Magical And Mental Therapy

Scope Note

Individual therapeutic efforts (e.g., acts of faith, self-analysis); resorting to a specialized practitioner (e.g., circumstances, arrangements, payments); diagnosis (e.g., divination, interpretation of symptoms); therapeutic procedure (e.g., shamanistic seances, analytic couch); methods (e.g., interpretation of dreams, counter-magic, exorcism; recapture of soul, sucking out of intrusive object, resort to spirit helpers); prescriptions (e.g., medication, purification, expiation, imposition of taboos); prognosis; ritual banishment of disease (e.g., scapegoat); faith healing; scientific systems of psychotherapy (e.g., psychoanalysis, psychiatry, mental hygiene); evidence as to the effectiveness of magical and mental therapy; etc.