The Self Possessed: Deity and Spirit Possession in South Asian Literature and Civilization by Frederick M. Smith

Divine trauma: Schizophrenia and unresolved realities in South India

“…Furthermore, despite the symbolically rich Hindu cosmology that Dhruv considers himself a part of, Dhruv never mentioned that his encounters and felt sensations with the divine were from a specific divine, and this article follows his usage of rather vague signifiers, where the divine itself becomes an unstable concept. While there are many rich accounts of how locally specific divinities in India might be dark, hopeful, chaotic, dangerous, ambivalent, or even madness‐inducing (DeNapoli, 2017, Doniger O'Flaherty, 1980, Hawley, 2015; McDaniel, 2019; Obeyesekere, 1990; Ram, 2013; Smith, 2006), such accounts do not typically enter the urban, upper‐caste spaces in India, such as the ones that Dhruv, his friends, family, and psychiatrists in Chennai operate within.…”

“…A symbolic construction of the divine does not account for how, once these gods appear and make their presences known, individuals may react—or how this coincides with designations of pathology. This article specifically draws upon three conceptions of the divine: one, it follows scholars who move away from a symbolic construction of the divine and explore the ways in which the divine cannot be fully known (Mittermaier, 2011; Suhr, 2015) and is an unpredictable agent, which can result in ambivalent encounters (Beliso‐De Jesús, 2014; Lambek, 2003; Orsi, 2018; Scherz, 2018; Scherz & Mpanga, 2019; Smith, 2006; Suhr, 2015; Pandolfo, 2018; Whitmarsh [forthcoming]). For example, Scherz (2018), working in a Ugandan convent, explores how the uncertainty of the will of a divine entity that both harms and heals impacts human agency, constituting an ambivalent encounter.…”

“…By the end of our conversation, Dr. G was exasperated due to my lack of understanding, as the difference between religious states and psychiatric states was clear to him. His analysis can be placed in productive dialogue with a larger body of literature (Bourguignon, 2004; Kakar, 1991; McDaniel, 1989, Obeysekere, 1981; Smith, 2006) that explores these differences through their distinct temporalities. More relevant to this article is Dr. G's emphasis on the effect of individuals he labels as “truly” spiritual: they exhibit calm and collected behaviors, devoid of distress or hallucinations.…”

“…My fieldwork sites in Chennai were diverse, including in‐patient clinics, outpatient clinics, rehabilitation homes, beaches, religious healing sites, art therapy sessions, cafes, and home spaces. Moving through these different sites was integral to understanding how distinctions between various categories of experience—medicalized, pathologized, artistic, religious—are often slippery in India (McDaniel, 1989; Ram, 2013; Smith, 2006). Scholars have explored how the illness experience in India does not sit systematically on biomedical, Ayurvedic, and localized diagnostic grids (Luhrmann & Marrow, 2016; Lang, 2018; Pinto, 2014; Ram, 2013); McDaniel (1989) has argued that those experiencing different religious states do not always map neatly onto ritual or theological grids, offering a model of subjectivity that evades standardized, functional logics.…”