Conflicting perspectives on shamans and shamanism: points and counterpoints

Shamans' communities grant them privileged status to attend to those groups' psychological and spiritual needs. Shamans claim to modify their attentional states and engage in activities that enable them to access information not ordinarily attainable by members of the social group that has granted them shamanic status. Western perspectives on shamanism have changed and clashed over the centuries; this address presents points and counterpoints regarding what might be termed the demonic model, the charlatan model, the schizophrenia model, the soul flight model, the degenerative and crude technology model, and the deconstructionist model. Western interpretations of shamanism often reveal more about the observer than they do about the observed; in addressing this challenge, the study of shamanism could make contributions to cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, psychological therapy, and ecological psychology.