This study explores the therapeutic implications of including culturally adapted spiritual ceremonies in the process of testimonial therapy for torture survivors in India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Data were collected through an action research process with Asian mental health and human rights organizations, during which the testimonial method was reconceptualized and modified to include four sessions. In the first two sessions, community workers assist survivors in the writing of their testimony, which is their narrative about the human rights violations they have suffered. In the third session, survivors participate in an honour ceremony in which they are presented with their testimony documents. In the fourth session, the community workers meet with the survivors for a reevaluation of their well-being. The honour ceremonies developed during the action research process came to employ different kinds of symbolic language at each site: human rights (India), religious/Catholic (Sri Lanka), religious/Buddhist (Cambodia), and religious/Moslem (Philippines). They all used embodied spirituality in various forms, incorporating singing, dancing, and religious purification rituals in a collective gathering. We suggest that these types of ceremonies may facilitate an individual’s capacity to contain and integrate traumatic memories, promote restorative self-awareness, and engage community support. Additional research is needed to determine the method’s applicability in other sociopolitical contexts governed by more Western-oriented medical traditions.
In this article we assess the prevalence rates of harmful spirit possession, different features of the spirits and of their hosts, the correlates of the spirit possession experience, health patterns and the sources of health care consulted by possessed individuals in a population sample of 941 adults (255 men, 686 women) in post-civil war Mozambique in 2003-2004. A combined quantitative-qualitative research design was used for data collection. A major study outcome is that the prevalence rates vary according to the severity of the possession as measured by the number of harmful spirits involved in the affliction. The prevalence rate of participants suffering from at least one spirit was 18.6 percent; among those individuals, 5.6 percent were suffering from possession by two or more spirits. A comparison between possessed and non-possessed individuals shows that certain types of spirit possession are a major cause of health impairment. We propose that knowledge of both local understandings of harmful spirit possession and the community prevalence of this kind of possession is a precondition for designing public health interventions that sensitively respond to the health needs of people afflicted by spirits.
A remarkable drop in symptoms could not be linked directly to the intervention. Feasibility of the intervention was good, but controlling the intervention in a small rural community appeared to be a difficult task to accomplish.
This article describes the ways in which in post‐civil war Gorongosa (central Mozambique), women (and occasionally men) with personal and/or family experiences of extreme suffering are the focal point of possession by male, war‐related spirits named gamba. However, gamba spirits also create post‐war healing in which memory work and gender politics play an essential role. This type of post‐war healing is demonstrated through a secret, contractual ceremony in which a male living suitor demands permission from a gamba spirit, lodged in the body of a young woman (his deemed wife), to marry that woman. An account of the ceremony is preceded by a description of the conditions that gave rise to the emergence of gamba spirits in central Mozambique, and is followed by an analysis of the meaning of the voice of the spirit and its impact on the relation between the living husband and wife and, more generally, on Gorongosa post‐war society. We argue that the performance of gamba spirits contributes to a certain form of moral renewal. In the process, we locate relationships between spirits and hosts within wider systems of meaning in which they are created and reproduced, and we reinforce approaches to possession that see it as constituted by ‘a practice and politics of voice’ (Lambek). Résumé L'article décrit comment, au Mozambique d'après la guerre civile, dans la région du Gorongosa au centre du pays, les femmes (et parfois les hommes) ayant fait une expérience personnelle et/ou familiale de souffrance extrême sont possédées par des esprits mâles liés à la guerre appelés gamba. Les esprits gamba sont cependant aussi facteurs d'une guérison dans laquelle le travail de mémoire et la politique des genres jouent un rôle essentiel. Ce type de guérison d'après‐guerre est démontré par une cérémonie contractuelle secrète, au laquelle un prétendant vivant demande à un esprit gamba logé dans le corps d'une jeune femme (considérée comme son épouse) la permission d’épouser cette femme. Le récit de la cérémonie est précédé d'une description des conditions suscitant l’émergence des esprits gamba dans le centre du Mozambique, et suivi par l'analyse de la signification de la voix des esprits et de son impact dans la relation entre le mari vivant et sa femme, et plus généralement dans la société d'après‐guerre du Gorongosa. Les auteurs de l'article affirment que les performances des esprits gamba contribuent à une certaine forme de renouvellement moral. Ce faisant, ils resituent les relations entre les esprits et leurs hôtes dans des systèmes plus larges de significations dans lesquels elles sont créées et reproduites, et confortent les approches qui considèrent la possession comme constituée par « une pratique et une politique de la voix » (Lambek).
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