Altered States Chapters 1, 2, and 3

Things I found most interesting in my readings.

Power And Possession:

I found the the reading about Shamans to be the most interesting to me. According to Hughes, Shamanizing societies are, "a belief in the spirit force." What caught my interest about Shamans is that they are healers and are often poets, singers, dancers, and artists. Only select people have the ability to be a Shaman, and those are young people who have a near death experience through an accident or illness. While these individuals are at near death their spirits receive knowledge that will give them the power of healing others. It was intriguing to me the comparison of a Shaman to a circus, but what amazed me more was that rock and roll stars such as Little Richard, John Lennon were considered to be Shamans. Believing that Lennon was one of the most talented musicians ever it's hard for me to compare him to a healer of people. I have read stories that Lennon was addicted to drugs and listening to many of his songs I tend to think that his lyrics were not signs of him being a shamanic but signs of him hallicinating from self adminstered drugs. To my knowledge Lennon, Little Richard, and Bob Dylan never medically healed anyone. Not wanting to offened anyone, I feel that Shamanizing is alittle far fetched. Mybe I need to be more open minded or mybe I am interpreting this completely wrong.

Structures Of The Mind

My thought on Multipersonality Disorder (MPD) is that we all experience MPD at some point of time. It is very sad to hear the story on Sybil and her 16 different personalities, but I do believe that is a very rare situation. Many people have suffered MPD simply by life changes. It seems rather strange that the book states MPD symptoms appear only when therapy for this disorder begins and symptoms disappear when therapy ends and these personalitys are found when people are hypnotised. I do think that MPD places a role in the environment that you are in, attitude, and mood.

Due to this being our first blog for the class, and this being new material to me, I hope I don't come across as being too close minded.