5/11/2023 0 Comments Shaman alternate spirit wolf formsBefore exploring individual traditions, Feldmeier offers two somewhat surprising thematic chapters, which turn out to be foundational for his project, on mysticism and on mediators. The overall structure of the book embodies its comparative methodology. Rather, he floats among the models and employs one or another as is “useful and appropriate” (p. As for the Christian theological resources for doing this, Feldmeier summarizes the standard, but controversial, three “models” of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, but then makes a postmodern decision not to endorse any one of them. So the book has a proximate and an ultimate goal: to understand other religions as accurately as possible but then “to inform, inspire, challenge, and renew one’s religious sensibilities” (p. The book embodies something I don’t think I’ve found in any other textbook: comparative, or dialogical, theology applied to a world religions course.įeldmeier lays out this novel approach in an introductory chapter in which he basically defines himself as a comparative theologian-a scholar of Christianity who is convinced that one of the most promising-maybe necessary-ways of understanding Christianity is to bring it into conversation with other religious traditions. He does so as a Christian primarily for Christian and/or Western readers. He not only describes objectively but engages personally the truths that these religions hold dear. Thomas, boldly, and I would add fittingly, commits what most scholars of religion consider a mortal sin. Peter Feldmeier, professor of Christian theology at. It fits neatly into the rows of textbooks weighing down the shelves marked “Introduction to World Religions,” for it admirably achieves the goal of introducing its readers to the basic beliefs and practices of humanity’s ancient and more recent religious traditions. This book occupies a unique place in a big crowd. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) Part III surveys the use of hypnosis in psychotherapy. Part II relates hypnosis to sleep, somnambulism, dreaming, fugue, traumatic neurosis, brain washing, and trance in Bali. The basic theoretical premise of the book is "hypnosis is a particular kind of regressive process which may be initiated either by sensori-motor ideational deprivation, or by the stimulation of an archaic relationship to the hypnotist." The hypnotic state is defined as "an induced psychological regression, issuing, in the setting of a particular regressed relationship between two people, in a relatively stable state which includes a subsystem of the ego with various degrees of control of the ego apparatuses." In Part I the theory of hypnotic induction and the hypnotic state, and the metapsychology of regression and hypnosis are discussed. Shamanism is an ancient human institution that recurs because of the capacity of cultural evolution to produce practices adapted to innate psychological tendencies.Īn extensive presentation of a psychoanalytic theory of hypnosis, its relationship to other altered states of consciousness, and its use in psychotherapy. This contrasts with dealing with problems that have identifiable solutions (like building a canoe), where credibility hinges on showing results and outsiders can invade the jurisdiction by producing the outcome. Entry requirements for becoming a shaman persist because the practitioner's credibility depends on them “transforming”. The shaman does this by ostensibly transforming during initiation and trance, violating folk-intuitions of humanness to assure group-members that he or she can interact with the invisible forces that control uncertain outcomes. According to this theory, shamanism is a set of traditions developed through cultural evolution that adapts to people's intuitions to convince observers that a practitioner can influence otherwise unpredictable, significant events. This paper proposes a cultural evolutionary theory to explain why shamanism consistently develops, and in particular, (1) why shamanic traditions exhibit recurrent features around the world, (2) why shamanism professionalizes early, often in the absence of other specialization, and (3) how shifting social conditions affect the form or existence of shamanism. Shamanism also existed among nearly all documented hunter-gatherers, likely characterized the religious lives of many ancestral humans, and is often proposed by anthropologists to be the “first profession”, representing the first institutionalized division of labor beyond age and sex. Shamans, including medicine-men, mediums, and the prophets of religious movements, recur across human societies.
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