Week 3 - Mental Health Industrial Complex and Clash of Self - Calvin Huang

During this week’s reading, the article that stood out to me the most was What A Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital.  Most people’s view of shamanism tends to have a negative stigma.  To elaborate, they view it as a skeptic practice where results are usually not seen as reliable.  In Marohn’s article, it goes even further than the general surface view.  Marohn details the viewpoint from the other side; the shaman side.  People who practice shamanism believe that “it’s not really about us not needing to be fixed, or resisting oppressive diagnoses, because ultimately we do need to be ‘fixed’—through a broadening of the norm. We actively want to be considered, somehow, some way, ‘normal.’” (Haydock  47)  It is interesting for me to see the other side of the viewpoint because all contemporary media portrayals of shamanism are so similar.  By getting the other side of the input, I can get a more accurate view of the practice. 

What surprised me the most was how much this article related to the experience that the speaker on Hmong shamanism had.  I distinctly remember his experience of becoming a shaman.  He said that his body had ailments before becoming a shaman.  This is also apparent in the article, which says, “In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.” (Marohn).  In the speaker’s case, he had an abundance of saliva in his mouth and his body was experiencing pains until he had a shaman guide him toward a path of healing.  The article mentions that if you ignore these symptoms, you would accumulate too much energy.  If that happens, “The energy of the healer is a high-voltage energy,” he observes. “When it is blocked, it just burns up the person.””.  (Marohn).  This brings up a really potent point, that maybe if these energies are causing bad symptoms then maybe shamans can actually be accepted into medicine in the way doctors are.

My question for this week is: Should there be a school for shamanism, where students expressing shaman qualities would be sent to?

Marohn, Stephanie, and Malidoma Patrice Somé. "What A Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital." The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizoph 178 (2014): 189.

Shana Bulhan Haydock. “Fucked Up: I Would Always Rather be Abnormal than Holistic.” Open in Emergency.