What Has Really Been Learned About Shamanism?

Abstract

Within anthropology, investigations of shamans and their altered states of consciousness have followed some of the prescriptive problems inherited from the discipline of psychology, coloring the assumptions and perspectives of students of shamanism. These inherited problems include the following: conscious/volitional versus unconscious/involuntary mentalisms; contentual objectivism versus contentual subjectivism; environmentalism versus nativism; monopsychism versus polypsychism; mechanism versus vitalism; and quantitativism versus qualitativism. Although the polemics of anthropological studies of shamanism have reflected these prescriptive perspectives, this has not inhibited the acquisition of new knowledge about shamanism. Nonetheless, a resolution of these problems is lacking due to insufficient data.