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Puva asked:
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What is the impact of superstitious beliefs on mental health?
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============
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It depends on what you mean by "superstitious beliefs", doesn't it. But take a look at this book:
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Harrington, A., ed. The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration.Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2000.
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It is an exploration of the reality of the placebo effect, which seems to happen about 1/3 of the time...
although there is controversy about this. There was a recent study, either Danish or Norwegian, I
forget which (sorry for lack of reference), which seemed to indicate much lower frequency than that.
At any rate, one interesting correspondence is that about 1/3 of people can be reasonably easily
hypnotized. Kihlstrom has done work in the latter area, e.g.,
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Kihlstrom, J. F. "The Cognitive Unconscious." Science237 (1987): 1445-1452, and many others.
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See also:
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Farthing, G. W. The Psychology of Consciousness.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1992 for
information on hypnosis.
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Now, why am I talking about placebos and hypnosis in the context of superstition? That's pretty
obvious, isn't it. If you consider that the meansof effect of superstitions are at least partly through
these processes, then we're starting to understand how to get a reasonably clear handle on them. In
addition, relating to the origins of superstitious beliefs, you might look at: Frazer, J.G. The Golden
Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion.Third ed. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1951; and
Eliade, M. The Sacred and the Profane.Translated by W.R. Trask, The Cloister Library. New York,
NY: Harper & Row, 1961.
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Steven Ravett Brown
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