Bullying, the Neurobiology of Emotional Aggression, and the Experience of Witchcraft

Abstract

Anthropologists define witchcraft as the belief that certain people have the innate ability to cause other people misfortune through occult, or hidden, means. This chapter draws on recent work in the neurobiology of anger, intersubjectivity, fear, psychophysical influences on health, and modern adult bullying to provide new insights into the process by which this can actually take place. It starts by considering some cases of witchcraft in which peoples’ physical ailments were attributed to suspects’ belligerent behaviors. It then examines research into modern adult bullying that demonstrates that hostile behaviors analogous to those attributed to the witches do take place, and connects them to somatic as well as psychic distress in their targets. It concludes with a detailed consideration of how manifestations of hostility by one person can be transmitted and internalized by another in ways that result in physical disorders. Acknowledging that cases involving such mechanisms constitute a small minority of all witch trials, the chapter argues that historians nevertheless need to take this reality into account in their interpretations of individual cases and of witchcraft as a whole.