Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 181–196, 2010
0892-3310/10
Importance of a Psychosocial Approach for a Comprehensive Understanding of Mediumship
EVERTON MARALDI
FATIMA REGINA MACHADO
WELLINGTON ZANGARI
Abstract—There are several definitions of mediumship. The majority of them
are religion-based. In this article, the term mediumship is defined as the supposed
capacity that certain people—that is mediums—are said to have by
which they can mediate communication between spiritual entities or forms
and other human beings. Such a definition does not explain the origin of mediumship,
but rather highlights its characteristics as they are reported by people
who experience the phenomena in different sociocultural contexts. In general,
it is said that mediumistic capacity is aroused when the medium is in an altered
state of consciousness such as a trance state. However, for Kardecist Spiritists
for example, mediumship may also occur in conscious states. Mediumship
can be present in practically any human activities, from the elaboration of
a scientific or literate text to an artistic production, as well as in such minor
experiences as vague physical sensations or even emotional states such as irritability,
sadness, sudden joy, obsessive thoughts, moments of inspiration or
geniality, and so on. In all these experiences—from the most common to the
most exceptional—Kardecist Spiritists admit the possibility of spirit intervention.
So, in many cases there is no clear delimitation between what comes
from the medium as an individual and what would come from an external
source. Although the Kardecist perspective—very widespread in Brazil—is
based upon certain religious and philosophic hypotheses that are unacceptable
for many scientists and academics, Kardecism has contributed to the development
of scientific and psychological conceptions of so-called mediumistic
manifestations. Shamdasani (1994:xiv) pointed out that because Kardec believed
that mediumship was a fundamental aspect of humanity and must be
considered in order to understand the human condition, his Spiritist doctrine
was formed in such a way as to facilitate psychological interpretation of what
seemed to be mediumistic phenomena. The main difference between Kardec’s
theory and a completely psychological study of mediumship is the cause of
the phenomena: that is whether the phenomena occurred through the action
of spirits or through the action of the medium’s subliminal or subconscious
imagination. The search for an intrapsychic source for mediumship contributed
to the “discovery” of the unconscious mind.
Keywords: mediumship—Spiritism—psychosocial identity
Approaches to the Study of Mediumship, Their Contributions and Consequences
Proper scientific studies of mediumship were first conducted in the period
between the late 19th century and the early 20th century, arousing huge public
interest, especially in the United States and Europe. However, the interest
in the study of mediumship had already appeared in the 18th century when
Christian values were profoundly affected by the emergent worldview that was
based on industrial and scientific development. These new ideas threatened
the ontological status of beliefs in the existence of life after death (Northcote,
2007). Rationalism and the concomitant growth of positivism became popular,
imposing a strictly materialistic conception of reality. The new way of looking
at the world confl icted with previous religious conceptions, especially those that
touched on the origin of human beings and the existence of the soul (Ronan,
2001). Society began to move away from a religious worldview based simply
on religious dogmas. To some it seemed necessary to adopt scientific methods
in order to scientifically prove the existence of the soul and its immortality
(Rogo, 1986). But even if the majority of the scientific and academic community
adopted a materialist view of the world and society as a whole questioned the
traditional basis of religions, the masses began to look for a worldview that was
both religious and, paradoxically, empirical (Northcote, 2007).
Scientific psychology appeared in that context. In the beginning, the
discipline was strongly connected to the study of alleged paranormal experiences
and especially to the study of mediumistic experiences (Alvarado 2005,
Alvarado, Machado, Zingrone, & Zangari, 2007, Ellenberger, 1976). By the end
of the 19th century, mediumship was the object of many psychological studies
(Shamdasani, 1994). However, the majority of researchers saw mediumistic
practices only as the fruit of frauds or as a dangerous threat to the well-being
of society. Mediumship was commonly linked to psychopathology in the
psychiatric literature of the times (Le Maléfan, 1999). There were physicians
who maintained that brain damage and/or other functional disturbances
caused spiritualist/Spiritist beliefs and practices or vice versa. Many of those
physicians believed that spiritualist beliefs were a principal cause of insanity
(Hess, 1991, Shamdasani, 1994, Zingrone, 1994). Consequently, people who
practiced Spiritism or spiritualism or who participated in seances began to be
persecuted in Europe and in such countries as the United States and Brazil
(Almeida et al., 2005, Giumbeli, 1997, 2003, Machado, 1996, 2005). With
the infl ux of Social Darwinism, the psychiatric community began to use the
metaphors of evolution, characterizing mediumistic manifestations along the
scale of intellectual and social development.
According to Zingrone (1994), behind the intrigues involving mediums and
scientists, there were racial, gender, and social status confl icts, as well as confl icts
stemming from political and religious interests. Mediumistic phenomena
were associated with such marginal social groups as women, individuals of
African descent, and the poor, reproducing and amplifying existing prejudices.
Some criticisms aimed at Spiritists/spiritualists had an evident party–political
content. They alluded in a pejorative way to the connection of mediumship
to suffragism and other social movements. Critics also were against beliefs
incompatible with Roman Catholic dogma—which was considered a model of
religious institutional beliefs, especially in the West—and against several forms
of alternate therapies not approved by the medical establishment. Efforts to stop
spiritualists and Spiritists could take a judicial form. As Zingrone says:
For the anti-Spiritualists, this characterization of Spiritualism and mediumship as categories of mental illness was deadly serious and could be used to strip “the patient” of legal rights and social privileges. Owen (1990) uncovered an abundance of legal records of “lunacy” cases tried in England. A number of similar cases were litigated in the United States as well [Haber, 1986]. The evidence in some of these cases rested solely on defendants’ interest in, practice of, or belief in Spiritualistic phenomena. Purely on this basis, many persons, mostly women, were involuntarily committed to asylums. Only a handful of these inmates were able to obtain their release, and then only after enlisting the legal and financial aid of other more socially powerful Spiritualists (Owen, 1990:160–167, 168–201). Many others—again, mostly women—lost legal control of their monetary resources to members of their immediate families—usually men—on the grounds that commitment to Spiritualism was symptomatic of a severe chronic mental incapacity (Owen, 1990:160–167). (Zingrone, 1994:102–103)
In spite of the persecutions, however, a segment of the scientific community
considered mediumship from another point of view. In 1882, a group of
intellectuals from different areas decided to join forces to found The Society for
Psychical Research (SPR), the purpose of which was to investigate so-called
mediumistic and paranormal events using the scientific method.2 Investigation
on mediumship done by the SPR resulted in pioneering studies on dissociation
and altered states of consciousness (Alvarado, 2002).
The first studies of mediumship were strongly infl uenced by their historical
time. People then were still deeply involved in their traditional religious beliefs,
so much so that many scientists still believed in life after death, and felt it was
possible to study the topic from a scientific point of view. Similarly, such scientists
were also interested in studying mediums. Frederic Myers, for instance,
was both favorable to the Spiritist survival hypothesis and explored evidence
related to it in his work (Myers, 1903/2001:31). Theodore Flournoy, who was
skeptical of the possibility of communication with the dead, declared that, even
though he felt that way, he still considered himself a Spiritualist and therefore
believed in the existence of a transcendent dimension in the human being. As
Flournoy said:
Let me insist here that we must not confound Spiritism, which is a pretended scientific explanation of certain facts by the intervention of spirits of the dead, with Spiritualism, which is a religio–philosophical belief, opposed to materialism and based on the principle of value and the reality of individual consciousness, and which I conceive to be a necessary postulate for a wholesome conception of the moral life. […] One may be a Spiritist without being a Spiritualist, and vice versa. So far as I myself am concerned I am a convinced Spiritualist. (Flournoy, 1911/2007:142)
Although pioneers of scientific studies on mediumship had different
opinions and beliefs on the subject, all of them privileged the scientific posture
in their studies and shared some ideas: (a) they believed in the importance
of the psychological study of mediumship for its potential to add to our
understanding of the human mind; (b) they understood that mediumship is a
complex phenomenon but despite that fact it was possible to formulate certain
testable hypotheses for mediumistic phenomena that were not sufficiently wellunderstood;
(c) they believed that even though mediumship could sometimes
be associated with psychopathology, they felt that such an explanation could
not be applied in general because it did not explain all the available evidence;
and (d) while the majority of them were in doubt about the paranormal nature
of some of the phenomena described in the mediumistic context, in other cases
available evidence confirmed the legitimacy of the paranormal hypothesis.
The majority of the early investigations conducted by SPR members
were focused primarily on verifying that the content of supposed mediumistic
communications had, in fact, originated with the deceased. Although many
hypotheses proposed by these researchers contained psychological concepts,
their main purpose was to investigate the notion of survival (Zangari, 2003). One
evident problem in these early investigations was the emphasis on individual
aspects of mediumship, that is on the study of intrapsychic and unconscious
processes in mediums. This approach neglected the power of culture and society
in modeling beliefs and experiences associated with mediumistic phenomena
(Maraldi, 2008).
In the first two decades of the 20th century, the interest in mediumship
diminished considerably. The ascension of psychoanalysis has been said to
have been greatly responsible for the decline. Unlike psychical research—an
empirical discipline—psychoanalysis established therapeutic methods that
became popular and, to some extent, obscured the investigation of mediumistic
phenomena and other forms of paranormal experiences as verifiable
occurrences. Psychoanalytic techniques made possible a more controlled and
rational relationship with the unconscious, less intense and passionate than
those observed in mediumistic seances (Alvarado, 2002, Shamdasani, 1994).
Due to the association of mediumship with Spiritism/Spiritualism and
Occultism, mediumistic phenomena began to be considered threatening to
psychology because their studies were seen as metaphysical speculations.
Psychology gradually abandoned its interest in mediumship, concentrating
instead mainly on psychopathology, learning, child development, and
comparative psychology, and other areas of modern psychology. Theories
began to focus on referential models designed to increase comprehension of the
psyche. Mediumship was set aside and only recently has become the object of
intensive investigations on a par with those conducted previously (Almeida &
Lotufo Neto, 2004:137).
The renewed academic interest in mediumship is relatively recent. It
has been occurring because of the growing enthusiasm about the study of
paranormal beliefs and/or experiences in general. Mediumship studies have
made little progress over the intervening decades, and researchers continue
to face practically the same problems faced by the pioneers of mediumship
research.
Perhaps the most important contribution of recent work is the establishment
of mediumship as a psychosocial phenomenon, which, in a certain way,
disconnects it from exclusively intrapsychic and psychopathological
interpretations. Regarding the psychosocial aspect, modern researchers
have understood that perceiving mediumship as a dissociative phenomenon
constrained by the historical and social context was something that most of the
pioneer researchers missed because of their focus on individual aspects of the
mediums themselves. As Zangari has said:
[...] in spite of the fact that mediumship “uses” a medium’s dissociative capacities, it seems to be a dissociation disciplined by the medium´s social group. [...] Socio-cultural elements that outline the “intruder” personality are present in the medium’s social group and, therefore, in the medium’s mind [ . . . ] the difference between pathological dissociation and non-pathological dissociation lies in the consideration of context, of culture. (Zangari, 2003:54–55).
Unilateral analyses of mediumship tend to partial—and therefore
incomplete—interpretations. Monique Augras (1983:77) has criticized those
who have tried to understand mediumship using an approach that excludes the
cultural elements involved in the phenomenon.
There are clinical studies that have considered mediumship from
psychosocial perspectives that seem to corroborate the importance of
mediumship as a social construction as opposed to seeing the phenomena
from a merely pathological or intrapsychic point of view. Several authors
have provided evidence for the notion that mediumship is not necessarily
associated with psychopathologies (Almeida, 2004, Almeida, Lotufo Neto, &
Greyson, 2007, Negro, 1999, Reinsel, 2003). Grosso (1997) defends the notion
that mediumship, artistic inspiration, and surrealism are forms of “creative
dissociation”. According to Grosso (1997) and Zangari (2003), what seem to be
fragmentations and disintegration in a specific culture may be the prelude to a
major psychological integration in another culture.
Discussing the correlation between mediumship and dissociative identity
disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), Braude (1988) has
suggested that while the creation of multiple personality usually begins as a
reaction to unbearable traumatic events, mediumship tends to develop in a more
healthy way—although the author considered the possible link between certain
mediumistic phenomena and psychopathology. A similar opinion was adopted
by Richeport (1992).
After interviewing and administering dissociation scales to individuals
diagnosed as suffering from multiple personality disorder, Hughes (1992:191)
has concluded that mediums do not present a high level of psychopathology
or dissociative experiences. Mediums differ from those who have multiple
personality disorder in terms of mental processes (etiology, function, control,
and psychopathology). For those who have multiple personality disorder,
dissociation is compulsive; for mediums, it is disciplined and culturally
contextualized.
Similarly, recent research results have not confirmed that mediumship
is invariably a defense mechanism against psychological suffering or social
exclusion (Negro, 1999). Almeida (2004), for instance, has demonstrated that
the socio–demographic profile of Spiritists in Brazil is quite different from what
is expected.
The Flourishing of a Psychosocial Perspective of Mediumship in Brazil
It is said that Brazil—often characterized as the largest Spiritist country in
the world—is a warehouse of paranormal experiences, especially Spiritist-like
ones. And Brazil is also well-known for its mixture of cultures and its tolerance
of different religious beliefs. But it was not always like that. Spiritist practices
were illegal at one point in the history of the country—especially in the first
part of the 20th century—and during that time a number of interpretations of
mediumship related to dissociation were proposed. But the cultural context of
experiences was usually neglected. Mediumship was also almost invariably
described as a symptom of psychopathology. Raimundo Nina Rodrigues
(1862–1906), an eminent Brazilian physician and anthropologist, interpreted
possession as “a provoked sleepwalking-like state with fragmentation and
substitution of personality” (Nina Rodrigues, 1900:81). Manoel Querino (1851–
1923), a Brazilian intellectual and anthropologist who was a pioneer historian
of African culture in Bahia, Brazil, described mediumship as an impressive
hysterical phenomenon peculiar to women (Querino, 1955:73).
Monique Augras (1983) points out that such important researchers and
academics as Artur Ramos (1903–1949), a Brazilian physician, anthropologist,
and folklorist, believed “that trance does not reveal any characteristic beyond
what is already established by Psychiatry as mass hysteria” (p. 36). Brazilian
researchers were infl uenced by 19th century European psychiatric ideas,
especially those in France, such as Le Bon’s concept of “mass hysteria” and
Charcot’s ideas on hysterical dissociation as a neurological degeneration of
women (Ellenberger, 1976).
The opinion of the Brazilian medical community on Spiritism—a term
that was commonly used to refer to Kardecist Spiritism as well as mediumistic
African or Afro–Brazilian practices—was linked to the Brazilian historical
context. Spiritists in general were persecuted for political and religious views
when Getúlio Vargas was the President of Brazil (1930–1945 and 1951–1954).
A large number of Spiritist centers were closed during those years (Hess, 1991).
The campaign against Spiritism helped to legitimize the position of physicians
who were against Spiritist beliefs and practices. For example, in the 1920s and
1930s, the Liga de Higiene Mental (League for Mental Hygiene) considered
Kardecist Spiritism and other mediumistic religions to be both a mental health
problem and a social problem (Costa, 1976, Oliveira, 1931, Ribeiro & Campos,
1931). Their views were consonant with the opinion of such early Brazilian
psychoanalysts as Artur Ramos.
Social dimensions of mediumship started to be considered formally in Brazil
with the work of Melville J. Herskovits (1967) who did not see mediumship
only from a psychopathological point of view. According to Augras, Herskovits
“states that ritual trance, while institutional, is an abnormal phenomenon. It is
an organized cult, not an individual pathology” (Augras, 1983:47). Herskovits’
perspective was assumed later by such Brazilian researchers as Octavio da
Costa Eduardo and René Ribeiro (1978). However, it was the French sociologist
Roger Bastide (1898–1974) and the French photographer and ethnologist Pierre
Verger (1902–1996) who first proposed a properly sociological and historical
perspective for the analysis of mediumistic religions in Brazil in the mid-1950s
(Bastide, 1989, Verger, 2002).
Sociologists and anthropologists, more than members of any other
discipline, have offered psychological or social interpretations for mediumistic
phenomena. However, the sociological perspective is a generalist one and does
not always adequately consider the individual and group dimensions in their
interaction with broader social and institutional processes. Social psychology,
on the other hand, takes on as its task the investigation of particularities
and mechanisms involved in the dialectic between group and individual.
From a social psychological perspective, then, mediumship can be seen as
a psychosocial construction, that is as a phenomena that is simultaneously
individual and collective. Recently, this perspective has been fl ourishing in
Brazil and seems to us to be a fruitful approach to the study of mediumship.
An Exploratory Psychosocial Study of Mediumship in Brazil
An exploratory study conducted by the Brazilian psychologist Everton de
Oliveira Maraldi (2008) is offered here as the first step in a larger research
project focused on psychosocial aspects of mediumship in Brazil. His study
aimed to understand the use and meaning of mediumship and the paranormal
beliefs connected to it in the formation of the psychosocial identity of Kardecist
Spiritists. The research program draws on the theory of identity proposed by
Ciampa (1987, 1994), a well-known social psychologist in Brazil. Ciampa’s
work can be defined as a tentative recasting of identity theory that is anchored
especially in Habermas’s (1990) philosophy.
According to Ciampa, identity is in a constant state of transformation
and metamorphosis, passing through different moral or cognitive stages
of development. He also recognizes identity as a predominantly social
phenomenon, that is all individuals contribute to the actualization of a group’s
identity even if it is only in a potential way. Individual particularities reproduce
universal particularities. Thus, group identity and individual identity are
not disconnected. They form together in a shared context. Identity can be
understood as two different aspects in a dialectical relation: the representational
aspect (categorization) and the dynamic aspect (metamorphosis), both seen as
process. Identity results primarily from the process of metamorphosis itself,
and its construction occurs across the lifespan. The construction of a “good”
identity project is a process that can be favorably infl uenced (or not) by social
conditions or by adaptive crises faced by the individual in his or her daily life.
Using Ciampa’s approach to discuss the construction of Kardecist Spiritist
mediums, Maraldi’s exploratory research was composed of two “life history”
case studies with two female mediums from the Centro Espírita Ismael (http://
www.ceismael.com.br) in the city of São Paulo in Brazil. In addition to
doing deep interviews with the mediums, Maraldi visited the Spiritist center
several times and observed mediums in action. He has also considered other
complementary materials for his analysis, such as psychographic messages
and a mediumistic drawing. Maraldi has selected two mediums who seemed
to have effectively established a significant personal and group connection to
mediumistic beliefs and practices. The main objective of the exploratory study
was to evaluate the potential infl uence of indoctrination and group context on
the maintenance of beliefs and on the construction of mediumship as an identity,
as well as to raise hypotheses for future investigations.
From the analysis of interviews—as well as consideration of the
complementary material—using Ciampa´s ideas as reference, Maraldi verified
that the uses and meanings of mediumship in the construction of the investigated
mediums’ identities varied not only in terms of psychodynamic functions but
also in psychosocial meanings. These can be reduced to the following three
basic categories:
(a) Mediumship as a life project. This is a category that includes the resignifi cation of mediumistic and Spiritist identity in the interviewed mediums’ life histories as the search for emotional and spiritual meaning. In this category, Maraldi explored how daily situations and physical and emotional experiences are interpreted by each of interviewees (E.D.E. and I.N.) to conform to their evolving mediumistic identities. That is, how the interviewees learned to give a spiritual meaning to their personal problems, difficulties, or even successes. Maraldi also investigated the interviewees’ interpretations of their mediumistic abilities and their efforts to bring their experiences into conformance with Kardecian Spiritist doctrine as their mediumistic identity developed and matured, and as they came to see their mediumship, as they told Maraldi, as predestined and predetermined even from before their reincarnation into their present lives.
(b) Mediumship as a way to veil or unveil identity. This is the category in which Maraldi examined the psychodynamic means by which the interviewees masked or disclosed their mediumistic identity in the context of the Spiritist center including those moments when their activities occurred within unconscious mediumistic states, or through what seemed to be paranormal phenomena.
(c) Mediumship as ideology. In this category, Maraldi’s investigation revolved around the notion that mediumship can be seen as an ideological posture that is a kind of materialization of Spiritist doctrine. He focused his analysis on the way in which the interviewees commonly incorporated scientifi c and religious tropes in support of Spiritism in their speech. In this category, Maraldi noted that the discourse in which the interviewees engaged repeatedly centered on the debates between materialist science and Spiritism, medicine and Spiritism, and Catholicism and Spiritism.
When dealing with “mediumship as a life project”, Maraldi’s results
supported the notion that the formation of a mediumistic identity organized
the mediums’ emotional experiences so as to sustain a life project that was
previously nonexistent or inconceivable. This is the re-signification function
of mediumship: a search for meaning to face, explain, or justify difficulties
or successes. Not only are certain psychodynamic functions serviced—such as
diminishing anguish and anxiety from the exposure to confl ictful and traumatic
situations—but also future personal psychological needs are prepared for.
From the analyses of the mediums’ discourse, it becomes apparent that prior to
their conversion to Spiritism and their training as mediums, the interviewees’
lives had no defined direction, as they were unsure as to what role they might
play in the world. The interviewees tended to see their pre-mediumship past
as marked by problems that could only be solved after their predestined
dedication to Spiritism. The way in which the mediums described their lives
before mediumship centered on a painful life full of disease and disturbance.
Both mediums had endured difficult childhoods. E.D.E. was ill frequently and
hospitalized repeatedly without her doctors being able to render a diagnosis.
I.N. had psychological and family problems. Her childhood was complicated
by continually arguing parents to the extent that her siblings seemed to have
played a more significant role in her upbringing than her parents did. Both
E.D.E. and I.N. also suffered from relatives who considered them to be
mentally disordered. On the other hand, the “discovery” of their mediumship
re-signified their experiences, giving them a paranormal meaning. For E.D.E.,
what she thought were hallucinations became the perception of spirits. I.N.’s
mood swings and other emotional difficulties were not only the result of family
confl icts, but also fl owed from her as-yet-untrained ability to “capture energies”
from discarnate spirits or living people, something mediumship training helped
her to balance. Seemingly inexplicable relationships and occurrences in both
mediums’ family lives were now understood as consequences of past lives.
For instance, E.D.E. explained her difficult relationships with her parents and
her good relationships with her grandparents as a result of her parents having
been her aunt and uncle in a previous life while her grandparents had been her
parents. An emotional dependency on her displayed by her brother was also
explained in terms of past life events. In effect, E.D.E.’s attributions of past life
causes to current life events or relationships allowed her to delineate a mythical
origin to those elements—including social roles—of her current life that she
considers emotionally unacceptable or incomprehensible.
Not only do mediumship practices help E.D.E. and I.N. to deal with their
experiences, but social perceptions both made by and of the interviewees have
also changed. As mediums, both E.D.E. and I.N. find themselves embedded in
a context in which who they are and what they do are culturally valued. For
I.N., for example, the “discovery” of her mediumship has been a transformative
experience that has changed her from a shy and unstable person to someone
who has occupied a more adaptive and fulfilling social role in life.
The second analytical stance Maraldi took with his interviewees was to
follow Ciampa’s (1987) notion that identity is alternatively veiled and unveiled.
That is, an individual’s multiple social roles are revealed or hidden at different
moments, each role being only a partial representation of the whole individual.
These transitions may be conscious or unconscious and it is the unconscious
roles that may become strange to the waking self, dissociated because they
cannot be openly assumed. A tension is created, however, in that what is
masked and unconscious must seek to be disclosed, expressed in some way.
In this sense, the context of Centro Espírita Ismael provides E.D.E. and I.N.
with the opportunity to unveil an otherwise veiled aspect of their selves through
exercising their mediumistic identity. The Spiritist center becomes a safe,
controlled environment in which those aspects of the mediums’ psychology
that are repressed or undeveloped may be expressed (and we are not talking
only about mediumistic ability surfacing: Maraldi also observed such creative
processes as painting and writing being expressed in the context of the Centro).
Diffuse emotions may also be expressed, and by doing so the mediums are able
to deal with their subjective world without assuming total responsibility for
what emerges in mediumistic sessions.
Mediums report they are susceptible to feelings that damage family and
social life. To maintain an emotional balance she believes is necessary for her
mediumship, I.N., for example, says she avoids feeling anger or hostility toward
her husband. Allowing her emotional balance to be upset I.N. fears makes her
vulnerable to invasion by something strange and compulsive that could harm
her, her family, and her mediumship. She is also afraid of losing effective
contact with the world, of dissociating from herself. I.N. fears possession
as a sign of obsession, an uncontrollable negative infl uence by spirits. From
a psychodynamic point of view, however, that which I.N. sees as an abrupt
intrusion of the spirit world may be, in fact, an unconscious activity, what
Jung (1920/2004) defined as “ideo-affective complexes”. As Jung has said,
complexes tend to become true secondary personalities, or, in other words,
unconscious roles, such as the roles that mediums can freely experience in the
Spiritist center, but for which they do not assume complete authorship.
In their own way, activities at the Spiritist center can be integrative and
therapeutic, facilitating safe contact with the unconscious and promoting the
adaptive development of individual identity through a form of emotional control
instilled through doctrinal compliance. The Spiritist center provides meaning
through both a symbolic system and practical training that allows the medium to
interpret and control otherwise disturbing experiences without fear. The power
of Spiritist doctrine to shape the medium’s emotional control can be seen as a
progressive capacity that increases in efficacy as the mediums develop. Zangari
(2003) has called this process “the training of altered states of consciousness in
a ritual context”. Negro (1999), on the other hand, characterizes this process as
the “modeling of social behavior” or the assimilation of experiences in a “social
matrix”.
Techniques employed at the Centro Espírita Ismael to train or induce
mediumship are derivations of hypnosis that clearly evoke altered states of
consciousness in which it is suggested that the emotions should be worked on
through practices that comply with Spiritist doctrine. The capacity of mediums to
surrender to the spirits—as proposed by Zangari (2003)—is a passive surrender
to (potential) unconscious elements. The Spiritist center both welcomes and
allows latent content within a socially accepted ritual that, at the same time,
helps mediums preserve the stability and integrity of their personal identity.
However, mediumship practices also involve risks. An extreme adherence
to Spiritist doctrine can provoke, to some extent, a resistance to change, to
identity metamorphosis, resulting in the mere re-positioning of social roles
and the exercise of repressive “control” of aspects deemed undesirable by, or
incompatible with, Spiritist doctrine. During his visits to the Spiritist center,
Maraldi noticed that it was not uncommon for participants to repress contrary
phenomena not in keeping with Spiritist ideas. Attitudes expressed by mediums
or even by the supposed deceased communicators that contradicted Spiritist
doctrine were received with anxiety. Mediums tended to avoid doctrinal
confl icts, attempting to maintain harmony and balance with both Spiritist
and Christian values. This goal was not always accomplished owing to the
difficulty of controlling the upswell from the unconscious that occurred during
mediumistic trance. In such moments, while the medium’s role was preserved,
the spiritual harmony of the Centrowas not. At those moments, the Spiritist
center’s concern with the maintenance of its Spiritist ideology overrode the
development of the medium as an individual. Yet, even at moments when
ideology was the main goal, the imposing of doctrine could lead to therapeutic
and integrative outcomes. As Ciampa (1987) has argued, institutions must also
undergo transformation and metamorphosis of their collective identity so as
to adjust to the needs of their members and to the requirements of the social
environment as a whole.
Maraldi also noted that the interviewees reported both some paranormallike
personal experiences that were better explained psychologically as the
result of interpretation and cognitive process biases, group suggestion, or
criptomnésia, and a mediumistic drawing that seemed to have resulted from a
paranormal retrieval of information.3
From the perspective of mediumship as ideology, Maraldi had postulated
that the medium’s individual history seems to reproduce in several aspects the
history of Spiritism in Brazil. For example, there is the fusion of a personal
search with the still-unsolved collective search. Mediums’ discourse—when
it centered on debating scientific materialism and discussions about the
supremacy of conventional Medicine and Catholic dogma, for instance—seem
to reproduce (even indirectly) the early history of Brazilian Spiritism when
suffering persecution by medical and religious institutions.4 It seems that
initial confl icts and continuing rivalries are alive in the mediums’ imagination,
keeping mediums on the defensive where their Spiritist beliefs are concerned.
And this defensiveness, in fact, can be seen as an act of preservation of their
own mediumistic identities.
Finally, Maraldi’s study provides an important refl ection based on I.N.’s
life history which reveals a very significant development of psychologically
adaptive identity that contradicts the idea that Spiritist beliefs and paranormal
experiences indicate regression in the psychological sense as Ciampa and
Habermas believe.
For Habermas (1990), paranormal beliefs are a regressive cultural form
that represents a step backward in the process of identity development.
Ciampa (1987) also believes that paranormal beliefs may be an obstacle to the
achievement of Habermas’s (1990) post-conventional identity as proposed, that
is a relatively autonomous identity that moves beyond group and institution
beliefs. Maraldi has noticed, however, that I.N. seems to be taking her first
steps toward a post-conventional worldview, albeit without abandoning her
paranormal beliefs. The formation of an adaptive identity has not cancelled her
beliefs nor her commitment to her mediumship.
Developing a mediumistic worldview must be recognized as a valid way in
which individuals may search for emotional and spiritual meaning in their lives,
even if the outside observer doubts the reality of alleged Spiritist phenomena.
A perspective that is both historical and psychological can help. Maraldi has
proposed that the ideas presented by Foucault (1968) in Mental Disease and
Psychology provide insight here. To Foucault, the regressive character of
pathological behaviors in neurosis or in certain cultural phenomena—such as
mystical and religious experiences—do not constitute an inherent expression
of such phenomena, but rather refl ect a culture that allocates to the past those
elements that are offensive to the dominant worldview. The repression of such
cultural phenomena would cause them to re-emerge as a kind of marginalized
discourse. Linking the phenomena to pathology then can be seen as a cultural
and historical construction, and not as an inherent property of the phenomena
themselves. The pathologizing of mediumistic practices and Spiritist beliefs
becomes, in a sense, more properly an effect rather than a cause.
So we would not agree that the majority of those who hold paranormal
beliefs are members of socially marginalized groups such as women, the elderly,
individuals of African descent, or homosexuals (Emmons & Sobal, 1981). Even
if certain paranormal beliefs may be a psychological resource for dealing with
the frustrations of social exclusion, such a generalization does not explain
the enormous interest that members of socially privileged (dominant) groups
have in the paranormal (Irwin, 2003). Perhaps such paranormal experiences as
mediums claim and seek to develop can be seen as marginal not only because
they are restricted to a specific segment of society or because they can serve
as both a compensation and a justification for social and economic alienation
in specific groups, but because they can be characterized as fundamentally
resistant to the secularization of culture in its legitimate expression of a
persistent spiritual aspect of the human condition.
Conclusion
In order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of mediumship,
it is necessary to pay attention not only to its psycho–physiological aspects—as
has been done in the past—but also to consider its psychosocial and cultural
aspects. An exclusively psychopathological or intrapsychic interpretive axis
has recently begun to transform into a psychosocial one, but it seems that
the relationship of these perspectives to each other has not been successfully
outlined as yet. It is not enough to point out both these perspectives as relevant.
Rather it is necessary to determine how psychosocial aspects infl uence
mediumistic experiences. This approach has inspired a number of recent studies
(Machado, 2009, Maraldi, 2008, Negro, 1999, Stoll, 2004, Zangari, 2003), but
more research is needed, especially that which can integrate the psychosocial
with other aspects of mediumship.
We believe that the psychosocial perspective can promote a more effective
scientific understanding of mediumship from that already provided by the
theoretical heritage that reduces the social to the biological. It is necessary that
different analytical perspectives—psychosocial and biological—be seen as
complementary so that the complexity of mediums and mediumship may be
better understood.
Notes
1 Allan Kardec was the name adopted by the French mathematician and educator Hyppolite
Leon Denizard Rivail (1804–1869), who was the codifier of Spiritism. In the
second part of 19th century, he was invited to analyze and organize several reports
received by mediums working in different Spiritist groups—especially those linked to
the historical tradition of belief in survival and to the principle that the deceased can
interact in our world (Kardec, 1861/2001). In Brazil, Kardec’s Spiritist perspective—
Kardecism—is the most infl uential of the Spiritist traditions and has more followers
than other similar religions.
2 Other societies or institutes with similar objectives were later founded, such as the
American Society for Psychical Research (1885) in the USA and the Institut Métapsychique
International (1919) in Paris, for example.
3 This is discussed in more detail in Maraldi’s (2008) exploratory study. However, it was
not possible to get a broad comprehension of the nature of the “secondary personalities”
manifested by the interviewed mediums.
4 Nowadays people in Brazil are free to adhere to any religion and to express their faith.
The country is said to be the biggest Spiritist country in the world. There are Kardecist
Spiritist centers as well as other mediumistic religious temples such as Umbanda and
Candomblé all over the country. At the same time, Brazil is one of the biggest Catholic
countries in the world. In fact, it is common to find Brazilians who are adept at more
than one religion, especially Catholicism and Kardecist Spiritism (Machado, 2009).
Acknowledgements
Thank you to CNPq, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brazil), for the grant received by Everton de Oliveira Maraldi for his Master’s Degree research, to Carlos S. Alvarado for his help and suggestions, and especially to Nancy L. Zingrone for editing this paper in English.
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