Abstract
In the last three decades, Caribbean indigenous healing systems have been studied extensively by Western researchers in an attempt to increase our understanding of healing as a generic process.1 Their studies suggest the need to consider the substantial role of culture in the nature of healing and disease. An appreciation of indigenous healing systems can be an important step in improving the delivery of health care, in particular of mental health services, to all populations.
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Joan Koss-Chioino, Women as Healers, Women as Patients: Mental Health Care and Traditional Healing in Puerto Rico (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992); Julio Sánchez, La religión de los orishas (San Juan: Editorial Puertorriqueña, 1987).
Ann Hohmann, Madeline Richeport, Bernadette Marriott, Glorisa Canino, Maritza Rubio-Stipec, and Héctor Bird, “Spiritism in Puerto Rico: Results of an Island-Wide Community Study,” British Journal of Psychiatry 156 (1990): 328–35.
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Mario Núñez Molina, “Desarrollo del Médium: The Process of Becoming a Healer in Puerto Rican Espiritismo,” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1987.
Lydio Cruz Monclova, Historia de Puerto Rico (San Juan: Editorial Universitaria, 1952); Joan D. Koss, “Religion and Science Divinely Related: A Case History of Spiritism in Puerto Rico,” Caribbean Studies 16:1 (1977): 22–43; Nestor Rodríguez, Historia del Espiritismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Author, 1978); and Teresa Yáñez, El Espiritismo en Puerto Rico (San Juan: Federación de Espiritistas en Puerto Rico, 1963).
Allan Kardec, El libro de los espíritus (Buenos Aires: Tipográfica Editora Argentina, 1978 [1857]); El evangelio segñn el espiritismo (Buenos Aires: Tipográfica Editora Argentina, 1978 [1864]); El libro de los mediums (Buenos Aires: Tipográfica Editora Argentina, 1977 [1859]).
Carlos Alvarado, “Psychical Research in Puerto Rico,” Parapsychology Review, 10 (1979): 23–24.
See Ricardo Alegría, La fiesta de Santiago en Lotza Aldea (San Juan: Instituto de Cultura, 1954).
Alan Harwood, Rx: Spiritist as Needed: A Study of a Puerto Rican Community Mental Health Resource (New York: Wiley, 1977).
Vincent Crapanzano, Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Paul Rabinow, Reflections on Fieldwork (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977).
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Donald Polkinghorne, Methodology of the Human Sciences (Albany: State University of New York, 1983).
Hussein Fahim, ed., Indigenous Anthropology in Non-Western Countries (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1982).
Richard Katz, The Straight Path: A Story of Healing and Transformation in Fiji (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1993).
Youngsoook Harvey, Six Korean Women: The Socialization of Shamans (New York: West, 1979), 199; Hohmann et al., “Spiritism in Puerto Rico.”
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Thomas Csordas, “Medical and Sacred Realities: Between Comparative Religion and Transcultural Psychiatry,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 9 (1985): 105.
Carl Rogers, A Way of Being (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980).
Vivian Garrison, “Folk Healing Systems as Elements in the Community,” in Therapeutic Intervention: Healing Strategies for Human Systems (New York: Human Science Press, 1982).
Joan D. Koss, “Therapeutic Aspects of Puerto Rican Cult Practices,” Psychiatry 38:2 (1975): 160–71.
Isaac Lubchansky, Gladys Egri, and Janet Stokes, “Puerto Rican Spiritualists View Mental Illness: The Faith Healer as a Paraprofessional,” American Journal of Psychiatry 127:3 (1970): 313–21.
Melvin Delgado, “Accepting Faith Healers: Problems and Rewards,” Journal of Social Welfare 6 (1979–80): 5–16.
Richard Katz and Mario Núñez Molina, “Researching ‘Realities’: A Method for Understanding Cultural Diversity,” The Community Psychologist 19:2 (1986): 7–8.
Melvin Delgado, “Puerto Rican Spiritualism and the Social Work Profession,” Social Casework 58 (1977): 451–58.
Moisés Gaviria and Ronald Wintrob, “Spiritist or Psychiatrist: Treatment of Mental Illness Among Puerto Ricans in Two Connecticut Towns,” Journal of Operational Psychiatry 10 (1979): 40–46.
Beatrice Purdy, Renee Pellman, Sarah Flores, and Harvey Bluestone, “Mellaril or Medium, Stelzaine or Séance? A Study of Spiritism as It Affects Communication, Diagnosis, and Treatment,” in On the Urban Scene, ed. Morton Levitt and Ben Rubenstein (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972), 65–79.
Pedro Ruiz and John Langrod, “The Role of Folk Healers in Community Mental Health Services,” Community Mental Health Journal 12 (1976): 392–98.
Victor De La Cancela and Iris Zavala, “An Analysis of Culturalism in Latino Mental Health: Folk Medicine as a Case in Point,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 5 (1983): 267.
José Figueroa, The Cultural Dynamic of Puerto Rican Spiritism: Class, Nationality, and Religion in a Brooklyn Ghetto, Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1981.
See Garrison (1977, 1982); and Ramona Salgado, The Role of the Puerto Rican Spiritist in Helping Puerto Ricans with Problems of Family Relations, Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1974.
Richard Katz, Boiling Energy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
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© 2001 Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
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Molina, M.A.N. (2001). Community Healing Among Puerto Ricans: Espiritismo as a Therapy for the Soul. In: Olmos, M.F., Paravisini-Gebert, L. (eds) Healing Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07647-2_7
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