User:Mimito1644/sandbox

A shaman is a person who does spiritual work on behalf of the community through altered states of consciousness. The curer is obligated to respond to his call even if he isn't compensated for his work. Consciousness is one's awareness of the Self and the surroundings. Some tribes belief that one's soul can be outside the body and that is a condition that requires the recovery of the loss soul. Soul loss is observed in most world's cultures, it's just termed different depending on the society. In America for example, the symptoms of depression are the same as of a soul loss. We use medications to treat depression, while in other cultures magic and shamanism is used to restore the equilibrium. Philip Bock states that cultures channel irrational and bizarre behaviors of shamans, into acceptable social role. In Freud terms this is called "sublimation" - turning unacceptable impulse into something socially acceptable. Anthropologist George Devereux argued that shamans are abnormal or mentally unstable. However, they have learned how to control their neurotic episodes. Bock also mentioned that "our sense of "ordinary reality" is socially constructed". It follows our perceptions are limited at best and we can't arrive at an absolutely objective or natural conclusion about the nature of our everyday experiences. Waking consciousness maybe just one of many alternative mental states available to humans. Dreaming could be another-one. Not by accident, Freud and other psychoanalysts used dreams to derive new knowledge about the ways in which humans learn. These scientists maintain that intense mental activity goes on during sleep. Anthony Wallace has coined the term "ritual learning" to show that some find solutions to personal and intellectual problems in their dreams. That proposition is important because it explains why cultures don't account all learning to be mechanical response to stimulus.