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Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 42, No. 4, 596-609 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1363461505058917

Religious Stigmata, Magnetic Fluids and Conversion Hysteria: One Survival of ‘Vital Force’ Theories in Scientific Medicine?

Roland Littlewood

University College London

Goffredo Bartocci

World Psychiatric Association, Transcultural Psychiatry Section

A study of Natuzza Evolo, a contemporary Roman Catholic stigmatic in southern Italy, raises certain questions of mechanism and evidence. Was this a miracle, hysterical conversion or contrived? The medical interpretation of the phenomenon as conversion disorder raises questions about the popularity of hysteria as a medical diagnosis and the ways in which it functions like ‘vital forc', as a metaphoric mediator between the natural world, human agency, and the ultrahuman.

Key Words: conversion disorder • religious stigmata


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