Where Do We Put Our Madness?

 

 

Assume that humans evolved as hunter-gatherer-scavengers, and that our ice-age genetic stock is very great, as E. O. Wilson has suggested.  Assume that hunter-gatherer societies studied in the twentieth century, like the Aborigines of Australia, the Tungus of Siberia, or the !Kung of South Africa give a reasonably accurate picture of what human society was like until the arrival of agriculture roughly ten thousand years ago.

 

Let speculation thrive as to how much hunting was done by the women, gathering and scavenging by the men.  No one could have had any more rights than the environment permitted, and social organization, culture, would have been the only thing that separated humans from wildlife.  The human capacity for complex communication and for organized planning would have been what put them at the top of the food chain, but the changing patterns of climate and game migration would have kept the patterns of culture from settling into rigid structures.

 

Leadership before the polis would have undoubtedly been the kind of shifting hunting-band leadership that is seen in twentieth-century hunter-gatherer societies.  It is unlikely that anything like hereditary leadership could have developed before agriculture and land ownership.  The survival of the band depended too much on having the best people on the job at the moment to tolerate any established hierarchy, so leadership must have been the shifting, rough-and-ready kind seen in recent hunter-gatherer societies.

 

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think of these societies as peripatetic versions of the Athenian polis, deciding their course of action by open debate in woodland agoras.  These societies had madness at their heart.

 

People who were visibly strange, who looked different and behaved differently, who went into trances, spoke uncouth languages, told stories, sang songs, painted pictures, made sculptures, and acted out dramas not only lived in the midst of the band but were perceived to be a vital part of it.  The shamans were the connections between the band and the perceived spirit world which lay behind and controlled the visible world of weather, game, and survival.

 

It seems pretty clear that shamans--real shamans, at any rate--were and are psychotic by modern Western standards.  Psychoticism is, of course, defined against the ground of our culture, where "crazy," so often invoked as explanation, rarely means anything but "I don't understand why he did that."  The shamans were not permanently psychotic, of course.  Very few people are, even in our society.  The defining mark of the shaman seems to have been the ability to control the reality he or she lived in, to turn the vision on and off, so to speak.  The shaman could be like everyone else but, when needed, go into a reality that others were rarely able to perceive, fly, dive into the earth or the sea, talk to the spirits.

 

The shaman was not just an accepted part of hunter-gatherer society, but a necessary part.  It was the shaman who dealt with the powers--the "spirits"--of nature to ensure the abundance of game and to deal with difficult weather, to get the people through the hard times that are a constant accompaniment to hunter-gatherer existence.

 

To some extent, shamans may have been bred.  Shamanic initiations often seem to involve visions of being dismembered and eaten by one's ancestors who were shamans, and having shaman ancestors implies familial tendencies toward shamanism.  However, there always seem to be shamans who received their call out of nowhere, so to speak, and who did not want to be shamans at all (see Lommel).  Grace apparently could be as irresistible for shamans as for Moses and the prophets, or for St. Augustine and more modern preachers.

 

 

Shamanic Genes

 

In psychobiological terms, if people had an interest in keeping shamanhood alive, they had an interest in getting shamanic genes into circulation and keeping them there.  Shamans may have been perceived as high-status mates, having a status more permanent than the hunter of the day.  Humans running in bands of a hundred or so, near the maximum size for hunter-gatherers, would have needed a population of shamans somewhat more than ten percent of their number to guarantee one shaman per band.

 

Stories of fights between shamans suggest that there may have been an occasional oversupply of shamans, and stories of would-be shamans who failed in their initiations (Lommel) suggest that shamanic potential need not always be realized.

 

What all this suggests is an evolutionary foundation for the functional psychoses, generally agreed to have a genetic basis.  If for thousands of generations people saw the shaman as vital to survival, their mating would have evolved to guarantee that there would always be a shaman, and behavior that we call psychotic would be certain to appear, generation after generation.

 

 

The Value of Madness

 

Perhaps there is also a built-in disposition to regard shamanic behavior and perceptions as more valuable and true than the behavior of ordinary people under ordinary circumstances.  The perceived relationship between madness and the divine has a very long history; indeed, it is almost as old as history itself.  Very gifted people, from religious leaders to generals, have been noted for their great moodiness, and some, like Julius Caesar, have been afflicted with epilepsy as well.  And of course the caveat must be sounded that there is danger here as well.  The gifted great tend to meet violent ends, as Caesar did.  Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

 

The relationship between madness and genius has been a commonplace so long that in scarcely needs to be mentioned.  It is a relationship particularly exalted by the Romantic philosophers and artists in reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and the Romantics put the artist in the position of shaman, most explicitly in English in the works of Coleridge and Shelley.

 

Of course, we prefer the term "creativity" to "madness," but the dynamics remain: an uncanny vision of things that sets one apart from others and a need to do something about that vision.  Some creative people seem to be blessed with a sunny disposition and a fairly even distribution of energy through the day and through the year, and there seem to be many difficult, moody people who don't get much of anything done.  Still, mood swings and creativity are clearly associated in history and in popular culture.

 

No wonder, then, that the depressed, the manic-depressive, and the schizophrenic so often resist being medicated for their condition.  After all, those responding to a different reality from the rest of us only have our word for it that their reality is not really real and they need to live in ours.  We are demanding that they give up a reality that has been seen as vital for survival itself, not just nice for creating art.  Or religion.  Or military campaigns.  Or politics.  Or science.  Or wealth.

 

In the face of the aggrieved and aggressive psychiatrist on the public-radio talk show, the depressive call‑in who stopped taking her medication can only say, "I dunno.  It just didn't seem like the real me."  "Well," the audially puzzled doctor responds to this lame excuse, "please don't stop again!" and the unctuous talk-show host intones his assent.

 

In defense of medicine, some high-profile researchers like Kay Redfield Jamison clearly understand and underscore the value of, in her case, manic depression, since she endures as well as researches it.  Who wouldn't want to be manic, she asks, when you can accomplish so much?  But, the evidence suggests, if you're going to dance, you have to pay the piper.  Depression as profound as the mania is exalted is its partner.  The function of medicine may be only to control the madness enough to keep the subject from hurting him- or herself too seriously, so that the creative side can function again.

 

More radical voices have risen and continue to rise, suggesting that the problem is not in the "mentally ill," but in the society that isolates and victimizes them.  Gregory Bateson's double-bind theory of schizophrenia comes to mind, as does the work of R. D. Laing.  Others suggest that the cure for madness lies in the madness itself, suggesting Eliade's frequently cited assertion that the shaman is a psychotic who has learned how to cure him- or herself.  Therefore the shaman can cure the tribe.

 

 

Where Are Our Shamans?

 

If shamanism and psychoticism evolved together, they should still be with us, and it should be easy to find them, even outside mental institutions.  In fact, it is arguable--one might even venture to say obvious--that the crazy people are not in the mental institutions.  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. If you have money, that's what they're after.