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Transcultural Psychiatry
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From Affliction to Affirmation: Narrative Transformation and the Therapeutics of Candomblé Mediumship

Rebecca Seligman

McGill University, rseligm{at}yahoo.com

Through the presentation and analysis of a prototypical mediumship narrative, this article shows how individuals initiated into the Candomblé religion of north-eastern Brazil come to alter their own self-narratives by learning and internalizing the cultural model for an established social/religious role: that of the medium. As individuals come to identify with this ‘role model,’ they are able to reinterpret their own life histories in terms of the model’s structure and its symbolic content. This article also demonstrates how the social articulation and cognitive internalization of this new self-narrative act therapeutically, to foster a positive transformation in self-understanding that facilitates positive behavior.

Key Words: Brazil • mental health • religious healing • self-identity • spirit possession

Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 42, No. 2, 272-294 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1363461505052668
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