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Results for “Ceremonial Behavior”

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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1977

A proposed bioanthropological approach linking ritual and opiate addiction.

This paper presents preliminary conjectures about possible neurobiological relationships among seemingly disparate phenomena: religious rituals, native curing therapies, and the pharmacodynamic, psychological, and sociocultural components of opiate addiction. Central to the discussion is an analysis of the function of opiate receptors, the endogenous neurochemical that binds to opiate receptors, and the impact of exogenous opiates on human behavior. Throughout the paper a synthetic but admittedly speculative approach is employed.

Animals↗
PubMed1991

Ritualistic behavior: breaking the cycle.

1. Recent studies reveal that OCD occurs at rates of 25 to 60 times greater than previous estimates. 2. Currently, biological theories of causation have been cited by multiple researchers. 3. Behavioral therapy and medication therapy have emerged as treatments of choice in OCD.

Adult↗
PubMed1990

Management of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by compulsive rituals such as excessive washing and repeated checking and phobic avoidance. The treatment of choice is behavioural psychotherapy, namely exposure and response prevention.

Antidepressive Agents↗
PubMed1975

[Some ethological features in farm animals (author's transl)].

A number of general ethological principles are discussed in the present paper. Attention is paid to normal and ritualized behaviour of cattle and swine during mating and on aggression. The fact is stressed that external stimuli during the period of so-called imprinting may also affect the future behaviour of cattle and swine. This is of particular importance in male animals used in artificial insemination. Finally, the effect of social stress on symptoms such as cannibalism, gastric ulcers and avian hysteria is discussed.

Aggression↗
PubMed1985

Trust, talk and touch in Balkan folk healing.

Broadly based in long-term anthropological fieldwork in the Balkans (in Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria), this discussion of folk healing techniques illustrates how convergence in the patient/practitioner relationship is of prime importance in effecting a positive outcome. Sumadija in central Serbia is selected as an example, and treatment for erysipelas, a common health problem which villagers call 'the red wind', is described and analyzed. Against a sociocultural background in which the collective wisdom of the past is retained and transmitted orally to contemporary healers, especially to the bajalica, or conjurer who heals with words, it is shown how shared communicative modes of trust, talk and touch are essential to the ritual psychomancy by which the treatment 'works'. Also considered are the ritual roles of women in this patriarchal society and peasants' perceptions of folk pharmacology as being extraneous to the eventual cure. Connections between cultural responses and physiological responses as manifested in the villages are suggested as counterparts of Western symptomatic treatments related to behavior modification.

Attitude to Health↗
PubMed1991

Sex, culture and the anthropologist.

The apocalyptic threat of AIDS, combined with recent ethnological developments, is promoting an anthropological "rediscovery of sex." If this rediscovery is to have important and lasting effects on the development of theory, a stock-taking is in order--one which examines anthropology's historical, methodological, and practical relationship to the study of sexual behavior. Parallel theoretical directions taken in both American and British anthropology, starting in the late 1920's, resulted in a disciplinary departure from the study of sexuality, as such; sexual behavior became shielded from analytic view by a more abstract, propositional approach to society and culture. In addition to reviewing these historical trends, the paper considers elements of personal privacy and intrasocietal variation in the anthropology of sex and, with illustrations taken from the Ilahita Arapesh of northeastern Papua New Guinea, proposes that the locus of sexual behavior and experience lies in the interaction of cultural ideas and psychobiological impulses.

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome↗
PubMed1990

Childhood rituals: normal development or obsessive-compulsive symptoms?

The symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) have been viewed as extreme variants of normal developmental rituals and superstitiousness; however, difference in timing, content, and severity argue against this continuum. In a systematic comparison of 38 children with severe primary OCD and 22 matched normal controls, parents were interviewed about their child's early developmental rituals and current superstitions. Children were asked about superstitious beliefs. Children with OCD did not differ significantly from controls in number or type of superstitions. However, parents of the OCD children reported significantly more "marked" patterns of early ritualistic behavior than did parents of normal controls. When behaviors resembling primary OCD symptoms were excluded, other rituals did not differ leaving open the possibility that such behaviors were early manifestations of the disorder. Only a prospective study can determine whether these results reflect preclinical OCD or are an artifact of biased recall.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Needle sharing in The Netherlands: an ethnographic analysis.

BACKGROUND: Needle sharing has been reported to be the main cause of the rapid spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among injecting drug users. Risk behaviors such as needle sharing are, however, the end result of complicated interaction patterns in drug user networks, which have their specific rules and rituals, and larger social structures and official drug policy. METHODS: To study these interaction patterns we examined the drug administration rituals of heroin addicts in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Intensive ethnographic descriptions were collected by participant observation. RESULTS: In less than 10% of the observed self-injections unsafe syringes were used. In 68% of the self-injections new, sterile syringes were used. Needle sharing as a planned sequence was not observed. Sharing was determined primarily by the availability of syringes, experience with the injecting ritual, and drug craving. In all observed needle-sharing events, subjects were aware of the risks involved and undertook efforts to clean the injection equipment. CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to psychological approaches aimed at reducing individual "risk behavior," these findings suggest that HIV prevention can be made more effective if active drug injectors are organized to help themselves and their peers prevent high-risk exchange situations.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Water and the psychotic world.

Water, in the acute psychotic state on the behavioral level, represents a means of controlling anxiety and/or a sign for the situation. On the verbal level there is a lack of integration between its value as sign and as symbol. It is not invested with any new significance, and its appearance is not coincidental.

Adult↗
PubMed1975

Specificity of social-anthropological studies of ritual.

Many fruitless controversies about 'ritual' are based on the multivocality of the word. By recent work by Tinbergen in ethology confines the term to rigid, highly formalistic, exaggerated behavior by animals in situations of compromise formation, where the animal is moved by contrary impulses to action. Similarly, in psychoanalytic writings the word is reserved for rigid formalistic actions which are defence mechanisms. These uses of the term are congruent with that social-anthropological use which has found that in tribal societies, in situations where there occurs sharp conflict of processes based on inconsistent, discrepant and contrary social principles of values, persons tend to be required to perform rigidly prescribed actions that exaggerate their normal social roles. Illustrations are given from initiation and political ceremonies; and these lead to an analysis of how ritual symbols transmute (sublimate) to ideological values energy roused by emotive stimulants. Thus ritual is directed to assert that social harmony prevails precisely in those situations where this harmony is most imperilled.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

The shadow of life: psychosocial explanations for placenta rituals.

Culturally determined patterns of behavior associated with placenta disposal are characteristic of many modern and ancient societies. This paper defines this type of placenta disposal as a ritual event that delimits a "portion of reality"; explanations are provided leading to the conclusion that placenta rituals operate as anxiety releasing mechanisms that provide a means of control over the future health and welfare of mother, child, and community. The question of why the placenta figures so prominently in folk beliefs and practices has previously been attributed to its morphological and physiological properties; this paper argues that attributes associated with it from a psychosocial model are equally important. The data for this study were drawn from a compilation of ethnographic reports of post-partum practices in African, Asian, European, and Latin American societies. Additional information on placenta disposal was derived from interviews with 1,859 Peruvian informants. Analysis of the data obtained from the Peruvian studies show a significant difference between rural and semi-urban patterns of placenta disposal.

Ceremonial Behavior↗
PubMed1990

How do societies and "corporate" groups delimit themselves? A puzzle common to social and medical anthropology.

Classic anthropological theories define the first but neglect the second condition of social life. When they assume that the universal effect of the incest taboo is the opening of the consanguinial groups to the others, to exchange, they do not explain the closure of their sphere of reciprocity, i.e., the delimitation of the society. Hence the question: How, by which means, are stateless societies delimited or do they delimit themselves? Among the Senoufo of Ivory Coast (Nafara), one of the main acts of male initiation ceremonies--to the Poro, which is the very basis of the Senoufo's ethnic identity--is a ritual intercourse between the neophytes and their symbolic mother who has just given birth to them. This rite materializes the initiatic axiom: Senoufo men reproduce themselves by incest. In this case, the prescription of ritual incest is a means by which the society "closes" the field of reciprocity "opened" by the prohibition of actual incest. The return of the forbidden--at the heart of the institution which reproduces its identity--is the basic principle of the ritual delimitation of this society. Despite appearances, the delimitation of the so-called "corporate groups"--for example, an African lineage--is neither more "natural" nor more jural than that of the society which contains them. The limits of these groups are traced and retraced notably in the course of traditional "therapies" and by means of etiological entities which share several common, distinctive properties. (1) They cannot operate outside of the group delimited by them. (2) They are polyvalent and their effects are permutable from one group-member to another. (3) They act periodically: they have to dismantle the group periodically from the inside in order to be able to delimit it constantly from the outside. This phenomenon of spatio-temporal inversion (inside-outside; periodic-continuous), observable in any process of ritual delimitation, deserves our attention insofar as its closer analysis could lead us to rethink our present theories of ritual.

Ceremonial Behavior↗
PubMed1988

Ritual, the state, and the transformation of emotional discourse in Iranian society.

This paper explores the social and cultural organization of Iranian emotional discourse and its transformation in post-revolutionary Iran. First, the Moharram dramas we participated in during field research are described, indicating how these performances organized a 'prototypical' view of the social order, the self, and the passions. Using Kapferer's distinction between "transcendental" and "transformative" rituals, we argue that these dramas were traditionally organized as "transcendental" rites. Second, data on grieving rituals and depressive illness among Iranians is introduced, focusing on the "transformative" qualities of mourning rites and suggesting an interpretation of depression as a failure of the "work of culture." Third, the appropriation of these symbolic forms of society, self, and the emotions by the current Iranian Islamic state and the role of the state in defining the meaning and legitimacy of emotions and their expression is analyzed.

Ceremonial Behavior↗
PubMed1988

Reading Saedi's Ahl-e Hava: pattern and significance in spirit possession beliefs on the southern coasts of Iran.

Based on Saedi's description of spirit possession beliefs and practices on the southern coasts of Iran, this paper attempts to isolate the culturally and psychologically significant categories through which the possessed define and differentiate their possessing spirits or "Winds." It examines the play of these categories in the complex of relationships between the possessing spirits, the possessed, ritual specialists, "symptoms" of possession, and their "negotiations" in rituals of possession or exorcism. It examines from a semiotic perspective the double transformations of spirit and host which in the beliefs and practices of the People of the Air constitute "therapy." It points out areas for further research and analysis.

Ceremonial Behavior↗
PubMed1987

Healing spirits of South Kanara.

In South Kanara, India (formerly the kingdom of Tulunadu), and area stretching some 150 miles along the Arabian Sea and 25 to 50 miles inland, ancient forms of rural pageantry in honor of particular local Spirits are enacted yearly. These ritualized performances include elements of masked folk drama and epic recitation and serve a valued social role as a form of healing and counselling within village communities. Contemporary practitioner-patient interactions are part of an intricate tapestry partaking of customs occurring since times long past, such as the kinship structure (aliya-santana or nephew inheritance), the geopolitical milieu and the myths of Tulunadu. The power of these healing Spirits lies in their ability to reproduce social form through the cultural idiom of therapeutic efficacy.

Ceremonial Behavior↗