Abstract
In this paper we present a multidisciplinary, developmental analysis of a Dominican Republic Vodou servidor (“Marcos”), from childhood to early adulthood, integrating ethnographic observation, field documentation, and anthropological analysis, with relevant constructs from developmental, personality, and clinical psychology. Marcos transitioned from a child with many problems to a young adult who has learnt how to control and adapt dissociative manifestations into a professional role as a Vodou priest. Most empirical studies on spirit possession (SP) have rarely taken a longitudinal, multidisciplinary approach, which may better account for such a complex phenomenon. Adopting such an approach helps make sense of both the continuity and changes in Marcos, as well as of his community's shifting attitudes towards him. We describe how specific psychological and cultural conditions help explain the change from originally dysfunctional expressions of SP to personally and socially beneficial ones. [anomalous experience, dissociation, gender, spirit possession, Vodou]
Highlights
In this paper we present a multidisciplinary, developmental analysis of a Dominican Republic Vodou servidor (“Marcos”), from childhood to early adulthood, integrating ethnographic observation, field documentation, and anthropological analysis, with relevant constructs from developmental, personality, and clinical psychology
In the West, they go a long way back (Oesterreich 1921/1974) and include Plato’s philosophical discussion of the manias in the Phaedrus dialogue, the centuries-long Christian attempts to discern the nature of possessing entities (Sluhovsky 2011), and more recent discussions within anthropology (Bourguignon 1965; Boddy 1994), psychology (Mischel and Mischel 1947), neurocognition (Peres et al 2012), dramaturgy (Metraux 1955), and parapsychology (Gauld 1984)
We present the history of a Vodou devotee from childhood to young adulthood integrating anthropological and psychological perspectives
Summary
In the Dominican Republic, vodouists self-identify as Catholics, only a fraction of Catholics hold a belief in Vodou, in which SP by entities commonly but not exclusively associated with Catholic saints is a central feature. Influenced by Haitian Vodou, far less widespread (Davis 2007). How it is viewed depends on the socioeconomic and cultural divisions between the professional class and the largely disenfranchised communities of informal workers in rural or suburban areas. A young woman suffering from dissociative episodes with violent features reported that they were attributed to SP by a distinct class of misterios (spirits of uncivilized indigenous people). She found relief after being initiated into Vodou and learning how to control her “wild” possessions (Schaffler 2017)
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