Levi Strauss structural anthropology

Main Argument

• Shamanistic healing is effective because it uses symbols and myth to allow people to articulate feelings that are often verbally unexpressible

• By giving internal experiences shape, shamans induce real organic and physiological transformations, like facilitating childbirth

“The shaman provides the sick woman with a language, by means of which unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be immediately expressed. And it is the transition to this verbal expression—at the same time making it possible to undergo in an ordered and intelligible form a real experience that would otherwise be chaotic and inexpressible—which induces the release of the physiological process, that is, the reorganization, in a favorable direction, of the process to which the sick woman is subjected.“ - p. 198

Cuna childbirth incantation as a psychological and physiological manipulation

• There is a Cuna Indian song used to treat people in labor, and it is sung with no physical contact and no physical remedy is administered

• The song maps out a mythical journey (“Muu’s way” refers to a vagina and “Muu’s abode“ refers to a uterus)

• This creates an emotional geography that targets the affected organ directly through symbols

“The text that we have analyzed offers a striking contribution to the solution of this problem. The song constitutes a purely psychological treatment, for the shaman does not touch the body of the sick woman and administers no remedy. Nevertheless it involves, directly and explicitly, the pathological condition and its locus. In our view, the song constitutes a psychological manipulation of the sick organ, and it is precisely from this manipulation that a cure is expected.“ - p. 191-192

Symbol vs cause (meaning vs germ)

• Modern medicine relies on cause-and-effect relationships and mechanisms (i.e. a germ or virus acting on the body, to which an antibiotic or antiviral medication is administered)

• Shamanism relies on an internal relationship between a symbol and a thing being symbolized

• The patient’s belief in cultural myth allows the symbolic presentation of pain to trigger a positive physiological reaction and ease suffering

“And yet, the relationship between germ and disease is external to the mind of the patient, for it is a cause-and-effect relationship; whereas the relationship between monster and disease is internal to his mind, whether conscious or unconscious: It is a relationship between symbol and thing symbolized, or, to use the terminology of linguists, between sign and meaning.“ - p. 197-198

Parallel to psychoanalysis

• The shamanistic cure and psychoanalysis both aim to bring unconscious conflicts/resistances to the surface so the patient can live through a vital, structuring experience, but certain elements are inverted

• In psychoanalysis, the psychoanalyst listens while the patient builds an individual myth from their personal past

• In Shamanism

“Actually the shamanistic cure seems to be the exact counterpart to the psychoanalytic cure, but with an inversion o f all the elements. Both cures aim at inducing an experience, and both succeed by recreating a m yth w hich the patient has to live or relive. But in one case, the patient constructs an individual m yth with elements drawn from his past; in the other case, the patient receives from the outside a social m yth which does not correspond to a former personal state.“ - p. 199

Nature of the unconscious

• Levi Strauss argued that the unconscious is not a repository of unique, individual memories, as argued by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung

• Strauss argues instead that the unconscious does not contain mental images; It is rather a mere symbolic function that imposes universal, limited structural laws upon the raw materials of human emotions, impulses, and myths

“The unconscious ceases to be the ultimate haven of individual peculiarities—the repository of a unique history which makes each of us an irreplaceable being. It is reducible to a function—the symbolic function, which no doubt is specifically human, and which is carried out according to the same laws among all men, and actually corresponds to the aggregate of these laws.“ - p. 202-203