tanya luhrmann | Stanford University (original) (raw)
Papers by tanya luhrmann
Schizophrenia bulletin open, Dec 31, 2022
American Ethnologist, Dec 5, 2023
This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise... more This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise but also as a spiritual discipline. This is because ethnography enables us to imagine other ways of living in the world. The fieldwork, the writing, and even the reading of ethnographies provide people with some external perspective on themselves. Ethnography thus allows people to develop a more a nuanced sense of what, for them, should constitute the good.
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Nov 29, 2023
This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may ha... more This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may have a schizophrenia-like psychotic process which is managed or mitigated by their religious practice, in that they are able to function effectively and are not identified by their community as ill. We conducted careful phenomenological interviews, in conjunction with a novel probe, with okomfo, priests of the traditional religion in Ghana who speak with their gods. They shared common understandings of how priests hear gods speak. Despite this, participants described quite varied personal experiences of the god's voice. Some reported voices which were auditory and more negative; some seemed to describe trance-like states, sometimes associated with trauma and violence; some seemed to be described sleep-related events; and some seemed to be interpreting ordinary inner speech. These differences in description were supported by the way participants responded to an auditory clip made to simulate the voice-hearing experiences of psychosis and which had been translated into the local language. We suggest that for some individuals, the apprenticeship trained practice of talking with the gods, in conjunction with a non-stigmatizing identity, may shape the content and emotional tone of voices associated with a psychotic process.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 20, 2024
This chapter aims to show that working back and forth between neuroscienti c methods and ethnogra... more This chapter aims to show that working back and forth between neuroscienti c methods and ethnographic phenomenology can inspire us to think di erently. We discuss a neurophenomenological project to improve our understanding of the evangelical Christian practice of speaking in tongues. After several years of ethnographic participant observation in tongues-speaking churches, we interviewed tongues-speakers carefully. As we developed a neuroimaging experiment to try to capture what we heard from them, our interdisciplinary approach pushed us to notice shifts in the experience of speaking in tongues, which we came to call "dropping in." The combination of ethnographic phenomenology and neuroscience brought us a deeper understanding of tongues prayer in ways we did not expect.
We present a mixed-methods study, from an anthropological perspective, of 22 healthy voice-hearer... more We present a mixed-methods study, from an anthropological perspective, of 22 healthy voice-hearers ie, people who report hearing voices but have no need for clinical care. They were interviewed using the Varieties Of Individual Voice-Experiences Scale (VOICES), a new scale assessing phenomenology, beliefs and relationships with voices, and their emotional and behavioral impact. Despite in many cases hearing voices daily, they report remarkably little distress, with almost all mentioning a positive impact on their life. Most interpreted their voices as spirits, and spoke of learning to understand, to manage, and even to train their experience of communicating with spirits productively. There was, however, considerable diversity in their voice experiences. Some described experiences they seemed to have discovered after starting a practice. Others described reaching for a practice to make sense of unusual experiences. This raises the possibility that cultural ideas about spirit communication may have two effects. On the one hand, they may help those who begin to hear voices involuntarily to interpret and manage their experience in a non-threatening way, through a meaning framework imposed on experiences. On the other hand, it also suggests that cultural ideas about spirit communication may lead some people to identify some thoughts as voices, and to come to feel that those thoughts are generated outside of themselves, through a meaning-framework shaping experiences. This should remind us that the culture-mind relationship is complex. There may be different kinds of phenomena described by individuals as "voices," with practice and interpretation changing how these phenomena are experienced.
Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, 2023
This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may ha... more This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may have a schizophrenia-like psychotic process which is managed or mitigated by their religious practice, in that they are able to function effectively and are not identified by their community as ill. We conducted careful phenomenological interviews, in conjunction with a novel probe, with okomfo, priests of the traditional religion in Ghana who speak with their gods. They shared common understandings of how priests hear gods speak. Despite this, participants described quite varied personal experiences of the god's voice. Some reported voices which were auditory and more negative; some seemed to describe trance-like states, sometimes associated with trauma and violence; some seemed to be described sleep-related events; and some seemed to be interpreting ordinary inner speech. These differences in description were supported by the way participants responded to an auditory clip made to simulate the voice-hearing experiences of psychosis and which had been translated into the local language. We suggest that for some individuals, the apprenticeship trained practice of talking with the gods, in conjunction with a non-stigmatizing identity, may shape the content and emotional tone of voices associated with a psychotic process.
American Ethnologist
This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise... more This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise but also as a spiritual discipline. This is because ethnography enables us to imagine other ways of living in the world. The fieldwork, the writing, and even the reading of ethnographies provide people with some external perspective on themselves. Ethnography thus allows people to develop a more a nuanced sense of what, for them, should constitute the good.
Current Directions in Psychological Science
When scholars and scientists set out to understand religious commitment, the sensation that gods ... more When scholars and scientists set out to understand religious commitment, the sensation that gods and spirits are real may be at least as important a target of inquiry as the belief that they are real. The sensory and quasisensory events that people take to be the presence of spirit—the voice of an invisible being, a feeling that a person who is dead is nonetheless in the room—are found both in the foundational stories of faith and surprisingly often in the lives of the faithful. These events become evidence that gods and spirits are there. We argue that at the heart of such spiritual experiences is the concept of a porous boundary between mind and world, and that people in all human societies have conflicting intuitions about this boundary. We have found that spiritual experiences are facilitated when people engage their more porous modes of understanding and that such experiences are easier for individuals who cultivate an immersive orientation toward experience ( absorption) and e...
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01303 Causal beliefs about depression in different cultural groups—what d... more doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01303 Causal beliefs about depression in different cultural groups—what do cognitive psychological theories of causal learning and reasoning predict?
British Subjects : An Anthropology of Britain
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2020
This special issue reports the findings of the Mind and Spirit project. We ask whether different ... more This special issue reports the findings of the Mind and Spirit project. We ask whether different understandings of ‘mind’, broadly construed, might shape the ways that people attend to and interpret thoughts and other mental events – and whether their judgements affect their experience of (what they take to be) gods and spirits. We argue in this collection that there are indeed cultural differences in local theories of minds, in the way social worlds draws the line between interior and exterior, and that these differences do affect the way people sense invisible others. This introduction lays out the ideas that inspired the project and the methods that we used. This is the first report on our work.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2020
The Mind and Spirit project found that the way a social world invites its members to experience t... more The Mind and Spirit project found that the way a social world invites its members to experience thought appears to have consequences. When the boundary between inner awareness and outer world is culturally represented as porous, so that thoughts can be construed to move in and out of the mind as if they had agency and power, people are more likely to describe their experience of invisible others as if those others could be experienced with the senses. They are more likely to say that a god or spirit spoke in a way they could hear with their ears, or that they sensed a presence in the room.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2018
Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane , and Christian Suhr . 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthrop... more Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane , and Christian Suhr . 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the ethnographer’s divine revelation.” Hau : Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 65–78
American Journal of Psychiatry, 2017
American Anthropologist Journal of the American Anthropological Association, 2004
Journal of Anthropological Research, 1996
Schizophrenia bulletin open, Dec 31, 2022
American Ethnologist, Dec 5, 2023
This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise... more This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise but also as a spiritual discipline. This is because ethnography enables us to imagine other ways of living in the world. The fieldwork, the writing, and even the reading of ethnographies provide people with some external perspective on themselves. Ethnography thus allows people to develop a more a nuanced sense of what, for them, should constitute the good.
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Nov 29, 2023
This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may ha... more This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may have a schizophrenia-like psychotic process which is managed or mitigated by their religious practice, in that they are able to function effectively and are not identified by their community as ill. We conducted careful phenomenological interviews, in conjunction with a novel probe, with okomfo, priests of the traditional religion in Ghana who speak with their gods. They shared common understandings of how priests hear gods speak. Despite this, participants described quite varied personal experiences of the god's voice. Some reported voices which were auditory and more negative; some seemed to describe trance-like states, sometimes associated with trauma and violence; some seemed to be described sleep-related events; and some seemed to be interpreting ordinary inner speech. These differences in description were supported by the way participants responded to an auditory clip made to simulate the voice-hearing experiences of psychosis and which had been translated into the local language. We suggest that for some individuals, the apprenticeship trained practice of talking with the gods, in conjunction with a non-stigmatizing identity, may shape the content and emotional tone of voices associated with a psychotic process.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jun 20, 2024
This chapter aims to show that working back and forth between neuroscienti c methods and ethnogra... more This chapter aims to show that working back and forth between neuroscienti c methods and ethnographic phenomenology can inspire us to think di erently. We discuss a neurophenomenological project to improve our understanding of the evangelical Christian practice of speaking in tongues. After several years of ethnographic participant observation in tongues-speaking churches, we interviewed tongues-speakers carefully. As we developed a neuroimaging experiment to try to capture what we heard from them, our interdisciplinary approach pushed us to notice shifts in the experience of speaking in tongues, which we came to call "dropping in." The combination of ethnographic phenomenology and neuroscience brought us a deeper understanding of tongues prayer in ways we did not expect.
We present a mixed-methods study, from an anthropological perspective, of 22 healthy voice-hearer... more We present a mixed-methods study, from an anthropological perspective, of 22 healthy voice-hearers ie, people who report hearing voices but have no need for clinical care. They were interviewed using the Varieties Of Individual Voice-Experiences Scale (VOICES), a new scale assessing phenomenology, beliefs and relationships with voices, and their emotional and behavioral impact. Despite in many cases hearing voices daily, they report remarkably little distress, with almost all mentioning a positive impact on their life. Most interpreted their voices as spirits, and spoke of learning to understand, to manage, and even to train their experience of communicating with spirits productively. There was, however, considerable diversity in their voice experiences. Some described experiences they seemed to have discovered after starting a practice. Others described reaching for a practice to make sense of unusual experiences. This raises the possibility that cultural ideas about spirit communication may have two effects. On the one hand, they may help those who begin to hear voices involuntarily to interpret and manage their experience in a non-threatening way, through a meaning framework imposed on experiences. On the other hand, it also suggests that cultural ideas about spirit communication may lead some people to identify some thoughts as voices, and to come to feel that those thoughts are generated outside of themselves, through a meaning-framework shaping experiences. This should remind us that the culture-mind relationship is complex. There may be different kinds of phenomena described by individuals as "voices," with practice and interpretation changing how these phenomena are experienced.
Culture Medicine and Psychiatry, 2023
This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may ha... more This paper presents evidence that some-but not all-religious experts in a particular faith may have a schizophrenia-like psychotic process which is managed or mitigated by their religious practice, in that they are able to function effectively and are not identified by their community as ill. We conducted careful phenomenological interviews, in conjunction with a novel probe, with okomfo, priests of the traditional religion in Ghana who speak with their gods. They shared common understandings of how priests hear gods speak. Despite this, participants described quite varied personal experiences of the god's voice. Some reported voices which were auditory and more negative; some seemed to describe trance-like states, sometimes associated with trauma and violence; some seemed to be described sleep-related events; and some seemed to be interpreting ordinary inner speech. These differences in description were supported by the way participants responded to an auditory clip made to simulate the voice-hearing experiences of psychosis and which had been translated into the local language. We suggest that for some individuals, the apprenticeship trained practice of talking with the gods, in conjunction with a non-stigmatizing identity, may shape the content and emotional tone of voices associated with a psychotic process.
American Ethnologist
This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise... more This essay invites us to understand ethnography not only as a science-like comparative enterprise but also as a spiritual discipline. This is because ethnography enables us to imagine other ways of living in the world. The fieldwork, the writing, and even the reading of ethnographies provide people with some external perspective on themselves. Ethnography thus allows people to develop a more a nuanced sense of what, for them, should constitute the good.
Current Directions in Psychological Science
When scholars and scientists set out to understand religious commitment, the sensation that gods ... more When scholars and scientists set out to understand religious commitment, the sensation that gods and spirits are real may be at least as important a target of inquiry as the belief that they are real. The sensory and quasisensory events that people take to be the presence of spirit—the voice of an invisible being, a feeling that a person who is dead is nonetheless in the room—are found both in the foundational stories of faith and surprisingly often in the lives of the faithful. These events become evidence that gods and spirits are there. We argue that at the heart of such spiritual experiences is the concept of a porous boundary between mind and world, and that people in all human societies have conflicting intuitions about this boundary. We have found that spiritual experiences are facilitated when people engage their more porous modes of understanding and that such experiences are easier for individuals who cultivate an immersive orientation toward experience ( absorption) and e...
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01303 Causal beliefs about depression in different cultural groups—what d... more doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01303 Causal beliefs about depression in different cultural groups—what do cognitive psychological theories of causal learning and reasoning predict?
British Subjects : An Anthropology of Britain
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2020
This special issue reports the findings of the Mind and Spirit project. We ask whether different ... more This special issue reports the findings of the Mind and Spirit project. We ask whether different understandings of ‘mind’, broadly construed, might shape the ways that people attend to and interpret thoughts and other mental events – and whether their judgements affect their experience of (what they take to be) gods and spirits. We argue in this collection that there are indeed cultural differences in local theories of minds, in the way social worlds draws the line between interior and exterior, and that these differences do affect the way people sense invisible others. This introduction lays out the ideas that inspired the project and the methods that we used. This is the first report on our work.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2020
The Mind and Spirit project found that the way a social world invites its members to experience t... more The Mind and Spirit project found that the way a social world invites its members to experience thought appears to have consequences. When the boundary between inner awareness and outer world is culturally represented as porous, so that thoughts can be construed to move in and out of the mind as if they had agency and power, people are more likely to describe their experience of invisible others as if those others could be experienced with the senses. They are more likely to say that a god or spirit spoke in a way they could hear with their ears, or that they sensed a presence in the room.
HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2018
Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane , and Christian Suhr . 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthrop... more Rejoinder to Willerslev, Rane , and Christian Suhr . 2018. “Is there a place for faith in anthropology? Religion, reason, and the ethnographer’s divine revelation.” Hau : Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1): 65–78
American Journal of Psychiatry, 2017
American Anthropologist Journal of the American Anthropological Association, 2004
Journal of Anthropological Research, 1996
Finnish Journal of Social Anthropology, 2018