpretive rather than a descriptive statement. 9. To my knowledge the ethnic differentiation of demonology is not culturally elaborated among Charismatics. These data emerged only upon specific probing, and were often accompanied by the healer's remark that he or she had never paid much attention to such ethnic differences. 10. The data for such an analysis have only begun to appear in works by Ackerman (1981) on Malaysian Catholic Charismatics, and by Fabian (1991) of Zairean Catholic Charismatics. 11. The anthropological literature on possession is quite substantial (e.g., Bourguignon 1976b, Crapanzano and Garrison 1977, Ward 1989). Here we note only that in cross-cultural perspective possession may either be regarded as positive (by deities or benevolent spirits) or negative (by demons or evil spirits), and mayor may not be associated with a state of trance. 12. Once again, there is precedent in the Renaissance, where alongside the demonologies we have already mentioned were those in which spirits were

298

NOTES TO PAGES 221-224

classified by their locale of dwelling, whether in the atmosphere, on the ground, underground, or in the water (Robbins 1959:133).

Chapter 8 1. For a discussion of a Charismatic case in which the supplicant did hear voices, see Csordas (1992b). 2. The work of Bilu (1979, 1980, 1985) and Bilu, Witzum, and van der Hart (1989) on spirit affliction in Judaism would certainly have to be considered in any such enterprise. Like Charismatics, Jews could be aftlicted by either evil spirits (demons) or spirits of the dead (dybbuk), although the latter include spirits other than ancestors of the aftlicted. Although Bilu argues that dybbuk possession is a "pure case" of a culture-specific syndrome completely conforming to the cultural physiognomy and needs for social control in traditional, closed Jewish communities, there are specific features common to contemporary Christian deliverance. Thus the afflicted often displayed overtly antireligious attitudes, dybbuk were characterized as "clinging" to the afflicted externally, and the process typically included the necessity of identifying the specific spirit, obstinate refusal of the spirits to depart, and "manifestations" of the spirit's eventual expulsion. Ortner (1974) offers a relevant if brief characterization of demons among the Sherpas as essentially violent and greedy beings. In a psychocultural thematization of control comparable to that of Charismatics, the Sherpas hold that demons correspond to interior impulses to be defeated by concentration and self-control. As among the Charismatics there is intracultural variation in the demons' ethno-ontological status: for the sophisticated they "are images, projections of human psychological forces, particularly the greedy, voracious, predatory tendencies of the self," whereas "for most lay people the demons are really 'out there,' and are felt to prey upon people from without" (ibid.:99). However, the Sherpa demonology is not only a collective representation of the person in its negative aspect, but reflects elements of the social structure, particularly "any category or group that is threatening or problematic" to the established cultural order (ibid.:101). 3. In making this statement Kapferer, perhaps somewhat hastily, lumps the implicitly phenomenological orientation of Hallowell (1955,1960) and Bourguignon (1965, 1976b) with the explicitly psychodynamic approaches of Spiro (1987) and Obeyesekere (1981, 1990). 4. Kapferer shares our goal ofcollapsing the subject-object duality (see chapter 1), but from his theoretical position proposes to do so by examining "the production of subjectivity through participation in an interob;jecti1Je world" (1983:242). In contrast, our approach has been to begin with the preobjective bodily synthesis in order to capture the process of cultural objectification in an intersub;jective milieu (cf. also Csordas 1990a, Ots 1991). However, we are in agreement on the basic phenomenological principle that subjectivity and reflective meaning are emergent through being in the world.

NOTES TO PAGES 225-244

299

5. One healer told of a man who had in vain contacted several priests in the belief that he was being tortured by evil spirits. After spending several sessions with this man himself, the healer concluded that he could be of no help. He indicated that the man probably had serious emotional problems rather than demonic oppression, and suggested that the reason he had gone from priest to priest was that they mutually tended not to validate his self-attribution of demonization.

Chapter 9 1. Other prominent Catholic healers associated with the practice are the priests Roben DeGrandis, Ralph DiOrio, and Edward McDonough, and the nun Francis Clare. 2. As we have noted, it is safe to say that participation in the movement as a whole peaked at about this time, as did its phases of communitarianism and millennialism. 3.. In a survey of two hundred people who attended his workshops across the country, Roben DeGrandis, S. J. repons that 10 percent (N = 20) rested in the Spirit more than a hundred times. The vast majority of respondents had been Charismatics for more than three years, and were naturally self-selected panicipants aware that the workshop leader was a proponent of resting in the Spirit. 4. In a separate question about whether they had rested in the Spirit during the service we visited, 46 percent of women and 34 percent of men answered yes, still not as commanding a difference as cultural expectation would have it. 5. Chi-square 52.6, degrees of freedom 6, probability .00. 6. For a broader ethnological introduction to the diversity ofcultural formulations of power see Fogelson and Adams (1977). 7. Smith (1985), following Jaynes (1976), raises the issue of whether reflective consciousness is not in fact a recent invention in the history of human thought. This is an interesting hypothesis, but perhaps not the first time we have underestimated the capacity of our forebears. 8. The most vivid instance of this contradiction in my data comes from a couple who are a community leader and a healer. They acknowledge teaching that unconsciousness while resting in the Spirit is "not of the Lord," but are faced with the fact that the wife was unconscious during what they both acknowledge to be an authentic episode of resting. Their attempt to resolve the contradiction was based on duration-she was "out" only a few seconds-and reduction of the sanction against unconsciousness to a pastoral principle intended to "guard against those who won't get up or can't hear" and are "emotionally checked out." 9. This descriptive terminology was elicited from healers who had both rested in the Spirit themselves and witnessed others in the sacred swoon. An

300

NOTES TO PAGES 247-248

alternative route to these data comes from responses to preestablished descriptive terms on the part of those among the 587 respondents who said they had the experience during the healing service under observation. The first series consists of emotions, and the second of physical sensations.

N

=

315

% = 100

Peaceful and calm 264 84 Relaxed and worry-free 132 42 Joyful and content 126 40 Hopeful and inspired 122 39 105 33 Cleansed and renewed 97 30 Cared for and accepted Glorious and sanctified 56 18 Pleasant thoughts/memories 49 16 Negative feelings 14 4 (anxiety, depression, anger, rejection, fear, soiled, undeserving, unpleasant thoughts/memories) N Light, floating Waves of love Heat, burning Faster heartbeat Vibrations, tingling Heaviness Tense muscles/back Breathlessness None Other

=

327 156 88 65 59 37 27 21 18 31 48

%

=

100

48 27 20 18 11 8 6 5 10 15

Seventeen of forty-eight "other" responses in this series of physical sensations referred to "peace" and "relaxation." The listing of their experiences -among both emotions and sensations is in accordance with our observation of their dual psycho-physical character. 10. Of the nearly fifty vignettes recounted in the manuscript of Charismatic healer Father DeGrandis, roughly half were stories of religious experience or conversion. The remaining healing narratives conform to the Charismatic typology with stories of "inner healing" predominating over those of "physical healing." In his survey of two hundred workshop participants, the clergyman found similar proportions of types of healing, where the "spiritual healing" category is likely to correspond to generalized religious experience (or edification) and conversion, and the "relationship and mental" categories together comprise what is usually called inner healing. Spiritual: Male (57%), Female (48%); Mental: Male (28%), Female (30%); Relationship: Male (18%), Female (15%); Physical: Male (11%), Female (13%). 11. Our data show unambiguously that the more times people have rested in the Spirit the more likely they are to report having experienced some kind of healing:

NOTES TO PAGES 249-253

Healed

Never

301

Rested in the Spirit 1-5 Times 6+ Times

No Yes

35 (37.2%) 59 (62.8%)

42 (27.8%) 109 (72.2%)

20 (12.5%) 140 (87.5%)

97 308

Total

94 (100%)

151 (100%)

160 (100%)

405

Chi-square 21.86, degrees of freedom 2, probability .00. The obvious limitation of this analysis is that those who have rested in the Spirit are also most likely also to have had other kinds of Charismatic healing prayer than that associated with resting in the Spirit. Father DeGrandis, in his survey of two hundred participants in one of his concentrated ''workshops," found that the proportion of participants who reported healing the first time they rested in the Spirit was 61 percent yes and 31 percent no, whereas the proportion who reported ever having a "major healing" while resting in the Spirit was 54 percent yes and 41 percent no (n.d.:45, 100). 12. The best-developed theory of catharsis to date is Scheff's (1979), which makes symbolic "distancing" a requisite of emotional release in both ritual and theater; and indeed the sacred swoon can be conceived as an embodied technique that achieves such a distancing. The concept of regression in service of the ego originates in Kris's (1952) concern with the psychodynamics of creativity. It is noteworthy that both works stem from aesthetic issues and have resulted in concepts of broad therapeutic import. . 13. In addition to interview data, four Charismatic texts are of particular importance: Dobson (1986) and Suenens (1987) for the critics, and MacNutt (1977) and DeGrandis (n.d.) for the apologists. 14. The polemic is most evident in the writing of Suenens (1987), a nowretired Belgian Cardinal, the highest-ranking clergyman in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and author of six pastoral and theological treatises on the movement known as "Malines Documents." Suenens does his position a grave disservice by uncritically analogizing resting in the Spirit to ethnographically and phenomenologically diverse phenomena from Buddhism, Islam, shamanism, "primitive Mrican and Latin American tribes," and "large audiences at jazz festivals and pop concerts" while insisting that episodes from the Bible and the experience of Catholic mystics bear virtually nothing in common with the Charismatic practice. In arguing further that resting in the Spirit might be due to "natural forces" instead of divine power, he describes some of those natural forces in the following remarkable passage: It was from the time of the German doctor Mesmer (1734-1815) and his followers that men came to recognize the existence of physiological radioactivity: mesmerism has helped to develop increasingly the psychomagnetic energies latent in each human being. It is from modern science that we have learned something about hypnotism, suggestion, telekinesis, therapeutic or experimental magnetic wave motion, the visibility of human auras or emanations, and cataleptic, comatose, or somnambulistic states. (ibid.: 69)

15. While most of these causes were cited by my informants, the precise form of this list is derived from Dobson (1986), who is quoting the Episcopalian

302

NOTES TO PAGES 258-281

Charismatic theologian Morton Kelsey. I am inclined to concur with the analytic equivalence of these causal mechanisms, and take this to support my position that we should demur from invoking suggestion, expectancy, or hypnosis for purposes of scientific explanation. Like mediumism, possession, and divine intervention, their meaning can be interpreted, but they explain nothing. 16. Both of these stances are in fact expressed by some Charismatics, but seem to represent idiosyncratic reflection on ritual practice rather than systematic intracultural variation. 17. This point is true only from a purely Catholic perspective, however, as it must be recalled that deliverance was received from classical Pentecostal healing, where it was practiced throughout most of the present century. Thus the point about cultural visibility must be modified with the statements that with the neo-Pentecostal movement since the 1950s the population participating in this healing system has at least doubled, and that in so doing these practices have also moved from the cultural shadows of lower-class marginality to the relative cultural spotlight commanded by the middle class. 18. On the stress response and the action of adrenaline, see Selye (1976) and Cannon (1953). 19. I use the term distinctive feature in a sense analogous to that of structural linguistics (Jakobson and Halle 1956). 20. Certainly, elements of each theme could be identified within each of the pathological and demonic categories. For example, as we showed in chapter 7, all demonic affliction is associated with absence of control. Depression's absence of spontaneity frequently occurs in the absence of, or inability to achieve intimacy. The family milieu of diagnosed schiwphrenic patients is also often characterized by crises of either overdistanced (critical and hostile) or underdistanced (emotionally overinvolved) intimacy (Jenkins 1991a). At this late stage in our argument, however, we must be satisfied to outline our conclusions with rather broad strokes.

Chapter 10 I. Less relevant to our concerns is the evaluative distinction between person and self made by Marcel, who endowed the former with the positive connotation of a "richly real presence" in relation to other persons, and the latter with the negative connotation of "idolatry of the solitary self' or egolatry (Zaner 1981:181). 2. That SchefPs theory is worked out using examples of both theater and ritual suggests that the experience of a1terity may be the common ground between the aesthetic and the sacred. We recall that Kris (1952) too developed the notion of regression in service of the ego in a study of artistic creativity. Recent studies that carry us toward an understanding of the relation between aesthetics and the sacred in ritual healing include Kapferer (1983), Roseman (1991), Laderman (1991), and Desjarlais (1992).

NOTES TO PAGE 282

303

3. These two dualities in particular will, I suspect, be found to be increasingly relevant in those anthropological writings that problematize the distinction between cognition and emotion, in which the importance of embodiment for the selfis already explicit to varying degrees (Rosaldo 1984, Jenkins 1991a, Wikan 1990). ' 4. In France, the most frequent term for the methodological position opposite phenomenology is in fact structuralism rather than semiotics.

References

Ackerman, S. E. 1981 "The Language of Religious Innovation: Spirit Possession and Exorcism in a Malaysian Catholic Pentecostal Movement." Journal of Anthropological Research 37:90-100. Adler, Barbara L. 1981 "A Phenomenological Investigation Into the Spontaneous Occurrence of Imagery on the Part of the Therapist During a Therapy Session." In Imagery, vol. 3, Theoretical and Clinical Applications, ed. Joseph E. Shorr et aI., 87-108. New York: Plenum Press. Ahern, Emily "The Problem of Efficacy: Strong and Weak Illocutionary Acts." 1979 Man 14:1-17. Ahsen, Akhter 1987 "Image Psychology and the Empirical Method." Journal ofMental Imagery 11(3/4):1-38. Bailey, F. G. 1983 The Tactical Uses ofPassion: An Essay on Power) Reason) and Reality. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Bauman, Richard 1974 "Verbal Art as Performance." American Anthropologist 77: 290-310. Beck, Aaron T., et al. 1979 Cognitive Therapy ofDepression. New York: Guilford Press. Bell, Rudolph 1985 Holy Anorexia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bellah, Robert, et al. 1985 Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. New York: Harper and Row. 305

306

REFERENCES

Benedict, Ruth 1934 Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifllin. Berger, H., Jr. 1987 "Bodies and Texts." RepresentatWns 17:144-166. Bilu, Yoram 1979 "Demonic Explanations of Disease among Moroccan Jews in Israel." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 3:363-380. 1980 wrhe Moroccan Demon in Israel: The Case of 'Evil Spirit Disease.'" Ethos 8:24-39. 1985 ''The Taming of the Deviants and Beyond: An Analysis of Dybbuk Possession and Exorcism in Judaism." The Psychoanalytic Study of Society 11:1-30. Bilu, Yoram, Eliezer Witzum, and Onno van der Hart 1989 "Paradise Regained: "'Miraculous Healing' in an Israeli Psychiatric Clinic." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 14:105-127. Blacking, John 1977 ''Towards an Anthropology of the Body." In The Anthropology of the Body, ed. John Blacking, 1-28. New York: Academic Press. Bloch, Marc 1973 The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France. London: Roudedge and Kegan Paul. Bloch, Maurice 1974 "Symbols, Song, Dance, and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?" Archives Europeen de Sociologie 15(1):55-84. 1986 From Blessing to Violence: History and Ideology in the Circumcision Ritual oftheMerina ofMadgascar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bloch-Hoell, Nils 1964 ThePenterostalMovement. Halden: Scandinavian University Books. Bourdieu, Pierre 1977 Outlineofa Theory ofPractice. London: Cambridge University Press. 1984 Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1987 Choses Dites. Paris: Editions de Minuit. Bourguignon, Erika 1965 ''The Self, the Behavioral Environment, and the Theory of Spirit Possession." In Context and Meaning in CulturalAnthropolgy, ed. Melford and E. Spiro, 39-61. New York: Free Press. 1976a wrhe Effectiveness of Religious Healing Movements." Transcultural Psychiatric Review 12:5-21. 1976b Possession. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharp. 1983 "Belief and Experience in Folk Religion: Why Do Women Join Possession Trance Cults?" Papers in Comparative Studies 2: 1-16. "Multiple Personality, Possession Trance, and the Psychic Unity 1989 of Mankind." Ethos 17:371-384. Brewer, William F. 1986 ''What is Autobiographical Memory?" In AutobiographicalMemory,

REFERENCES

307

ed. David C. Rubin, 25-49. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bynum, Caroline W. "Introduction: The Complexity of Symbols." In Gender and Reli1986 gion: On the Complexity of Symbols, ed. C. W. Bynum, S. Harrell and P. Richman, 1-20. Boston: Beacon Press. 1989 "The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages." In Fragments for a History of the Human Body, part 1, ed. Michael Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, 160-219. New York: Urzone. Cannon, Walter B. 1953 Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage. 2d ed. Boston: Charles T. Branford. Casey, Edward 1976 Imagining: A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1987 Remembering. A Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Clifford, James 1988 The Predicament ofCulture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Clow, Kenneth 1976 "Social Organization of the American Pentacostal Church." Ph.D. diss., Duke University. Comaroff, Jean 1983 "The Defectiveness of Symbols or Symbols of Defectiveness? On the Cultural Analysis of Medical Systems." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 7:3-20. Connerton, Paul 1989 How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conze, Edward 1975 Buddhism: Its Essence and Development. New York: Harper and Row. Crapanzano, Vincent The Hamadsha: A Study ofMoroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley: Uni1973 versity of California Press. Crapanzano, Vincent, and V. Garrison, eds. 1977 Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York: Wiley. Crawford, Robert "A Cultural Account of 'Health': Control, Release, and the Social 1984 Body." In Issues in the Political Economy of Health Care, ed. John McKinlay, 60-103. New York: Tavistock. Csordas, Thomas J. 1983 "The Rhetoric of Transformation in Ritual Healing." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 7:333-375. 1987a "Genre, Motive, and Metaphor: Conditions for Creativity in Ritual Language." Cultural Anthropology 2:445-469.

308

1987b

1988 1990a 1990b 1992a

REFERENCES

"Health and the Holy in African and Afro-American Spirit Possession." Social Science andMedicine 24:1-11. "Elements of Charismatic Persuasion and Healing." MedicRJ Anthropology Quarterly 2:121-142. "Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology." Ethos 18:5-47. ''The Psychotherapy Analogy and Charismatic Healing." Psychotherapy 27(1):79-90. "Religion and the World System: The Pentecostal Ethic and the Spirit of Monopoly Capital." Dialectical Anthropology 17:

3-24. ''The Affliction of Martin: Religious, Clinical, and Phenomenological Meaning in a Case of Demonic Oppression." In Ethnopsychiatry, ed. Atwood Gaines, 125-170. Albany: State University of New York Press. 1993 "Somatic Modes of Attention." Cultural Anthropology 8:135-156. In press Language, Charisma, and CreatiJJity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Mwement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Csordas, Thomas J., and Arthur M. Kleinman 1990 ''The Therapeutic Process." InMedicRJAnthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, ed. Thomas M. Johnson and Carolyn F. Sargent, 11-25. New York: Praeger. Daniel, E. Valentine 1984 Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way. Berkeley: University of California Press. DeGrandis, Robert, S. S. J. "Resting in the Spirit." Unpublished ms. n.d. Desjarlais, Robert 1992 Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. DeVos, George 1985 "Dimensions of the Self in Japanese Culture." In Culture and Self, ed. A. Marsella, George DeVos, and F. Hsu, 141-184. London: Tavistock. DeVos, George, A. Marsella, and F. Hsu 1985 "Introduction: Approaches to Culture and Sel£" In Culture and Self, ed. A. Marsella, George DeVos, and F. Hsu, 2-23. London: Tavistock. Dobson, Rev. Theodore 1986 The Falling Phenomenon. Pecos, N.Mex.: Dove Publications. Doob,D. W. 1982 "Structural Eidetic Images in Mrican Societies." Journal ofMental Imagery 6(1):44-46. Doob, Leonard 1964 "Eidetic Images Amongs the Ibo." Ethnology 3:357-363. Douglas, Mary 1973 Natural Symbols. New York: Vintage. 1992b

REFERENCES

309

Dow, James "Universal Aspects of Symbolic Healing: A Theoretical Synthesis." 1986 American Anthropologist 88: 56-69. Durkheim, Emile 1965 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press. Eliade, Mircea 1958 Patterns in Comparative Religion. Cleveland: World Publishing. Elliott, Robert 1984 "A Discovery-oriented Approach to Significant Events in Psychotherapy: Interpersonal Process Recall and Comprehensive Process Analysis." In Patterns of Change, ed. L. Rice and L. Greenberg, 249-286. New York: Guilford Press. 1985 "Helpful and Nonhelpful Events in Brief Counseling Interviews: An Empirical Taxonomy." Journal of Counseling Psychology 32: 307-322. Ellis, Albert 1973 Humanistic Psychotherapy: The Rational-Emotive Approach. New York: NcGraw Hill. Erikson, Erik H. 1963 Childhood and Society. 2d ed. New York: Norton. Fabian, Johannes "Genres in an Emerging Tradition: An Anthropological Approach 1974 to Religious Communication." In Changing Perspeaives in the Study of Religion, ed. A. Eister, 249-272. New York: John Wiley and Sons. 1991 "Charisma: Global Movement and Local Survival." Paper presented at the conference on Global Culture: Pentecostal/Charismatic Movements Worldwide. Calgary Institute of the Humanities. Fabian, Johannes, ed. "Beyond Charisma: Religious Movements as Discourse." Special 1979 edition of Social Research, vol. 46. Favazza, Armando "Modern Christian Healing of Mental Illnss." American Journal of 1982 Psychiatry 139:782-735. Feher, Michel 1989 "Introduction." In Fragments for a History ofthe Human Body, part 1, ed. M. Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, 10-17. New York: Zone. Feld, Steven 1982 Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Fernandez, James 1974 "The Mission of Metaphor in Expressive Culture." Current Anthropology 15:119-145. Repr. 1986 in Persuasions and Peiformances. The Play ofTropes in Culture, ed. James Fernandez, 28-70. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1982 "The Dark at the Bottom of the Stairs: The Inchoate in Symbolic

310

1986

REFERENCES Inquiry and Some Strategies for Coping With It." In On Symbols in Anthropology: Essays in Honor ofHarry Hoijer, ed. Jaques Macquet. Malibu, Calif.: Undena. Repr. 1986 in "PersURSions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture, ed. James Fernandez, 214-248. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. PersURSions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture. Bloom-

ington: Indiana University Press. "The Body in Bwiti: Variations on a Theme by Richard Werbner." Journal. ofReligion in Africa 10:92-112. Fernandez, James, ed. 1991 Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology. Stanford: Stanford. University Press. Fichter, Joseph 1975 The Catholic Cult of the ParRdete. New York: Sheed and Ward. Finkler, Kaja

1990

1985

Spiritualist Healers in Mexico: Successes and Failures in Alternati1le Therapeutics. South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey.

Fogelson, Raymond D. 1982 "Person, Self and Identity: Some Anthropological Retrospects, Circumspects, and Prospects." In Psychosocial Theories ofthe Self, ed. Benjamin Lee, 67-109. New York: Plenum Press. Fogelson, Raymond D., and Richard N. Adams 1977 The Anthropology ofPower: Ethnographic Studies from Asia, Oceania and the New World. New York: Academic Press. Frank, Gelya 1986 "On Embodiment: A Case Study of Congenital Limb Deficiency in American Culture." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 10: 189-219. Frank, Jerome 1973 Persuasion and Healing. Rev. ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Frank, Jerome, and Julia Frank 1991 Persuasion and Healing. 3d ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gaines, Atwood D. 1982a "Knowledge and Practice: Anthropological Ideas and Psychiatric Practice." In Clinically Applied Anthropowgy: Anthropologists in Health Science Settings, ed. Noel Chrisman and Thomas Maretzki, 243-273. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel. 1982b ''The Twice-Born: Christian Psychiatry and Christian Psychiatrists." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 6:305-324. 1992 "From DSM I to Ill-R; Voices of Self, Mastery, and the Other: A Cultural Constructivis Reading of U.S. Psychiatric Classification." In The Cult71ral Construction ofPsychiatric Classification. Special issue of Social Scimce and Medicine 35(1), ed. Charles Nuckolls, 3-24. Gartner, John 1988 "The Capacity to Forgive: An Object Relations Perspective." Jour-

nal ofReligion and Health 27(4):313-320.

REFERENCES

311

Geertz, Clifford

1968

Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco a:nd Imknesia. Chi-

1973

The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books.

cago: University of Chicago Press. Gergen, Kenneth 1990 "Social Understanding and the Inscription of Self." In Cultural Psychology: Essays on Comparative Human Development, ed. J. Stigler, R. Shweder, and G. Herdt, 569-606. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Giorgi, Amedeo 1987 "Phenomenology and the Research Tradition in the Psychology of Imagination." In Imagination and Phenomenological Psychology, ed. Edward L. Murray, 1-45. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Girard, Rene 1977 Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Good, Byron In press Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: AnAnthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Good, Byron, and Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good 1981 "The Meaning of Symptoms: A Cultural Hermeneutical Model for Clinical Practice." In The Relevance of Social Science for Medicine, ed. Leon Eisenberg and Arthur Kleinman, 165-196. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel. Gossen, Gary 1976 "Language as Ritual Substance." In Language in Reli!Jious Practice, ed. William Samarin, 40-60. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Greenberg, J. R., and Stephen A. Mitchell 1983 Objea Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge: Harvard U niversity Press. Hallowell, A. Irving 1955 "The Self in Its Behavioral Environment." In Culture and Experience, by A. Irving Hallowell, 75-110. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1960 "Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and World View." Repr. 1976 in Contributions to Anthropology, by A. Irving Hallowell, 357-390. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hamilton, N. Gregory 1989 "A Critical Review of Object Relations Theory." American Joumal

of Psychiatry 146(12):1552-1560. Hammond, Frank, and Ida Mae Hammond

1973

Pi!Js in the Parlor: A Practical Guide to Deliverance. Kirkwood, Mo.:

Impact Books. Harris, Grace G. 1989 "Concepts ofIndividual Self, and Person in Description and Analysis." American Anthropologist 91 :599-612.

312

REFERENCES

Heidegger, Martin 1977 "Letter on Humanism." In Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell, 230. New York: Harper and Row. Henderson, James 1982 "Exorcism and Possession in Psychotherapy Practice." Canadian Journal ofPsychiatry 27:129-134. Herdt, Gilbert, and Michelle Stephen 1989 The Religious ImRfJinatwn in New Guinea. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Holland, Dorothy, and Naomi Quinn, eds. 1987 CulturalModels in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollenweger, Walter 1972 The Pentecostals. London: SCM Press. Howes, David 1987 "Olfaction and Transition: An Essay on the Ritual Uses of Smell." Canadian Review of Sociology andAnthropology 24:390-416. Hsu, Francis L. K. 1985 The Self in Cross-cultural Perspective. In Culture and Self, 00. A. Marsella, George DeVos, and F. Hsu, 24-54. London: Tavistock. Hufford, David J. 1982 The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Husserl, Edmund 1964 The Phenomenology of Internal Time-consciousness. Ed. Martin Heidegger, trans. James Churchill. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hymes, Dell 1975 "Breakthrough into Performance." In FolkloreJ Communication, and Performance, ed. K. Goldstein and D. Ben-Amos, 11-74. The Hague: Mouton. Isaacs, Susan 1952 "The Nature and Function of Phantasy." In DePelopments in PsychoAnalysis, ed. M. Klein, P. Heimann, S. Isaacs, and J. Riviere. London: Hogarth Press. Jakobson, Roman, and M. Halle 1956 Fundamentals ofLanguage. S'Gravenhage, Holland: Mouton. James, William 1983 The Principles of Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Janet, Pierre 1925 Psychological Healing. 2 vols. New York: MacMillan. 1973 L'automatisme psychologique: Essai de psychologie expbimentale sur les formes inflrieures de Pactivite humaine. Paris: Societe Pierre Janet! Payot.

REFERENCES

313

Janzen, John 1978 The Quest for Therapy in Lower Zaire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jaynes, Julian 1976 The Origin ofConsciousness and the Breakdown ofthe Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Jenkins, Janis H. 1991a "Expressed Emotion and Schiwphrenia." Ethos 19:387-43l. 1991b "The State Construction of Affect: Political Ethos and Mental Health among Salvadoran Refugees." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 15:139-165. Johnson, Frank 1985 "The Western Conception of Self." In Culture and Self, ed. A. Marsella, George DeVos, and F. Hsu, 91-138. London: Tavistock. Johnson, Mark 1987 The Body in the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kakar, Sudhir 1982 Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors: A Psychological Inquiry into India and Its Healing Traditions. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Kant, Immanuel 1978 Anthropolgy From a Pragmatic Point of View. 1800. Trans. Victor Lyle Dodell. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Kapferer, Bruce 1979a "Ritual Process and the Transformation of Context." SociaiAnalysis 1:3-19. 1979b "Emotion and Healing in Sinhalese Healing Rites." Social Analysis 1:153-176. 1979c "Mind, Self, and Other in Demonic Illness: The Negation and Reconstruction of Self." American Ethnologist 6:110-133. 1983 A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Keesing, Roger M. 1989 "Exotic Readings of Cultural Texts." Current Anthropology 30: 459-479. Kehoe, Alice, and D. Giletti 1981 "Women's Preponderance in Possession Cults: The Calcium-deficiency Hypothesis Extended." American Anthropologist 83: 549-56l. Kennedy, John, and L. L. Langness, eds. 1981 "Dreams." Special issue of Ethos 9(4). Kirmayer, Laurence J. 1988 "Mind and Body as Metaphors: Hidden Valves in Biomedicine." In Biomedicine Examined, ed. M. Lock and D. Gordon, 57-94. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1992 "The Body's Insistence of Meaning: Metaphor as Presentation and

314

REFERENCES

Representation in Illness Experience." Medical Anthropology Quar-

terly (n.s.) 6:323-346. Klein, Melanie

1932 1964

The Psycho-Analysis of Children. London: Hogarth Press. Contributions to Psychoanalysis, 1921-1945. New York: McGraw-

Hill. Kleinman, Arthur

1980

Patients and Heaiers in the Context ofCulture. Berkeley: University

1988

Rethinking Psychiatry. New York: Free Press.

of California Press. Kleinman, Arthur, and Joan Kleinman 1991 "Suffering and Its Professional Transformation: Toward an Ethnography of Interpersonal Experience." Culture, Medicine, and Psy-

chiatry 15:275-302. Kleinman, Arthur, and Lilias Sung 1979 ''Why do Indigenous Practitioners Successfully Heal?" Social Science and Medicine 13b:7-26. Kramer, Heinrich, and James Sprenger 1971 The Malleus Maleftcarum. New York: Dover. Kris, Ernst 1952 Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art. New York: International Universities Press. Kristeva, Julia 1986 "Stabat Mater." In The Kristwa Reader, ed. Toril Moi, 160-186. New York: Columbia University Press. Laderman, Carol 1987 ''The Ambiguity of Symbols in the Structure of Healing." Social Scien&e and Medicine 24:293-30l. 1991 Taming the Wind ofDesire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lambek, Michael 1989 "From Disease to Discourse: Remarks on the Conceptualization of Trance and Spirit Possession." In Altered States of Consciousness and Mentai Health: A Cross-cultural Perspective, ed. Collen Ward, 36-61. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Leenhardt, Maurice 1979 [1947] Do Kama: Person andMyth in aMelanesian World. Trans. Basia Miller Gulati. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leighton, A. H., and D. C. Leighton 1941 "Elements of Psychotherapy in Navajo Religion." Psychiatry 4: 515-24. Levin, David Michael 1987a "Psychopathology in the Epoch of Nihilism." In Pathologies of the Modern Self: Postmodern Studies on Narcissism, Schizophrenia and Depression, ed. David M. Levin, 21-83. New York: New York University Press. 1987b "Clinical Stories: A Modern Selfin the Fury of Being." In Patholo-

gies of the Modern Self Postmodern Studies on Narcissism, Schizophre-

REFERENCES

315

nia, and Depression, ed. David M. Levin, 479-537. New York: New York University Press. Levin, Jeffrey, and H. Vanderpool 1987 "Is Frequent Religious Attendance Really Conducive to Better Health: Toward an Epidemiology of Religion." Social Science and Medicine 24:589-600. Levine, Stephen B. 1991 "Psychological Intimacy." Paper presented at Grand Rounds, Case Western Reserve Medical School Department of Psychiatry. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien 1926 Huw Natives Think. London: Allen and Unwin. Levi-Strauss, Claude 1966 ''The Effectiveness of Symbols." In Struaural Anthropology, 181-201. New York: Basic Books. Lewis, I. M. 1971 Ecstatic Religions: An Anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. Lifton, Robert Jay 1976 The Life of the Self. New York: Simon and Schuster. Linton, Marigold 1986 "Ways of Searching and the Contents of Memory." In AutobiographicalMemory, ed. David C. Rubin, 50-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lutz, Catherine 1988 Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on aMicronesianAtoll and Their Challenge to Western Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1990 "Engendered Emotion: Gender, Power, and the Rhetoric of Control in America Discourse." In Language and the Politics ofEmotion, ed. Catherine A. Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod, 69-91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyon, Margot 1990 "Order and Healing: The Concept of Order and Its Importance in the Conceptualization of Healing." Medical Anthropology 12: 249-68. MeAll, Kenneth 1982 Healing the Family Tree. London: Sheldon Press. McGuire, Meredith 1975 "Sharing Life in the Spirit: The Function ofTestimony in Catholic Pentecostal Commitment and Conversion." Paper delivered at annual meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. 1977 ''The Social Context of Prophecy: Word Gifts of the Spirit among Catholic Pentecostals." Review ofReligious Research 18: 134-147. Pentecostal Catholics: Puwer, Charisma, and Order in a Religious 1982 Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 1983 ''Words of Power: Personal Empowerment and Healing." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 7:221-240.

316

REFERENCES

McGuire, Meredith, with the assistance of Debra Kantor 1988 Ritual Healing in Suburban America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. MacNutt, Francis O. P. 1974 Healing. Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press. 1977 The Power to Heal. Notre Dame, Ind.: Ave Maria Press. Martin, Malachi 1976 Hostllge to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism ofFive Living Americans. New York: Harper and Row. Marty, Martin 1976 A Nation ofBehavers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Masson, J. M. 1984 The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Mauss, Marcel 1950a Une categorie de l'espirit hummn: La notion du personne, celle du "nwi. JJ Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris: Presses Universitares de France. 1950b Les techniques du cmps. Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris: Presses Universitares de France. Mawn, Benedict wresting the Spirits." Ph.D. diss., Boston University. 1975 Mead, George Herbert 1934 Mind, SelfandSociety. ed. Charles W. Morris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1962 Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. James Edie. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. 1964a Signs. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University 1964b The Primacy ofPerception. Ed. James M. Edie. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Messing, Simon 1958 "Group Therapy and Social Status in the Zar Cult of Ethiopia." American Anthropologist 60: 1120-1126. Mills, C. Wright 1940 "Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motives. " American Socio/ogiml Review 5:904-913. Monfouga-Nicholas, Jacqueline 1972 Ambivalence et culte de possession. Paris: Anthropos. Montagu, Ashley 1978 Touching. 2d ed. New York: Harper and Row. Moody, Edward J. 1974 "Magical Therapy: An Anthropological Investigation of Contemporary Satanism." In Religious Movements in Contemporary America, 00. Irving ZaretskyandMarkP. Leone, 355-382. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Morris, Peter E., and Peter J. Hampson 1983 Imttgery and Consciousness. London: Academic Press.

REFERENCES

317

Munn, Nancy D. 1973 Walbiri Iconography. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Murdock, George P. 1970 Theories of Illness: A World Survey. Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press. Murray, Edward L. 1987 Imagination Theory and Phenomenological Thought. In Imagination and Phenomenological Psychology, ed. Edward L. Murray, 175-220. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press. Neitz, Mary J. 1987 Charisma and Community: A Study ofReligion in American Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publications. Ness, Robert C. 1980 "The Impact ofIndigenous Healing Activity: An Empirical Study of Two Fundamentalist Churches." Social Science and Medicine 14b: 167-180. Neu, Jerome 1977 Emotion, Thought, and Therapy. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Noll, Richard 1985 "Mental Imagery Phenomenon: The Role of Visions in Shamanism." Current Anthropology 26(4):443-461. Numbers, Ronald R., and Darrel W. Amundsen, cds. 1986 Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions. New York: Macmillan. ()beyesekere, Gananath 1981 Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1990 The Work of Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago PreSs 1990b "The Illusory Pursuit of the Self: A Review of Culture and Self: Asian and Eastern Perspectives." Philosophy East and West (April): 239-250. ()'Neill, John 1985 Five Bodies: The Shape ofModern Society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ()ng, Walter 1967 The Presence of the Word. New York: Simon and Schuster. ()pler, Morris 1945 ''Themes as Dynamic Forces in Culture." American Journal ofSociology 51:198-206. ()rtner, Sherry 1974 Sherpas Through Their Rituals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1984 ''Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties." Comparative Studies in Society and History 26:105-145. ()ts, Thomas 1991 "Phenomenology of the Body: The Subject-()bject Problem in Psy-

318

REFERENCES

chosomatic Medicine and the Role of TraditionalMedical Systems." InAnthropologies ofMedicine: A Colloquium ofWest European and North American Perspectives. Special issue of Curare 7(91), ed. Beatrix pflederer and Gilles Bibeau, 43-58. In press ''The Silent Body-The Loud Leib: Mind versus Life in Chinese Cathartic Healing." In Embodiment and Experience, ed. Thomas J.

Csordas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Otto, Rudolf 1958 The Idea of the Holy. Trans. J. W. Harvey. New York: Oxford University Press. Pandolfi, Mariella 1991 "Memory Within the Body: Women's Narrative and Identity in a Southern Italian Village." In Anthropologies ofMedicine: A Colloqium ofWest European and North American Perspectives. Special Issue of Curare 7(91), ed. Beatrix Pflederer and Gilles Bibeau, 59-65. Pattison, E. Mansell 1974 "Ideological Support for the Marginal Middle Class: Faith Healing and Glossolalia." In Religious Mwements in Contempurary America, ed. Irving Zaretsky and Mark P. Leone, 418-458. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Pattison, E. Mansell, N. Lapins, and F. Doerr 1973 "Faith Healing: A Study of Personality and Function." Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders 157:397-409. Peacock, James 1968 Rites ofModernization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Poewe, Karla 1989 "On the Metonymic Structure of Religious Experiences: The Example of Charismatic Christianity." Cultural Dynamics 2: 361-380. Price-Williams, Douglas 1987 "The Waking Dream in Ethnographic Perspective." In Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Barbara Tedlock, 246-262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prince, Raymond 1964 ''Indigenous Yoruba Psychiatry." In Magic, Faith and Healing, ed. Ari Kiev, 84-120. New York: Free Press. 1980 Variations in Psychotherapeutic Procedures. In Handbook ofCrosscultural Psychology, vol. 6, ed. H. C. Triandis and J. C. Draguns, 291-349. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Rappoport, R. A. 1979 Ecology, Meaning, and Religion. Richmond: North Atlantic Books. Ricoeur, Paul . 1977 The Rule ofMetaphor. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1978 "Imagination in Discourse and in Action." InAnalectaHusserliana, vol. 7, ed. A. Tymieniecka, 3-22. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel. 1979 "The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text." In Interpretive Social Science, ed. P. Rabinow and W. Sullivan, 73-102. Berkeley: University of California Press.

REFERENCES

319

Robbins, Rossell Hope 1959 The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Crown. Rosaldo, Michelle "Towards an Anthropology of Self and Feeling." In Culture Theory, 1984 ed. R. Shweder and R. Levine, 137-157. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roseman, Marina 1988 "The Pragmatics of Aesthetics: The Performance of Healing among Senoi Temiar." Social Science and Medicine 27:811-818. 1991 Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest: Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sartre, Jean-Pa,ul 1948 The Psychology ofImagination. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press. Scheff, Thomas 1979 Catharsis in Healing) Ritual) and Drama. Berkeley: University of California Pn;ss. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, and Margaret Lock 1987 "The Mindful Body: A Prolegomenon to Future Work in Medical Anthropology." Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1 :6-41. Schieffelin, Edward, L. 1985 "Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality." American Ethnologist 12:707-724. Schilder, Paul 1950 The Image and Appearance ofthe Human Body. New York: International University Press. Schneider, David 1980 American Kinship: A CulturalAccount. 2nded. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schutz, Alfred 1970 On Plenomenology and Social Relations. Ed. Helmut R. Wagner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Selye, Hans 1976 The Stress ofLift· New York: McGraw-Hill. Sheikh, Anees A. 1984 Imagination and Healing. Farmingdale, N.Y.: Baywood. Sheikh, Anees A., and C. S. Jordan 1983 "Clinical Uses of Mental Imagery." In Imagery: Current Theory) Research and Application, ed. A. Sheikh, 391-435. New York: Wiley. Shepherd, M., and N. Sartorius, eds. 1989 Non-SpecificAspeas of Treatment. Toronto: Huber. Shorr, Joseph, et al. 1979 Imagery: Its Many Dimensions and Applications. New York: Plenum Press. Shweder, Richard, and Edmund J. Bourne 1982 "Does the Concept of a Person Vary Cross-Culturally?" In Cultural Conceptions ofMental Health and Therapy) ed. Anthony J. Marsella

320

REFERENCES

and Geoffrey M. White, 97-137. Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer. Singer, Jerome 1981 "Towards the Scientific Study of Imagination." In Imagery, vol. 3, TheoreticRl and ClinicalApplicatWns, ed. Joseph Shorr et al., 3-27. New York: Plenum Press. Singer, Milton 1958 "From the Guest Editor." Journal of American Folklore 71: 191-204. 1972 When a Great Tradition Moderniz.es. New York: Praeger. 1984 Man's Glassy Essence: Explorations in Semiotic Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1989 "Pronouns, Persons, and the Semiotic Self." In Siqns, Self, and Society, ed. B. Lee and G. Urban, 229-292. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Smith, M. Brewster 1985 The Metaphorical Basis of Selthood. In Culture and Self, ed. A. Marsella, George DeVos, and F. Hsu, 56-88. London:,Tavistock. Spiro, Melford 1982 Buddhism and Society. 2d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1987 Culture and Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stephen, Michelle 1989 "Self, the Sacred Other, and Autonomous Imagination." In The Reliqious Imagination in New Guinea, ed. Gilbert Herdt and Michelle Stephen, 41-66. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Straus, Erwin 1966 The Upright Posture. Phenomenological Psychology. New York: Basic Books. Suenens, Leon Joseph Cardinal 1983 Renewal and the Powers of Darkness (Malines Document IV). Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Books. 1987 A Contrwersial Phenomenon, Resting in the Spirit (Malines Document V). Dublin, Ireland: Veritas. Sullivan, Harry Stack 1953 The Interpersonal Theory ofPsychiatry. Ed. Helen Sweick Perry. New York: Norton. Sullivan, Lawrence E., ed. 1989 Healing and Restoring: Health and Medicine in the World's Reliqious Traditions. New York: MacMillan. Synan, Vinson 1975 Aspects ofPentecostal-CharismRtic oriqins. Bridge Publications. Tambiah, Stanley 1977 "The Cosmological and Performative Significance of a Thai Healing Cult." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 1:97-132.

REFERENCES

321

Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles 1989 Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tedlock, Barbara, ed. 1987 Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Truzzi, Marcello 1974 "Towards a Sociology of the Occult: Notes on Modern Witchcraft." In Religious Movements in Contemporary America, ed. Irving Zaretsky andMarkP. Leone. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Turner, Bryan 1984 The Body and Society. New York: Basil Blackwell. Turner, Terence 1980 "The Social Skin." In Not WorkAlone, ed. J. Cherfas and R. Lewin, 112-140. London: Temple Smith. Turner, Victor 1964 "An Ndembu Doctor in Practice." In Magic, Faith and Healing, ed. Ari Kiev, 230-263. New York. Free Press. 1974 "Pilgrimages as Social Processes." In Dramas, Fields, andMetaphors, by Victor Turner, 166-230. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Valla, Jean-Pierre, and Raymond H. Prince 1989 "Religious Experiences as Self-healing Mechanisms." In Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health: A Cross-cultural Perspective, ed. Collen Ward, 149-166. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. van der Kolk, Bessel A., and Onn() van der Hart 1989 "Pierre Janet and the Breakdown of Adaptation in Psychological Trauma." American Journal of Psychiatry 146(12):1530-1540. van der Leeuw, Gerardus 1938 Religion in Essence and Manifestation. Trans. J. E. Turner. London: Allen and Urwin. Varenne, Herve 1986 '''Drop in Anytime': Community and Authenticity in American Everyday Life." In Symbolizing America, ed. H. Varenne, 209-228. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. von der Heydt, Vera 1970 "The Treatment of Catholic Patients." Journal ofAnalytic Psychology 15:72-80. Wapnich, K. 1985 "Forgiveness: A Spiritual Psychotherapy. Psychotherapy and the Religiously Committed Patient." Psychotherapy Patient 1:47-53. Ward, Colleen 1985 "Scientific Methodology and Experiential Approaches to the Study of Mental Imagery." Journal ofMental Imagery 9: 113-26. 1985

322

REFERENCES

Ward, Colleen, cd. 1989 Altered States of Consciousness and Mental Health: A Cross-cultural Perspeaive. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage. Warnock, Mary 1976 Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weber, Max 1963 The Sociology ofReligion. Trans. Ephraim Fischoff. Boston: Beacon Press. Westley, Frances R. 1977 "Searching for Surrender: A Catholic Charismatic Renewal Group's Attempt to Become Glossolalic." American BehfllJioral Scientist 20:925-40. Whitehead, Harriet 1987 Renunciation and Re.formatWn: A Study ofConversion in anAmerican Sect. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Wikan, Unni 1989 "Illness from Fright or Soul Loss: A North Balinese Culture-Bound Syndrome?" Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 13:25-50. Wimber, John, with Kevin Springer 1986 Power EJlangelism. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Winnicott, D. W. 1958 Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press. 1965 The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press. Zaner, Richard M. 1981 The Context of Self: A Phenomenological Inquiry Using Medicine tIS a Clue. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Index

Altered states of consciousness, 79 Anatta (nonselt), 279-280 Anointing, 49-51, 61 Association of Christian Therapists, 27 Assumptive world, 3, 73 Attention, 67. See also Somatic mode of attention Austin, J. L., 45 Basham, Don, 41 Beck, Aaron, 220 Behavioral environment, 6, 23-24, 225, 235,240,276 Behaviorism, 285 n.12 Being in the world, 14,86,276,278, 291 n.8, 298 n.4 Belief, 280 Benedict, Ruth, 109,274 Bilu, Yoram, 298 n.2 Blacking, John, 50 Blake, William, 3 Bloch, Marc, 54 Body, 51,66,71, 158-159, 163-164, 239; techniques of the, 51-56, 230-246, 277, 291 nn.4-6. See also Embodiment Bourdieu, Pierre, 7, 9-15, 105, 152, 179,233,268,278-279,285 nn.lO, 11 BourgWgnon,Er~, 70, 151,260,298 n.3 Brewer, William, 142, 145, 152, 163

Buddhism, 222-224, 279-280 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 33, 271, 288 n.8, 290 n.23 Casey, Edward, 75, 80, 81-83,86, 94-95,99,119,143,147-148,149, 156, 159-163, 291 nn.6, 8, 295 n.8 Catharsis, 3, 161, 179,244,249, 250-251,265,281,301 n.l2 Catholic(s), vii, 48, 294 n.7 Charismatic Renewal, Catholic, vii, 16-18,173,260,269,273-274, 286 n.17, 299 n.2 Charismatics, viii, 25-26, 273; identity as, 18, 30-32, 112, 126, 132, 134, 204, 212-213, 218, 287 n.6 Claiming the healing, 34 Clifford, James, xi Comaroff, Jean, 71 Commemoration, 159-160,276 Connenon,Paw, 143, 159-160 Control. See Psychocwrural themes Covenant communities, viii, 32, 166, 274,283 n.l, 287 n.8, 289 nn.16, 17 Crapanzano, Vincent, xi, 2, 26, 30, 72, 152 Cwrural specialists, 52, 59 Daniel, E. V., xi De Grandis, Roben S. J., 299 n.3, 300 n.l0 323

324

INDEX

Deliverance. See Healing, genres of Demonology, 181-195,221-227,297 nn.8-1O, 298 n.2. See also Spirits, evil Depression, 200, 213, 293 n.4 DeVos, George, 286 n.19 Dialogue, x-xii Doob, D., 79 Doob, L., 79 Douglas, Mary, 269, 274 Dow, James, 56,103,202 Dreams, 79, 93-95, 292 nn.14, 16, 18 Durkheim, Emile, 165 Efficacy, 1-3, 55-56, 71, 76-79, 109, 159, 161-164,283 ch.1 n.l, 295 n.3; incremental, 60, 72, 130; nonspecific, 3,283 ch.1 n.2 Eliade, Mircea, 4, 164 Elliott, Robert, 293 n.5 Ellis, Alben, 220 Embodiment, 7-15, 86, 143, 149-151, 244,246,277-279,282,284 n.7, 290 n.3, 296 n.14, 303 n.3. See also Body Emotion, 150, 186, 187, 214, 276, 282, 294 n.lO, 300 n.9, 303 n.3 Erikson, Erik, 235 Exorcism, 41, 194-195,222-224,259 Expectantf~th,49,61

Favazza,}Urrnando,25 Feher, Michel, 230 Fernandez, James, 13, 86, 178,245, 249, 286 n.15 Finkler, Kaja, 30, 56, 152 Fogelson, Raymond, 277, 299 n.6 Forgiveness, 101, 126, 129, 133, 137, 151-152, 293 n.22 Frank, Gelya, 290 n.3 Frank, Jerome, 1, 2, 49, 73 G~es,

Atwood, 19,292 n.15

Geenz, Clifford, 4,74 Gender, 31-33, 285 n.10, 287-288 nn.8,9 Gergen, Kenneth, 285 n.13 Girard, Rene, 271 Good, Byron, xi, 280 Good, Mary-Jo, xi Gossen, Gary, 289 n.22 Habit, 102-105, 107, 140,288 n.14, 295 n.2

Habirus, 9-11, 39, 50, 52, 105-106, 107-108, 148-149, 165, 179, 180, 223,226,233,245,256,266,276, 278-279, 284 n.8 Hallowell, A. 1.,4, 5-6, 14,225,276, 277,298 n.3 Hammond, Frank, and Ida Mae Hammond,41,182-184 Healers, 26-29; initiation of, 28-29; professionalization of, 27 Healing, viii, x, 25-26, 235, 247-252, 255,276,289 n.17, 301 n.ll; acts of, 35, 45-49, 60; and conventional health care/psychotherapy, 35, 39, 123,149-151,187,195-198,248, 268, 287 n.4; events of (services and sessions), 35, 36-39; physical, 40, 109, 300 n.l0; spiritual, 42-43; as spiritual gift or charism, 38; team, 39,297 n.4 Healing, genres of, 35, 39-45, 59; ancestral, 43-45, 114, 180; deliverance, 41, 48, 166-180, 200-227, 259-269, 289 n.20, 296 n.l, 297 nn.5, 6, 302 n.17; inner (healing of memories), 40-41, 54, 109-164, 180,211,289 n.20, 300 n.10 Health care system, 284 n.3 Heidegger, Martin, xii, 83, 270 Henderson, James, 225 Husserl, Edmund, 4, 291 n.9, 295 n.8 Image-as-sign, 85-87, 292 n.21 Image-in-consciousness, 85-87, 292 n.21 Imagery, 47, 74-108, 114, 291 nn.2, 3; embodied, 80-81, 107-108, 124, 132, 136-139,290 n.23; modalities, 87-93, 117,291 n.12; revelatory, 75, 144-149, 169,292 n.17, 19, 296 n.15; therapeutic, 75, 109-140, 152-159,251-252,290 n.l, 293 n.6. See also Performance, imaginal; Word of knowledge Imagination, 74, 78,156,161-163,291 nn.6, 8, 9, 296 n.12; theories of, 81-87. See also Imagery; Performance, imaginal Inchoate, 13, 15, 249-250 Indeterminacy, 11-14, 15, 89, 118, 119, 242,246,249,256-259,278,279, 281, 284 n.7, 292 n.19

INDEX Inner healing. See Healing, genres of Intersubjectivity, 12-13,285 n.13, 298 n.4 Intimacy. See Psychocultural themes Janet, Pierre, 149-151, 158, 186, 199 Janzen, John, 30 Johnson,~uk, 142, 163-164 Kakar, Sudhir, 105 Kant, Immanuel, 88, 291 n.9 Kapferer, Bruce, 30, 222-224, 298 n.3, 4,302 n.2 Keesing, Roger, 240, 279 Kirmayer, Laurence, 286 n.15, 291 n.4,

5 Klein, ~elanie, 153 Kleinman, lUthur, 2, 30, 70, 71,164, 284 n.3, 286 n.16, 290 n.4 Kris, Anton, 249, 302 n.2 Kristeva, Julia, 295 n.9 Kuhhnan, Kathryn, 40, 230 Laderman, Carol, 283 ch.l n.l, 302 n.2 Lazansky, Rev. John. See photo insert Laying on of hands, 26, 51-56 Leenhardt, ~aurice, 280 Leg-lengthening, 58-67, 290 n.2 Levin, David ~ichael, 270, 272 Levine, Stephen, 157 Uvi-Strauss, Claude, 2, 143 Linn, Dennis, and Matthew Linn, 25 Linton, Muigold, 145-146 Lutz, Catherine, 19, 187 ~cGuire, ~eredith,

20-21, 26, 286 n.17, 289 n.21 ~acNutt, Francis, 26,36,42,231 ~arcel, Gabriel, 302 n.l ~ugin of disability, 71 ~auss, ~arcel, 50, 232, 277, 284 n.8 ~emory, 1l0, ll6, 141-164, 241, 293 nn.l, 2, 296 n.12; cognitive analysis of, 142 ~erleau-Ponty, ~aurice, 4,7-15,71, 83, 94, 107, 225-226, 284 n.4, 285 nn.ll, 12,295 n.l ~etaphor, 15, 73, 171-174,226-227, 248,286 n.15, 296 n.2 Mills, C. Wright, 22 ~ontagu, Ashley, 55, 290 n.24

325

~urdock, ~yth,

George P., 44 280

Neu, Jerome, 72 Ness, Robert, 284 n.3 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 78, 279, 298 n.3 Objectification, 7-8, 14-15, 158, 226, 278-279,282 Object relations, 153-159,296 n.14 Occult, 35, 105, 186, 191, 203, 245 O'Neill, John, 55 Opler, ~orris, 18 Orientation, 6, 7, 18, 284 n.6 Ortner, Sherry, 6, 298 n.2 Ots, Thomas, 286 n.19 Pandolfi, ~uiella, 295 n.6 Patients (supplicants), 30-35 Peirce, Chules Sanders, 85, 96 Perception, 87, 108,224 Performance: ritual, 21, 35-49, 78, 101, 119,166-180,193,200-227,241, 286 n.22; imaginal, 85, 109-140, 152-159,203,246,276,294 nn.8, 9, 296 n.15. See tdso Ritual Person, 5, 14-15,277-278, 302 n.l; Chuismatic concept of, 39-40, 185, 236,243,253-254,258 Phenomenology, ix, xii, 4,8,71,84-87, 105-106,141-143,226,239,244, 282,284 n.4, 285 n.14, 303 n.4; cultural, vii, x, 4-5, 13, 50, 79-83, 89, 153, 199,224,246,249,25~ 270,276,280,282 Placebo effect, 3, 161 Poewe, Carla, 146 Possession, 194,297 n.ll Postural model, 65-67, 136 Preobjective, 8-9, 71, 224, 225-226, 229,246,257,277-278 Prince, Derek, 41 Prince, Raymond, 2, 38, 248 Prophecy, 22, 273-274, 292 n.12 Protoritual, 50 Psychoanalysis, 1l0, 245-246 Psychocultural themes, ix, 18,286 n.19, 302 n.20; control, ix, 18, 19,95, 116-117,139,203,220-221, 221-227,238,242,243,253, 258-259,262-263,268,269,272,

326

INDEX

Psychocultural themes (continued) 273, 296 n.3; intimacy, ix, 18, 19-20, 54-55, 103-105, 116, 121, 132,134,139,157-158,204,209, 219,235-236,246,251,265,268, 272,294 n.5; spontaneity, ix, 18-19, 51, 65-67, 94-95, 116, 139, 147, 154,209,238,253,256-259,268, 272, 273, 286 n.20. See also Sacred, spontaneity as criterion of Regression in service of the ego, 249, 301 n.12 Representation, 14,86,97,223,244, 278, 291 n.8, 297 n.8 Resting in the Spirit, 32,46, 157, 230-259, 273-275, 299 nn.3, 4, 8, 9,301 n.14 Revelation, 74-108, 144-149, 276, 292 nn.17; 19. See also Imagery, revelatory Ricouer, Paul, 86 Ritual, 21; Charismatic, 21-22; language, 21-22, 46-47, 175-176, 188, 276, 289 nn.21, 22. See also Performance, ritual Roseman, Marina, 79, 302 n.2 Sacred, 4-5,56,239-240,249,271, 273, 281, 302 n.2; otherness/alterity as criterion of,S, 157-158, 213, 221, 246, 280; spontaneity as criterion of, 67, 93-95, 120, 170, 218,233-234,237,256-259, 262-263, 2~, 268, 280, 281. See also Psychocultural themes Sanford, Agnes, 40 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 85-86, 94 Scheff, Thomas, 3, 179,217,281,302 n.2 Schilder, Paul, 65-66, 290 n.2 Schneider, David, 185 Schutz, Alfred, 67 Scientology, 147, 295 n.4 Self, viii-x, 3-4, 44, 55, 78, 1l0-1l1, 123,160,221-227,231,238,244, 268-269,270-275,276-282,283 n.2, 284 n.5, 286 nn.14, 18,295 n.ll, 302 n.l, 303 n.3; defined, 5-15; processes, ix, 18, 21, 38, 54, 65-67, 70, 76-79, 94-95, 143,

152-159,224-227,240,241-246, 249-252,257-258,276-282 Semiotics, ix, xii, 71, 84-87, 105-106, 226,239,244,261,276,282,284 n.4, 292 n.20, 303 n.4 ShleIJlon, Barbara, 26 Shweder, Richard, 14, 55 Sign, 85,96-106; icon, 98-99; index, 97; interpretant, 102-106, 153; symbol, 100-101, 103-105 Singer, Milton, 4, 5'2,102,148,284 nn.4,5 Smith, M. Brewster, 274-275, 299 n.7 Somatic mode of attention, 67-70, 80 Speaking in tongues (glossolalia), 46, 273-274 Spirit, Holy, 231, 253 Spirits: ancesttal or familial, 43-44, 168, 170, 192-193,198; binding of, 175, 259,260; discernment of, 168-171, 176, 207; evil, 23, 41, 165-227, 229, 259-269, 272-273, 289 n.19, 299 n.5; manifestations of, 171-175, 259; names of, 181-185. See also Healing, genres of, ancesttal; Healing, genres of, deliverance Spiro, Melford, 279, 298 n.3 Spontaneity. See Psychocultural themcs; Sacred Stephen, Michelle, 83-84, 1l0, 162 Straus, Erwin, 228, 235, 236 Suenens, Leon Joseph, 180, 301 n.14 Suffering, 286 n.16, 295 n.6 Suggestion, 3, 161, 240, 302 n.15 Sullivan, Harry Stack, 285 n.9 Swaggart, Jimmy, 127, 294 n.14 Symbiotic cure, 26, 31, 72 Textuality, 86 Therapeutic process, 24, 67, 70, 71-73, 120-123,129-133,152,203, 211-212, 281, 290 n.4, 293 n.5; components of, defmed, 72-73; distinguished from therapeutic procedure and outcome, 57 Trance, 3,223-224,240,265,297 n.ll Trauma, 103-104, 113, 149-151,264 Turner, Terence, 54 Turner, Victor, 2, 50

INDEX

327

Van der Leeuw, Gerardus, 5 Varenne, Herve, 286 n.20 Vocabulary of motives, 22, 188

Winnicott, D. W., 154-155 Word of knowledge, 47, 75, 126, 144-149

Weber, Max, 285 n.8 Whitehead, Harriet, 147,296 n.12 Wimber, John, 180,231,232,289 n.18

Zaner, R. M., 6, 14, 158, 163, 246, 283 n.2, 286 n.14, 302 n.l