Doctoral Dissertation: The Call to Mediumship: Social, Psychological, and Psychobiological Characteristics of Participant in an Afro-Brazilian Religion

Emory University, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This research, which rests at the interface of anthropology, psychobiology, and mental health, will make an important contribution to our understanding of the social, cultural, and biological dimensions of religious experiences. Specifically, this project asks what characteristics distinguish religious adepts from other religious participants, and what if any relationship exists between certain types of religious participation, and mental illness, among members of a Brazilian religion. Religious adepts, or mediums, have typically been viewed as socially and/or psychologically marginal individuals who use religious participation as a sanctioned outlet for tendencies often equated with western categories of mental illness. The biological nature of the altered states of consciousness often associated with this type of religious participation suggests that physiological antecedents might be among the factors that distinguish these individuals from other religious participants. The contribution of social and psychological factors to the development, expression, and experience of such physiological predisposition needs to be examined in contexts like Salvador Brazil, in which religious belief systems affect concepts of deviance and normality, and may shape different outcomes for such individuals than in environments dominated by psychomedical paradigms. This 12-month psychobio-cultural study proposes to employ a combination of ethnographic, psychological, and psychobiological methods to explore the confluence of three domains in the lives of adepts who play the role of spirit medium in Brazilian Candomble : social factors, including demographic and life history variables; psychological characteristics, including personality traits and psychological symptoms; and psychobiology, in the form of patterns of attention and arousal regulation. This study will contribute to the following: 1) explore factors that predispose individuals to mediumship, 2) address questions surrounding the relationship of ritualized altered states of consciousness to psychopathology, and 3) contribute information that could help improve psychomedical approaches to mental illness in non-western contexts.