Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience

by Obeyesekere, Gananath

• ISBN13: 9780226616018
• ISBN10: 0226616010
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1984-09-15
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

The great pilgrimage center of southeastern Sri Lanka, Kataragama, has become in recent years the spiritual home of a new class of Hindu-Buddhist religious devotees. These ecstatic priests and priestesses invariably display long locks of matted hair, and they express their devotion to the gods through fire walking, tongue-piercing, hanging on hooks, and trance-induced prophesying. The increasing popularity of these ecstatics poses a challenge not only to orthodox Sinhala Buddhism (the official religion of Sri Lanka) but also, as Gananath Obeyesekere shows, to the traditional anthropological and psychoanalytic theories of symbolism. Focusing initially on one symbol, matted hair, Obeyesekere demonstrates that the conventional distinction between personal and cultural symbols is inadequate and naive. His detailed case studies of ecstatics show that there is always a reciprocity between the personal-psychological dimension of the symbol and its public, culturally sanctioned role. Medusa's Hair thus makes an important theoretical contribution both to the anthropology of individual experience and to the psychoanalytic understanding of culture. In its analyses of the symbolism of guilt, the adaptational and integrative significance of belief in spirits, and a host of related issues concerning possession states and religiosity, this book marks a provocative advance in psychological anthropology.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
Part One
Introduction	13	(1)
Private and Public Symbols	14	(4)
The Problem	18	(3)
Female Ascetics and Matted Hair	21	(1)
Three Female Ascetic-Ecstatics	22	(1)
Karunavati Maniyo	22	(5)
Nandavati Maniyo	27	(3)
Manci Nona	30	(23)
The Meaning of Hair	33	(5)
The Yogi and the Monk: Siva and the Buddha: Matted Hair and Shaven Head	38	(2)
Social Institutions and the Unconscious	40	(4)
Matted Hair and Shaven Head: Two Kinds of Psychological Symbolism	44	(6)
Conventionalization of Personal Symbols	50	(3)
Part Two
Introduction	53	(1)
The Dark Night of the Soul: Illustration and Psychocultural Exegesis	53	(1)
Pemavati Vitarana	53	(13)
Juliet's Dilemma: Buddhist Asceticism or Hindu Devotionalism	66	(1)
H. Juliet Nona	66	(25)
The Symbolization of Guilt	76	(8)
The Symbolic Integration of Personality	84	(7)
Part Three
Introduction	91	(1)
Interpersonal Interaction and Personal Symbols	91	(1)
Munasinha Beauty Silva	91	(33)
Myth Models	99	(3)
Communication and Estrangement	102	(4)
Networks of Meaning	106	(9)
Ghosts, Demons, and Deep Motivation	115	(8)
Part Four
Introduction	123	(1)
Descent into the Grave	124	(1)
Sirima Hettiaracci	124	(18)
Subjective Imagery: An Interpretation of Sirima's Case History	131	(7)
Tryst with the Black Prince: Incubus and Fire Walker	138	(4)
A Hook Hanger at Kataragama	142	(1)
Tuan Sahid Abdin	142	(51)
Comment on Abdin's Ritual Activities	148	(1)
Abdin's Descent into the Grave	149	(1)
A Ritual for Kali	150	(4)
Abdin's Tongue: An Interpretation	154	(5)
Fantasy and Symbolism in the Integration of Personality with Culture	159	(6)
Fantasy, Personal Symbols, and Subjective Imagery: A Metapsychological Excursus	165	(4)
Part Five
Introduction	169	(1)
Subjective Imagery and the Invention of Culture	169	(6)
Culture and the Unconscious: The Case of Contemporary Iconography	175	(4)
The Model for the Myth	179	(4)
Epilogue: The End and the Beginning	183	(10)
Notes	193	(10)
Glossary	203	(4)
References	207	(6)
Index	213