Mentally ill or chosen by spirits? ‘Shamanic illness’ and the revival of Kazakh traditional medicine in post-Soviet Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article discusses spiritual healing in post-Soviet Kazakhstan with reference to changing discourses about ‘shamanic illness’: a condition that afflicts the future healer. What had traditionally been identified as the call of spirits was seized in the Soviet period by biomedical discourse which ascribed those symptoms to mental illness. Whereas this attitude also influenced popular understandings of ‘shamanic illness’ at the time, traditional ideas have been gradually restored in the context of the political and social changes of the 1990s. Biomedical discourse on ‘shamanic illness’ has also undergone significant changes. I argue that this was induced by multiple interconnected factors, among which are the reappraisal and support of the government for Kazakh ‘folk’ medicine as a part of the national heritage, and a favourable attitude to local, traditional forms of religiosity. This allowed for collaboration between doctors and healers in the context of institutionalization of traditional medicine. Alongside these influences the strength of the tradition of remembering the spirits of ancestors prompted the re-establishment of this core experience in the process of becoming a healer: the call of spirits.

Keywords:

• spiritual healing
• shaman
• shamanic illness
• mental illness
• post-Soviet Kazakhstan
• Central Asia

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and constructive suggestions.

Notes

I use the term ‘spiritual healers’ in reference to those practitioners who appeal to spirits (of ancestors and saints) or God in their activities.

The first, short version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Healing Paradigms and the Politics of Health in Central Asia’ organized by the Global Health Research Center of Central Asia at Columbia University in New York on 8 April 2011.

However, there is evidence of the existence of female shamans (see Basilov 1992, 38, 55; Garrone 2000, 138–143; Michaels 2003, 29).

Mental illness was commonly ascribed in Central Asia to the influence of evil spirits which were expelled in the course of the shaman's or mullah's healing. See for instance a detailed report by Divaev (1899) of the healing séance of the Kyrgyz (that is, Kazakh) baqsı who exorcized jinns from the mentally ill patient (‘hit by jinns’).

For detailed descriptions of ‘shamanic illness’ among Turkic and other Central Asian peoples see Dyrenkova (1930) and Basilov (1992, 106–142). It is not, of course, an emic term – the Kazakh usually speak about being pressed or smothered by ancestor spirits. Privratsky quotes the saying: ‘The ancestor spirits “burn” in the Kazak healer’ (2004, 572).

I will not refer further to the well known but discredited and now irrelevant arguments developed long ago by ethnologists and historians of religion about the sources of ‘shamanism’ in mental illness of the shaman (see Eliade 1951).

A good and often cited example is the local treatment of rishta (the parasitic worm Dracunculos medinensis which causes dracunculosis) confirmed as an effective method by Russian physicians (Kushelevskiı˘ 1891, 148–149; Palkin 1967, 478–482; cf. Hohmann 2010a, 328–329). A well-known fact is that Russian medicine adopted Kazakh kumiss (kımız) – fermented mare's milk – for treatment of tuberculosis and other lung diseases (Afanas'eva 2008, 130–132; Michaels 2003, 34; Palkin 1967, 528–533).

Researchers who write about the introduction of Russian medicine in Central Asia generally agree that it served as an instrument for political legitimization of the Empire (Afanas'eva 2008; Hohmann 2010a; Michaels 2003). However, Afanas'eva (2008, 116) warns against direct application of analytical models like Said's Orientalism to the history of the Russian Empire and criticizes Michaels for overgeneralizations.

For example, various forms of acupuncture (called in Russ. iglorefleksoterapiya). According to the review of the health system in Kazakhstan (Kulzhanov and Rechel 2007, 108), those methods were formally recognized in the Soviet Union as early as in 1977 and permitted as a part of medical rehabilitation.

See Louw (2010) for discussion on the significance of dreams as divine revelations in Kyrgyzstan.

There are no apparent differences in the initiation experiences of the healers of different ethnic (Turkic) backgrounds, whereas some elements of healing practices differ; for example, Uighur healers use willow twigs for hitting the patients.

This is characteristic of the traditional and also contemporary healer's way that s/he is obliged to concentrate on spiritual development and remove all obstacles in this path. Therefore it is better to divorce if the spouse does not accept this mission than disappoint the spirits.

Similarly, healers could be called in their dreams to visit a particular mazar in order to get a blessing from the saint connected to that sacred place.

Unlike the Uzbeks of Khorezm, where Kehl-Bodrogi did not meet any male folbin (healer) (Kehl-Bodrogi 2008, 199).

As the doctors from the Centre told me, it was estimated that, all in all, until the year 2000, several thousand physicians in Kazakhstan had completed courses of traditional medicine (Chinese and Korean medicine, hirudotherapy, manual therapies) and perhaps quite a large number of them used those methods in practice. Besides, some doctors combined biomedicine with the methods of ‘folk’ medicine or healing with bio-energy.

Formally, they could be imprisoned for one to three years. In practice, inspectors fined such unlicensed healers and tried to persuade them to pass the procedures of official accreditation.

Applying a whip was not forbidden – it could be used for expelling evil spirits, but not for beating the patients. However, many healers working outside the Centre continued traditional methods.

Similarly, in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as Pelkmans (2005) and Kehl-Bodrogi (2008) showed, spiritual healers were not interested in getting official diplomas and relied entirely on traditional legitimacy.