JOURNAL. Art as Magic
change of plans (06.11.2025)
Note: shamanism as a form of mediation.
This seems similar to art: While the vision is a shaman's personal experience, in taking up his social role he must dramatize the experience in such a way to give it public expression
(Lindberg). It seems that the end of this article has made some arguments for understanding art as magic rather than just discussing the magical art of some Indigenous American groups.
change of plans (30.10.2025)
Not having been able to come up with a concrete research idea for psychosis, I have changed my topic. Now the idea is to discuss art as magic, artist as shaman. It is now up to me to specify this a bit more, but this is already much more focused than what I had before. The marginal relation to the symbolic order retains the relationship psychosis, but this is largely for my private consideration and potential elaboration later. There will not really be any space for it in the work itself.
To be addressed: catharsis? It seems to remind me of the curative power assumed in magic, although this is merely an intuition.
Not super relevant, but something I found interesting:
The "X-Ray Style Art," in which internal features appear is clearly associated with shamanism. The skeletal structure and interior organs of the animal are represented, with special accent on the "life-line" leading from the animal's neck or mouth to its heart, or sometimes its stomach or lung. This mode of animal painting and engraving passed eastward across Siberia into America as a living compound that included shamanism, social regulations, ceremonials, and mythological ideas.(Lindberg)
By the subtitle of the above (Art as Magic) I was lead somewhat errantly to believe that the article would be of a similar thesis of mine; it is not and more an exploration of Native american magical art, but still potentially useful in beginning to investigate the raltionship between the two. This seems promising: Thus, they were not themselves narrative in character but symbolic of rights validated by narratives (Feest 1992: 172)
. Also: the act of painting itself must have been of utmost importance, a reconnection with the forces that made the visions real and the spirits visible
.
hm (27.10.2025)
Ritualization and symbolization. Read on these. Need to work on an intersubjective symbolic order. May have to do the symbolic universe thing...
beginning (23.10.2025)
The goal of this page is to write a little bit on possible anthropological approaches to what we call psychosis as often as possible, ideally every day. With my various obligations, that may be difficult, but it is still important for me to try.
My understanding of psychosis itself is primarily Lacanian; I ought to see therefore if there is any structuralist or post-structuralist approach I might take.
- On the other hand, is there psychosis as psychosis in societies which believe in magic or otherwise offer some way in which psychotic ways of understanding might be integrated into the symbolic order (universe?)?
- Why in the supposed postmodern (melancholic) society does there seem to be no place for psychosis, even when the (neurotic) grand narratives have fallen?
- In general, is a place for psychosis possible in a “rational” culture?
- Psychosis of course is (despite foreclosure and remaining outside the symbolic order) nevertheless in relation with culture
- What does it mean that psychosis is outside of the symbolic order?
- Psychotic members of the collective sensitive to what is not covered by the symbolic (doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92895-1_3, de la Torre)
- This author seems to take a very Lacanian approach, which should be useful to me
- I may steal Berger and Luckmann’s “symbolic universe” to refer to the symbolic order on an intersubjective level
- Shamanism seems to allow the psychotic to socially occupy the position of knowledge, which they already occupy in their own structure (neurotics do not, perverts do but seem to manage elsewise)
These are very disconnected points so far, but what has inspired me so far is this: depending on culture, what we might think of as a psychotic symptom and classify as pathological may have its place in the culture: hallucinations might be the magical gift of a shaman. In a “rational” culture, life as a psychotic is very difficult. Hallucinations are no longer to be taken seriously, but something to be treated. Now, although I personally do not believe that anything supernatural might cause “visions” (hallucinations), it nevertheless seems quite unfortunate that the lives of countless psychotics have been made casualty to this advancement in our understanding of the world. What about a rational culture excludes the psychotic, and is there any possibility that psychosis may regain its social role?
- “religious movements were interpreted as the socialization of psychosis (Jones, 1916; Benedict, 1935; Mead, 1949; La Barre, 1970; Devereux, 1978)” (Littlewood, doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1980.tb02544.x)
- “Typical of these difficulties was the long-standing debate on the mental health of the shaman. Solutions which suggested that the shaman was abnormal in relation to a pan-human norm but normal in relation to a particular society (Devereux, 1970) merely replaced the idea of primitive societies by that of sick societies. Tribal peoples, like psychotics, children and our own ancestors, were supposed to operate a less disguised symbolism with a minimum of secondary process thinking.” (c.d.)
- “An ‘inconstant disciple’ of Durkheim, Levi-Strauss assumes, with George Kelly, that we are primarily motivated to make sense of our situation (Levi-Strauss, 1966, 1968).”
- Cited: The Savage Mind, Structural Anthropology