Why I chose the word dissociation to describe shamanic states was three-fold.
1. It evokes the meaning that you'd think it means, “coping mentality where things don't seem real.”, but with an addendum because in effect, in shamanism, when things “do not seem real” that is the point where reality melts and has the possibility of reformulating itself. Or more simply, when one suffers from “soul loss” one leaves the present mode of subjective conventionality and in this state of fugue one searches for the missing part of one’s identity until one finds it. When one does find it eventually, one carries the missing soul part part into the realm of the here-and-now and one has recovered oneself.
2. Dissociation has a sense of psychological organic responsiveness to it. Whereas desolation is something that may have already been mapped by one’s culture, and therefore has objective features, dissociation always relates immediately to the subject him or herself and their own subjective features. And it is a mechanism triggered by subjective need.
3. The third reason I selected this term is to reclaim a psychiatric term and use it in a broader, but competing paradigm.
1. It evokes the meaning that you'd think it means, “coping mentality where things don't seem real.”, but with an addendum because in effect, in shamanism, when things “do not seem real” that is the point where reality melts and has the possibility of reformulating itself. Or more simply, when one suffers from “soul loss” one leaves the present mode of subjective conventionality and in this state of fugue one searches for the missing part of one’s identity until one finds it. When one does find it eventually, one carries the missing soul part part into the realm of the here-and-now and one has recovered oneself.
2. Dissociation has a sense of psychological organic responsiveness to it. Whereas desolation is something that may have already been mapped by one’s culture, and therefore has objective features, dissociation always relates immediately to the subject him or herself and their own subjective features. And it is a mechanism triggered by subjective need.
3. The third reason I selected this term is to reclaim a psychiatric term and use it in a broader, but competing paradigm.
No comments:
Post a Comment