Some needed psychological clarifications on the experience(s) of shamanism

Abstract

The target article's use of core concepts is confused and excessively broad. Two main types of experiences have been described in relation to shamanism: magical flight and mediumship/possession. The first refers to visual and remembered experiences of events in other realms, the second to embodied experiences of ceding mental control and personality to a preternatural entity. These experiences grossly correspond to two main experience modalities exhibited by highly hypnotizable individuals in a secular setting.

“He Who Has the Spirits Must Work a Lot”: A Psycho‐Anthropological Account of Spirit Possession in the Dominican Republic

“…). It is also worth noting that SP is intrinsically an embodied alteration of consciousness (Cardeña ; Seligman ; Halloy ; ; Pierini ; ; Schmidt 2016), often elicited by robust bodily interactions (Rouget ) rather than a mostly imaginal state (Cardeña and Krippner ).…”

“…This analysis helps differentiate SP from "trance" experiences in which the person experiences losing control but not becoming a different self with personal history and characteristics (Cardeña et al 2009). It is also worth noting that SP is intrinsically an embodied alteration of consciousness (Cardeña 1989;Seligman 2010;Halloy 2012;Pierini 2016a;2016b;Schmidt 2016), often elicited by robust bodily interactions (Rouget 1980) rather than a mostly imaginal state (Cardeña and Krippner 2018).…”