PsychologicalReporh, 1992, 70, 669-670.
@ Psychological Reports 1992
THE PSYCHIATRIST AS SHAMAN: SULLLIVAN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA ' MARVIN GOLDWERT New York Institute of Technology Summary.-This paper describes an analogy between the primitive shaman's emotional illness, and its control, and the schizophrenic episodes of Harry Stack Sullivan, the founder of the interpersonal school of psychiatry. Like the primitive shaman, Sullivan partially overcame his illnesses, drawing from his psychoses the insights through which he healed others.
According to anthropologist Andreas Lommel (1967, p. l l ) , primitive "Shamanism is . . . a mental attitude that comes into being through the overcoming of a mental illness." Both healer and artist, the shaman answers a "call" to his profession. Almost reluctantly and after much psychological suffering, he enters his calling in primitive societies by virtue of "an inner compulsion" (Lommel, 1967, p. 9). Of the primitive healer, Spencer (1963, p. 11) writes: "He is often a man of psychic abnormality, but it is significant that the trouble is cured by the exercise of his arts." The life of the primitive shaman may be seen as analogous to that of Harry Stack Sullivan, the founder of interpersonal psychiatry. Although Sullivan's initial biographer, Chapman (1976, p. 26), argued that he "concocted" the story of an adolescent psychotic episode, other evidence is weighted in favor of one or more bouts with schizophrenia. Perry (1982, p. 152), Sullivan's official biographer, found no hospital records of his illness or illnesses but concluded that at age nineteen he had been hospitalized in Bellevue Hospital in New York City. This age-frame coincides with a period of great suffering in Sullivan's life, attributed to his ejection from Cornell University owing to poor grades and innocent complicity in mail fraud at that institution. Like the primitive shaman, Sullivan, at least partially, overcame his illness and went on to make the treatment of the mentally ill his life's profession. Like the shaman, Sullivan's fragile homeostasis depended on practicing psychiatric healing. As Leston Havens (1787, p. 184) poetically wrote of Sullivan: ". . . he made his contributions walking on one leg. At least twice acutely psychotic himself, he never gained the spontaneity, receptiveness, and capacity for intimacy his own interpersonal school worked to achieve for others. A trenchant teacher, a man legendary in his own lifetime, he remained sealed within the projections he was so adept at recognizing and cor'Please address correspondence to Marvin Goldwert, Ph.D., School of Humanities, New York Institute of Technology, 1855 Broadway, New York, NY 10023.
670
M. GOLDWERT
recting in others. How often psychiatric investigators are subject to this condition! Perhaps all investigators are. The searcher starts at home on the familiar ground of his own conflicts and disappointments, in Sullivan's case, with psychosis and personal isolation, working outward and forward to a greater freedom and power, at least for others." As for the frequency of Sullivan's psychoses, so similar to those of the shaman, Silvano Arieti wrote (1976, p. 359) ". . . Harry Stack Sullivan had several schizophrenic episodes.'' That Sullivan, like a shaman, suffered an episode early in life and became fascinated by schzophrenia is hinted at in his Conceptions of modern psychiatry (1953, p. 179): "the focus of my interests from before medical school having been the schizophrenic states. . . ." Indeed, there is an Adlerian strand in Sullivan's clouded life history: Sullivan-the outsider; Sullivan, the exschzophrenic; Sullivan, the homosexual-overcame his deficits and became a psychiatrist, skilled at healing others in the light of a painfully bought set of insights. REFERENCES
ARIETI, S. Creativib: the magic synthesis. New York: Basic Books, 1976. CHAPMAN,A. H. Harry Stack Sullivan: his life and his work. New York: Putnam's, 1976. HAVENS,L. Approaches to the mind: movement of the psychiatric schools from sects toward science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer. Press, 1987. LOMMEL,A. Shamanism: the beginnings of art. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. PERRY,H . S. Psychiatrist of America: the life of Harry Sbck Sullivan. Cambridge, M A : Belh a p , 1982. SPENCER,S. Mysticism in world religion. New York: A. J. Baines, 1963. SULLIVAN,H. S. Conceptions of modern psychiahy. New York: Norton, 1953.
Accepted March 9, 1992.
@ Psychological Reports 1992
THE PSYCHIATRIST AS SHAMAN: SULLLIVAN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA ' MARVIN GOLDWERT New York Institute of Technology Summary.-This paper describes an analogy between the primitive shaman's emotional illness, and its control, and the schizophrenic episodes of Harry Stack Sullivan, the founder of the interpersonal school of psychiatry. Like the primitive shaman, Sullivan partially overcame his illnesses, drawing from his psychoses the insights through which he healed others.
According to anthropologist Andreas Lommel (1967, p. l l ) , primitive "Shamanism is . . . a mental attitude that comes into being through the overcoming of a mental illness." Both healer and artist, the shaman answers a "call" to his profession. Almost reluctantly and after much psychological suffering, he enters his calling in primitive societies by virtue of "an inner compulsion" (Lommel, 1967, p. 9). Of the primitive healer, Spencer (1963, p. 11) writes: "He is often a man of psychic abnormality, but it is significant that the trouble is cured by the exercise of his arts." The life of the primitive shaman may be seen as analogous to that of Harry Stack Sullivan, the founder of interpersonal psychiatry. Although Sullivan's initial biographer, Chapman (1976, p. 26), argued that he "concocted" the story of an adolescent psychotic episode, other evidence is weighted in favor of one or more bouts with schizophrenia. Perry (1982, p. 152), Sullivan's official biographer, found no hospital records of his illness or illnesses but concluded that at age nineteen he had been hospitalized in Bellevue Hospital in New York City. This age-frame coincides with a period of great suffering in Sullivan's life, attributed to his ejection from Cornell University owing to poor grades and innocent complicity in mail fraud at that institution. Like the primitive shaman, Sullivan, at least partially, overcame his illness and went on to make the treatment of the mentally ill his life's profession. Like the shaman, Sullivan's fragile homeostasis depended on practicing psychiatric healing. As Leston Havens (1787, p. 184) poetically wrote of Sullivan: ". . . he made his contributions walking on one leg. At least twice acutely psychotic himself, he never gained the spontaneity, receptiveness, and capacity for intimacy his own interpersonal school worked to achieve for others. A trenchant teacher, a man legendary in his own lifetime, he remained sealed within the projections he was so adept at recognizing and cor'Please address correspondence to Marvin Goldwert, Ph.D., School of Humanities, New York Institute of Technology, 1855 Broadway, New York, NY 10023.
670
M. GOLDWERT
recting in others. How often psychiatric investigators are subject to this condition! Perhaps all investigators are. The searcher starts at home on the familiar ground of his own conflicts and disappointments, in Sullivan's case, with psychosis and personal isolation, working outward and forward to a greater freedom and power, at least for others." As for the frequency of Sullivan's psychoses, so similar to those of the shaman, Silvano Arieti wrote (1976, p. 359) ". . . Harry Stack Sullivan had several schizophrenic episodes.'' That Sullivan, like a shaman, suffered an episode early in life and became fascinated by schzophrenia is hinted at in his Conceptions of modern psychiatry (1953, p. 179): "the focus of my interests from before medical school having been the schizophrenic states. . . ." Indeed, there is an Adlerian strand in Sullivan's clouded life history: Sullivan-the outsider; Sullivan, the exschzophrenic; Sullivan, the homosexual-overcame his deficits and became a psychiatrist, skilled at healing others in the light of a painfully bought set of insights. REFERENCES
ARIETI, S. Creativib: the magic synthesis. New York: Basic Books, 1976. CHAPMAN,A. H. Harry Stack Sullivan: his life and his work. New York: Putnam's, 1976. HAVENS,L. Approaches to the mind: movement of the psychiatric schools from sects toward science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer. Press, 1987. LOMMEL,A. Shamanism: the beginnings of art. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. PERRY,H . S. Psychiatrist of America: the life of Harry Sbck Sullivan. Cambridge, M A : Belh a p , 1982. SPENCER,S. Mysticism in world religion. New York: A. J. Baines, 1963. SULLIVAN,H. S. Conceptions of modern psychiahy. New York: Norton, 1953.
Accepted March 9, 1992.
![[Learning from shaman].](/assets/img/hold.png)
