Evil spirit sickness, the Christian disease: The innovation of a new syndrome of mental derangement and redemption in papua new guinea

Abstract

This essay analyses the cultural and historical processes involved in the emergence of Evil Spirit Sickness, a form of mental or behavioral derangement that appeared among the Bosavi people of Papua New Guinea during a period of intense Christian evangelization and religious excitement. It explores the the emergence of the disorder both as a form of psychological breakdown under the burden of intolerable life stress and a socially innovated, ritually structured, and performatively achieved mode of seeking redemption in a Papuan Christian context. © 1996 Kluwer Academic Publishers.