Schizophrenia & Shamanism

Schizophrenia & Shamanism

Exploring cultural interpretations

My mother has suffered from schizophrenia since the time she was nineteen years old. She is highly gifted intellectually and as a musician, and people thought she had a very bright future ahead of her related to these gifts. Unfortunately due to this illness, she has never been able to hold down a job for very long, before becoming paranoid of her coworkers being “out to get her.”

I’ve even met old friends of hers who worked at the college I was attending at the time, who told me about how bright she was and were surprised to find out about her mental state now, having lost touch over the years.

My grandparents and my mother’s siblings, all being uptight Evangelicals, tried to hide her diagnosis and behaviors, due to a sort of shame. Looking back my grandparents seemed to mostly focus on denial, acting like nothing was different about her.

In my adult life, I’ve tried digging more into what exactly happened when her symptoms manifested. As it turns out she was dating a man around her father’s age while she was at the University of Texas. This man was some type of officer in the military. She often would talk about him throughout the years of my growing up, though in recent years doesn’t mention him almost ever anymore.

Her delusions often included him giving her missions, and that he worked for “army intelligence”, and nonsense like that. When he broke up with her she said she became hysterical since he was her first love, and she felt shame for losing her virginity to this man who didn’t marry her. Her family, my grandparents, would call her a slut to her face after this. There’s no hate like Christian love after all. She said he had her roommate give her some drug, and that after that things were “different”.

This was during the time period that the government was doing MKULTRA tests on unsuspecting college students around the country, so I have wondered if she was a victim of that program, although it doesn’t change things since I’m well past the anger stage of looking for someone to blame, and have been at the acceptance phase that this is how my mother is for a long time.

The other half of her delusions included, and still often do, her religious beliefs, rather than governmental conspiracies, although considering the MKULTRA revelation the term “conspiracy” has lost some weight in my book.

Her religious delusions include seeing messages from “God” in the clouds, hearing messages from God in her head, and she has claimed at times to see demonic things, or presences on people, behind them, sitting above them, and so on. These visual claims were more prevalent when I was younger and she was less stable due to not being on any medication regimen.

My Childhood

I was an only child for the first eight years of my life, and during that time my parents had several issues in their marriage, including some trial separations. During each of these separations, I would stay with my mother and my grandparents, since her side of the family, being more financially stable, was able to assist her with a child.

During these years I fully believed my mom when she told me things about demons, God, the government, etc. It was all just part of my reality, attending church regularly, and my grandparents ignoring anything my mom said about the government didn’t help ground me in actual reality. It wasn’t until I was around twelve or so that I fully realized that the stuff she would talk about wasn’t real.

During those years I really believed in demonic presence and possession, like what the televangelists loudly blasting on TV were talking about. I’d hear about this stuff in church, and from my mom at home. So it was being reinforced in every aspect of my life other than school thankfully, since during most of my childhood I attended public school. The lingering thoughts about a supreme evil out to get my soul, and an angry wrathful God looming above, were realities to me.

Sure, there was the message of Jesus being the savior who loved me. But not enough to keep me from hellfire if I fucked up bad enough.

Gradually in my preteen years, I figured out reality and stopped listening to everything she said as fact.

Perception Shift

As I mentioned in another article, I had some experiences with psychedelics and various drug use in my late teens and early twenties, which caused me to re-examine my mom’s situation rather than just accept it.

A question arose in my head what did indigenous people do in the past for people like her, before having meds to “stabilize” them? In my research, I ran across a case about a man whose son had schizophrenia who ended up seeking out help from various indigenous groups who saw this condition as an awakening or initiation to becoming a shaman. His son learned some of the practices from these indigenous groups and seemed to gain some additional tools to deal with his mental state, including gaining a new sense of well-being. In the end, it didn’t “cure” him, but seemed to help a lot, it also makes me wonder how his condition would be if he had begun initiation with a shaman immediately upon his symptoms appearing.

In other cases, some cultures believe that there is an imbalance with nature that exists in the area and that nature spirits are trying to send a message. In other cultures, they believe that ancestral spirits are trying to convey a message to their descendants. All of this caused me to want to dig deeper into this topic.

Here is an overview of various cultures that I was able to find that have a fairly similar belief in this regard.