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Cross-Cultural Approaches to Multiple Personality Disorder: Practices in BrazilianSpiritism
Stanley Krippner
 Ethos
, Vol. 15, No. 3. (Sep., 1987), pp. 273-295.
Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0091-2131%28198709%2915%3A3%3C273%3ACATMPD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B
 Ethos
is currently published by American Anthropological Association.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/anthro.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgFri Feb 22 13:12:01 2008
 
Cross-CulturalApproaches to MultiplePersonality Disorder:Practices
in
Brazilian
Sp
iritism
STANLEY KRIPPNER
In
1840,
the French physician Despine published a monograph de-scribing his successful treatment of dual personality in a youngwoman named Estelle. Despine claimed that Estelle's secondarypersonality directed her treatment with guidance from a benign"spirit." Although this approach is not in vogue among Westernpsychotherapists, it would not be considered unusual among themediumistic healers of Brazil's three major spiritist sects, Candom-
blt,
Kardecismo, and Umbanda.This paper will review the development of spiritism in Brazil anddescribe how some Kardecismo practitioners deal with a conditionreferred to
as
"multiple personality disorder"
(MPD)
by Westernpsychotherapists. MPD in the United States is uncommon but notrare (Watkins and Johnson
1982).
Many people who suffer from the
STANLEY KRIPPNER is Professor of Psychology, Saybrook Institute, 1772 Vallejo Street,San Francisco. CA
941
23.
 
condition do not receive appropriate therapy until some unusual orviolent experience calls attention to their actual condition (p. vii).MPD is often referred to as a "dissociative reaction," other ex-amples being amnesia and fugue states. It is not considered to be apsychosis, but it does represent a more severe psychological disturb-ance than those conditions classified as neuroses. In MPD, a largesegment of the psyche, including behaviors and feelings, has been"split off," apparently to eliminate an unwanted or painful part ofoneself (Watkins and. ohnson 1982:6). However, in MPD this "al-
-
tern segment of the psyche acquires a life and identity of its own,one of which the "host" is unaware.It would be tempting to regard mediumistic possession, the in-corporation of benign spirits, as analogous to MPD. Yet this wouldbe far from accurate. Mediums are quite aware of the process andeven when they claim to be amnesic for the experience, there arealways colleagues eager to describe the session for them. Rather, thediagnostic category of MPD in Western psychotherapy most closelyresembles the spiritist description of "involuntary possession" usedto describe those unfortunate individuals whose aberrant behavioris said to be due to long-term habitation and control by malevolentor immature spirits. Sometimes these spirits represent personalitiesfrom the victim's own "past lives" while at other times they repre-sent "earthbound" entities who prefer not to leave the familiarearthly setting once they die.ORIGINS
OF
BRAZILIAN SPIRITISMThe first African slaves were brought to Brazil in about 1550 towork on plantations in the northeastern part of the Portuguese col-ony. Many of them were appropriated, often with the complicity ofavaricious people from their
own
tribes, from the West Africancoast, home of the Yoruba culture. Permeating the Yoruba beliefsystem were stories about the spirits or "orishas." Powerful and ter-rifying, but so human that they could be talked to, pleaded with, andcajoled through special offerings, theorishas were part of the tra-dition brought to Brazil by the slaves. Upon their arrival, the slaveswere baptized as Christians and forced to attend the Roman Cath-olic mass. They were allowed to hold their own religious services butencountered difficulty if the priests did not find pictures of Jesus,Mary, and the saints upon the slaves' altars.
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