Putting Shamans to the Test:
Measuring Personality and Spiritual Mastery
…the question of whether the shaman is a disturbed individual (neurotic, psychotic or schizophrenic) or is, on the contrary a gifted, balanced and perfectly well adjusted person, constitutes one of the oldest of anthropological debates.244
If the health of shamans is one of the perennial puzzles of anthropology, then how best to assess health is one of the perennial puzzles of psychology. Debate has raged for half a century over the relative merits of clinicians using their intuitive judgment as compared to objective measurement. Both have their place, but carefully designed psychological tests can sometimes best even experienced clinicians.405 It is therefore unfortunate that we have so few objective studies of shamans. Still, these few offer interesting clues.
Projective Tests
The assessment measures used most often with shamans have been projective tests in which ambiguous images are shown to subjects. The pictures they see, the meanings they give, and the stories they tell in response to these images are then interpreted and mined for information about personality and perception. Projective tests have a mixed reputation, and it is not clear that all the subjects tested were in fact shamans as we are defining them. Therefore we will need to be cautious in drawing conclusions from the following studies.
When the Holtzman ink blot technique was given to Mexican Zinacanteco shamans, it revealed no significant differences between shamans and control subjects. However, the shamans did show a greater variability of psychological characteristics than the controls.89
This is an important finding since it is often assumed that shamans share a common psychological profile. However, this study suggests otherwise. And when you think about it, why should we expect shamans to exhibit a common personality or level of health any more than we expect this of physicians or psychologists?
The Rorschach Test
The most famous of all psychological tests may well be the Rorschach. It may also be the most controversial. An American Psychological Association group lauded it as “perhaps the most powerful psychometric instrument ever envisioned,” while the New York Review of Books damned it as “a ludicrous but still dangerous relic.”58 Certainly, as it is usually used, the Rorschach is neither particularly valid nor reliable,58, 422 and claims made from using it therefore need to be accepted cautiously.
This is particularly true of one of the most famous of all studies of shamans. This investigated Mescalero Indian reservation Apaches and compared shamans, pseudoshamans, and controls. Shamans were defined as native medicine men who claimed supernatural powers and were accorded shamanistic status by their people. Pseudoshamans were either regarded as shamans by the tribe but denied possessing any power, or else were claimants to shamanic status who were not regarded as such by others.
Overall, the shamans received a positive report. While they displayed more responses suggestive of hysteria, overall they seemed healthier than their peers. Some of their positive features included a high degree of reality testing, keen awareness of peculiarities, and a capacity to regress in the service of the ego. The experimenters concluded of the shamans that “In general, based on their greater capacity to test reality and their ability to use regression in the service of the ego, they are healthier than their society co-members.”31 By contrast, the pseudoshamans were said to display “impoverished personalities.”31 However, the poor design of the study renders these conclusions tentative.89, q
Further support for the health of shamans comes from a survey of Bhutanese refugees in Nepal that included forty-two people (most of them male) who claimed to be shamans. Interviews revealed no significant differences between them and non-shamans, although shamans tended to display fewer anxiety disorders.377
SPIRITUAL MASTERY
Spiritual masters have supposedly realized potentials of heart and mind that only lie dormant in the rest of us. How remarkable it would be to test these masters and find out precisely who and what they are. It would be even more remarkable to compare masters from different traditions. Recently the first such study appeared and revealed striking similarities between an outstanding Apache shaman, a Hindu swami, and an advanced female Buddhist meditation teacher.181 The study compared Rorschach responses, and we have already discussed the problems with this test. However, in this case it may be useful for two reasons:
• Though the Rorschach is not particularly reliable, it can still be valuable in exploratory studies looking for patterns that deserve further investigation.
• The findings are striking. In fact, they suggest something quite remarkable has occurred in these subjects.
While there were major differences between their responses, there were also striking similarities among the masters. What did they show?
Transpersonal Concerns
Unlike the rest of us, their responses had very little to do with their individual concerns. Rather, their perceptions were centered around their religious traditions. For example, the Apache shaman who was named Black Eyes gave responses involving the powers of nature and the seasons of the earth; Swami Sivananda described the forces of Shiva and Shakti and the unity underlying diversity; the Buddhist master saw human and animal forms representing the causes of suffering. In each case their responses mirrored the worldview and teachings of their tradition.
The researcher, Diane Jonte-Pace, interpreted these responses as being culturally embedded or impersonal. However, a better term would likely be “transpersonal,” since individual perspective and personality seemed to be replaced by a transpersonal perspective grounded in the teachings and experiences offered by the tradition. Jonte-Pace concluded that “the masters were enmeshed in their spiritual tradition to such a degree that inner life became indistinguishable from the spiritual teachings.”181
These findings offer support for several perennial spiritual claims. Diverse traditions hold that their practices include transpersonal shifts in identity and perception. Spiritual practices are said to gradually winnow away egocentricity and to replace our usual separate or egoic self-sense with a transpersonal identity that grows to encompass humankind, life, and the cosmos.
Along with this goes a transformation of understanding and perception. The conventional view gradually yields to a post-conventional, transpersonal understanding, and perceptual transformation awakens sacred vision.392
Integrative Style
When given the ten Rorschach images one after the other, people usually give unrelated responses to each. Not so the masters. Each one of them organized their responses into a single coherent account that laid out the basic teachings of their tradition. The masters transformed the test into a teaching for the testers. An amazed Jonte-Pace wrote:
One would almost believe that the masters had been given the Rorschach cards in advance with the request that each prepare a lecture on his or her spiritual tradition based on the sequence and the imagery of the cards….The shaman communicated his ecstatic flights through space; the swami taught the central elements of Vedantic doctrine; and the enlightened Buddhist master related her knowledge and experience of the means to end suffering. The integrative and unitive styles reveal the masters’ remarkable intellectual capacities, the presentations of cultural/spiritual truths support the earlier suggestion that individual perceptions seem to disappear as individual identity is subsumed by spiritual identity, while the didactic style demonstrates a deep embeddedness in the therapeutic and salvific role of master.181
Toleration of Ambiguity
A third unusual characteristic was the large number of responses related to shading, amorphous forms, and inanimate movement. Curiously, such responses are usually viewed as pathological. However, Jonte-Pace interprets these suggestions of change and lack of boundaries more positively in the case of these masters. She suggests they developed tolerance of ambiguity as well as a familiarity and comfort with flux and change. Recognizing and becoming comfortable with constant change is certainly one of the benefits of Buddhist meditation121 and this study suggests that it may also be a benefit of other practices.
Conclusions
Even given the limitations of the Rorschach, this is an exciting study with several important implications. First, intensive spiritual practices of diverse kinds can produce overlapping effects. Second, spiritual masters of different traditions may share several kinds of remarkable capacities, perspectives, and identities. Several findings support centuries-old claims about the effects of spiritual practice and the qualities of spiritual masters. Finally, the study opens a new era of testing and comparing spiritual masters.