On the use of the uncanny in ritual

In ‘The Future of an Illusion’, Freud suggested that religion allows a person to ‘feel at home in the uncanny’ – that unsettling interplay of suppression and memory that arises from living subject to fears and anxieties in an unpredictable world. Here, the author examines a ritual called the ‘Wild Hunt’ that occurred during her ethnographic research among contemporary Pagans to explore how uncanny encounters within religious rituals can help participants come to terms with fears and anxieties, transforming inchoate emotions stemming from trauma or dislocation. Following Otto, the author suggests that such a sense of the uncanny can be central to the power of religious ritual. These uncanny elements within religious ritual provide an illustration of how religious experiences can help participants to feel ‘at home in the uncanny’, thereby bringing together the seemingly disparate accounts of Otto and Freud on the relationship between religion and uncanny experience.     

Sacred marriage in the study of religion: A perspective from India on a concept that grew out of the ancient near east

Current scholarly understandings of ‘sacred marriage’ are seriously impaired by work that focuses on ancient cultures, primarily in the Near East, but also in Greece. Even when ‘diffusionism’, ‘patternism’, and an apparent preoccupation with rituals presumed sexual are all factored out, modern scholars offer little new because they appeal to rituals never witnessed and to fragmentary texts which we can only hope had some connection to ritual. Focusing on an extant ritual tradition in India with a 200-year-old festival and an explicitly associated text from the 13th century , Harman suggests that here, at least, sacred marriage is an elaborate, ritual statement of kinship responsibilities and obligations reestablished each year among deities and between deities and selected human beings.     

Searching for Control: Priming Randomness Increases the Evaluation of Ritual Efficacy

Reestablishing feelings of control after experiencing uncertainty has long been considered a fundamental motive for human behavior. We propose that rituals (i.e., socially stipulated, causally opaque practices) provide a means for coping with the aversive feelings associated with randomness due to the perception of a connection between ritual action and a desired outcome. Two experiments were conducted (one in Brazil [n = 40] and another in the United States [n = 94]) to evaluate how the perceived efficacy of rituals is affected by feelings of randomness. In a between‐subjects design, the Scramble Sentence Task was used as a priming procedure in three conditions (i.e., randomness, negativity, and neutral) and participants were then asked to rate the efficacy of rituals used for problem‐solving purposes. The results demonstrate that priming randomness increased participants' perception of ritual efficacy relative to negativity and neutral conditions. Implications for increasing our understanding of the relationship between perceived control and ritualistic behavior are discussed.     

Positive experiences of high arousal martial arts rituals are linked to identity fusion and costly pro-group actions

A cross-sectional study was conducted with 605 practitioners of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) to test the hypothesis that high arousal rituals promote social cohesion, primarily through identity fusion. BJJ promotion rituals are rare, highly emotional ritual events that often feature gruelling belt-whipping gauntlets. We used the variation in such experiences to examine whether more gruelling rituals were associated with identity fusion and pro-group behaviour. We found no differences between those who had undergone belt-whipping and those who had not and no evidence of a correlation between pain and social cohesion. However, across the full sample we found that positive, but not negative, affective experiences of promotional rituals were associated with identity fusion and that this mediated pro-group action. These findings provide new evidence concerning the social functions of collective rituals and highlight the importance of addressing the potentially diverging subjective experiences of painful rituals.     

仪式动作、象征意义和积极情绪增强控制感：双路径机制

以中国普米族人的传统文化仪式“敬锅庄”为例, 采用回忆任务、创设新颖仪式等方法考察仪式动作、象征意义和积极情绪对普米族青少年及成人的控制感的影响。结果表明, 熟悉敬锅庄仪式的动作、象征意义或者具有更多情感体验的青少年的控制感更强。仪式动作与象征意义对控制感的影响存在双路径机制：仪式动作直接增强个体的控制感, 象征意义通过积极情绪间接增强个体的控制感。象征意义与控制感的关系还因仪式主体不同有所区别：祈求庇佑通过积极情绪间接增强青少年的控制感, 表达感恩通过积极情绪间接增强成年人的控制感。研究结果对探究仪式动作、象征意义和积极情绪对个体控制感的影响有重要启示。     

A Typology of Ritual: Paradigms for Healing and Empowerment

Myth and ritual are the keys to collective and individual cognitive consonance. Because the postmodern cultural landscape is littered with “broken” myths, people need to learn how to birth viable symbols and create contemporary rituals. This article examines ritual from theoretical, clinical, and practical perspectives. Symbolic cognition and its relation to myth and ritual are discussed. A typology of ritual is abstracted from phenomenological sources. Examples of liberation, transformation, and celebration rituals are given. Elements commonly employed in ritual activity are identified as guides to ritual construction. Finally, suggestions are given concerning how to create powerful and effective personal rituals.     

Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals

Ritualized behavior, intuitively recognizable by its stereotypy, rigidity, repetition, and apparent lack of rational motivation, is found in a variety of life conditions, customs, and everyday practices: in cultural rituals, whether religious or non-religious; in many children's complicated routines; in the pathology of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD); in normal adults around certain stages of the life-cycle, birthing in particular. Combining evidence from evolutionary anthropology, neuropsychology and neuroimaging, we propose an explanation of ritualized behavior in terms of an evolved Precaution System geared to the detection of and reaction to inferred threats to fitness. This system, distinct from fear-systems geared to respond to manifest danger, includes a repertoire of clues for potential danger as well as a repertoire of species-typical precautions. In OCD pathology, this system does not supply a negative feedback to the appraisal of potential threats, resulting in doubts about the proper performance of precautions, and repetition of action. Also, anxiety levels focus the attention on low-level gestural units of behavior rather than on the goal-related higher-level units normally used in parsing the action-flow. Normally automatized actions are submitted to cognitive control. This "swamps" working memory, an effect of which is a temporary relief from intrusions but also their long-term strengthening. Normal activation of this Precaution System explains intrusions and ritual behaviors in normal adults. Gradual calibration of the system occurs through childhood rituals. Cultural mimicry of this system's normal input makes cultural rituals attention-grabbing and compelling. A number of empirical predictions follow from this synthetic model.     

Nineteenth-century inhibitory theories of thinking: Bain, Ferrier, Freud (and Phineas Gage)

The theories of thinking of Alexander Bain, David Ferrier, and Sigmund Freud are examined and their relation to Phineas Gage explored. During the 19th century Ferrier derived an inhibitory-motor theory of thinking from a similar theory of Bain's, and aspects of Freud's theory of thinking resemble both. All 3 theories were modeled on the sensory-motor reflex, and all proposed that thinking was inhibited action. Ferrier used his theory to explain the behavior of monkeys whose frontal lobes were ablated and the disinhibited behavior Phineas Gage exhibited after massive damage to his frontal lobes. I show there is some possibility that Freud knew the Bain-Ferrier theory of thinking and its application to Gage.     

Relationships between adult attachment representations and family ritual quality: a prospective, longitudinal study

Meaningful family rituals have been associated with positive outcomes for families and children. No studies, however, have investigated predictors of family ritual quality, the identification of which would be important for understanding why some families create and enact meaningful family rituals while others lack rituals or have problematic rituals. We propose that adult attachment security may be an important predictor of family ritual quality because family rituals may provide a sense of stability and cohesiveness for the family. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships between adult attachment representations and the quality of family rituals, using a prospective, longitudinal design. Prior to the birth of their first child, 125 couples completed the Adult Attachment Interview, and a subsample of 70 mothers and 62 fathers completed the Family Rituals Questionnaire when their first child was 7 years old. Different patterns of relationships between attachment representations and family rituals were found for mothers and fathers. Maternal Insecure Attachment was associated with higher routinization of family rituals. Being in a couple with mixed attachment classifications (e.g., one Secure partner and one Insecure partner) was related to a pattern of low routinization and low meaning for family rituals. The results of this study are interpreted in terms of two patterns of rituals that have been described by clinicians--rigid ritualization and underritualization, and suggestions for working with these ritual patterns in families with Insecure attachment are provided.     

Evoked culture, ritualization and religious rituals

This study presents an attempt to integrate two theories about ritual: the theory that McCauley and Lawson developed in Bringing Ritual to Mind; Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms and the theory that Boyer and Liénard presented in a target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, ‘Why ritualized behavior in humans? Precaution systems and action-parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals’ and in another article published in the American Anthropologist, ‘Whence collective rituals? A cultural selection model of ritualized behavior’.     

BELIEF, PRACTICE, AND RELIGION

Abstract. How to reconcile belief in God with the worldview generated by modern science is a concern for those who see such belief as the essence of religion. Some religious traditions emphasize correct behavior, including observance of ritual, more than belief. Others stress individual pursuit of inner tranquility without prescribing particular beliefs or rituals by which that is to be achieved. Theological issues relating to "the God question in an age of science" are relevant to Christians, whose religious emphasis is on right belief as necessary to personal salvation; but science does not raise such issues for religion generally.     

Ritual Participation,Sense of Community,and Social Well-Being: A Study of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Seva</Emphasis> in the Sikh Community

The study examined the impact of frequency of ritual participation on sense of community and social well-being of a minority community in India, the Sikhs. We looked at a unique ritualistic practice of the Sikhs, seva. Rituals are known to contribute toward social solidarity and cohesion as well as physical and mental well-being. In particular for a minority community, rituals help group members establish and maintain strong community networks and a unique group identity. A total of 156 members of the Sikh community (85 males; 71 females) participated in the study. Frequency of ritual participation was positively related with social well-being and sense of community. Furthermore, sense of community was found to mediate the effect of frequency of ritual participation on social well-being. Results are discussed in the light of the importance of studying rituals in minority groups, the frequency of participation in a ritual activity and the importance of addressing social well-being in ritual research.     

The Psychological Benefits of Superstitious Rituals in Top Sport: A Study Among Top Sportspersons1

The current research addresses the psychological benefits of superstitious rituals in top sport, examining the circumstances under which top‐class sportspersons are especially committed to enacting rituals prior to a game (ritual commitment). Consistent with the hypotheses, findings revealed that ritual commitment is greater when (a) uncertainty is high rather than low; and (b) importance of the game is high rather than low. Complementary analyses revealed that the state of psychological tension mediated both effect of importance and uncertainty on ritual commitment. Moreover, players with an external locus of control exhibited greater levels of ritual commitment than did players with an internal locus of control. The results are discussed in terms of the tension‐regulation function of superstitious rituals in top sport.     

Social behavior as discriminative stimulus and consequence in social anthropology

A behavior analysis is provided for three topics in social anthropology. Food, social relations, and ritual behaviors can enter into contingencies both as functional consequences and as discriminative stimuli for the reinforcement of behaviors through generalized social consequences. Many "symbolic" behaviors, which some social anthropologists believe go beyond an individual material basis, are analyzed as the latter. It is shown how the development of self-regulation to bridge remote consequences can undermine a group's generalized social control. It is also shown that rituals and taboos can be utilized to maintain generalized social compliance, which in turn can maintain both the community's verbal behavior and other group behaviors that bridge indirect and remote consequences.     

BDSM,Interaction Rituals and Open Bodies

In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism (BDSM) communities in Sweden, I explore the ritual aspects of BDSM. Drawing on Douglas and Collins’ theories of interaction rituals, I analyse the creation of emotional energy during humiliation practice through connection and intimacy between the participants. The article examines how the ritual aspect of BDSM sessions can be understood as an enabler of expressions and emotional energy. BDSM becomes a free zone in which bodies are allowed to be open in a Bakhtinian sense, that is, transgressive and beyond control.     

The Personalization of Postmodern Post-mortem Rituals

This article lays out the roots of the wish for personalized post-mortem rituals (funerals, memorial services, etc.) in postmodern culture and explains why many twentieth-century American, white Protestant funerals had become strikingly impersonal. It discusses the way in which the desire for personalized ritual is linked in American minds with the desire for “celebrative” ritual with an upbeat emotional tone. It describes ways to personalize traditional or nontraditional rituals and explores how personalization may make the rituals more able to meet some of the most important needs of grieving people.     

Beyond pluralism: psychoanalysis and the workings of mind

Subjects that Freud excluded or incompletely explored have been sites of theoretical expansion in over a century of observation: the role of the other, the self, the preoedipal period, action, the countertransference, limits to neutrality/anonymity/abstinence, the loci of the analytic drama, effects beyond interpretation, agency, and basic needs (versus wishes). These developments have led to conflicting theories and sect-like groupings within the field. Group psychological processes underlying this are discussed; and a broad and inclusive view of psychoanalysis is proposed under the heading of the study of the workings of mind. Additionally, substantial integrative proposals are offered with respect to the central tasks of individual development, theories of mind, the relational turn, and aspects of technique.     

Family Rituals

Family rituals, consisting of celebrations, traditions, and patterned family interactions, are defined and illustrated in this paper. The power of ritual practice in families is explained by three underlying processes — transformation, communication, and stabilization — concepts whose roots lie in anthropology and ethology. We propose that all families struggle with finding a suitable role for rituals in their collective lives but their actual achievement varies greatly. Commitment to ritual and adaptability of ritual practice throughout the family life cycle are important considerations. The utility of these concepts in the assessment and treatment of families is discussed.