Shamanism, psychosis and autonomous imagination

This paper focuses on traditional healers (balian) in Bali, Indonesia, to raise new arguments concerning the nature of the initiatory sufferings reportedly experienced by shamans in many cultures. Our evidence suggests that a) contrary to our expectations, an initiatory madness or illness is experienced by a minority rather than the majority of balian, and b) whether or not a balian undergoes initiatory sufferings seems to be linked to gender and to the methods of healing employed - thus women healers who employ trance possession are those most likely to report an initiatory madness or illness. This leads to the central argument of the paper: c) the nature of the initiatory sufferings, where they do occur, can be clearly distinguished on several grounds from the onset of mental illness among Balinese, both emically in terms of cultural understandings, and ethically in terms of objective criteria. Finally we discuss the concept of "autonomous imagination," suggesting that the key to becoming a balian is not overcoming an initiatory madness but gaining control over this special mode of imagery thought. We further suggest that Western ideas concerning the self and self healing, the superficial resemblance of the initiatory sufferings to schizophrenia, and the dramatic nature of the initiatory sufferings when they occur, have combined to give a misleading prominence to the role of an initiatory madness in shamanism.