Syncretism And Public Misconceptions In The 18th Century
Critical Review Part I A whopping 86% of the Philippines’ population is Catholic, making it the only Christian nation in all of Asia; however, concurrent with this apparent devotion, syncretism is also widely practiced within the Filipino culture; that is, there seems to be an active fusion of various belief systems, of pre-Hispanic (animistic/pagan) practices and of the traditions within the organized religion itself (Miller, n.d.; Merriam-Webster, 2014; Gingrich, 2005). As a result, different aspects of the Filipino way of life are seen to have been greatly influenced by this dynamic; among them, the unrelenting conviction that spiritual possession sufficiently explains instances of “altered states of consciousness”. The already limited
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But with this plethora of new information, came a number of misconceptions as well. One of the major public misconceptions, and certainly one of the most persistent, began in 1911 when Eugene Bleuler’s recently coined term, “schizophrenia” (which in Greek meant, “split mind”), was associated with the character(s) of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; particularly when Stevenson’s account of “man’s dual nature” was paralleled with Bleuler’s notion of schizophrenia: “we have here two different personalities operating side by side, each one may communicate with both… [t]he splitting of the psyche into several souls always leads to the greatest inconsistencies.” He later added, “the schizophrenic certainly has as many personalities as he has complexes—personalities which are more or less independent of each other.” In an attempt to correct this, Silvano Arieti, in 1968, stated, “By this term he did not mean a split, divided, or double personality as is popularly believed but a lack of coordination between various psychological functions.” Regardless of this clarification, the misconception stubbornly remained, seemingly cementing the faux connection between schizophrenia and split personality, or, “Jekyll and Hyde personality” (McNally, 2007). Cross-cultural studies lead by Schomerus and his colleagues (2007), aimed to test the resiliency of this “faux connection” by comparing responses from two sample groups, one from Germany, the other from Novosibirsk (Russia). Their results showed that no association of split personality and schizophrenia was found in the Russian sample, unlike the other (German sample) where it is the most common response; this implies that the misunderstanding of schizophrenia is a
But with this plethora of new information, came a number of misconceptions as well. One of the major public misconceptions, and certainly one of the most persistent, began in 1911 when Eugene Bleuler’s recently coined term, “schizophrenia” (which in Greek meant, “split mind”), was associated with the character(s) of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; particularly when Stevenson’s account of “man’s dual nature” was paralleled with Bleuler’s notion of schizophrenia: “we have here two different personalities operating side by side, each one may communicate with both… [t]he splitting of the psyche into several souls always leads to the greatest inconsistencies.” He later added, “the schizophrenic certainly has as many personalities as he has complexes—personalities which are more or less independent of each other.” In an attempt to correct this, Silvano Arieti, in 1968, stated, “By this term he did not mean a split, divided, or double personality as is popularly believed but a lack of coordination between various psychological functions.” Regardless of this clarification, the misconception stubbornly remained, seemingly cementing the faux connection between schizophrenia and split personality, or, “Jekyll and Hyde personality” (McNally, 2007). Cross-cultural studies lead by Schomerus and his colleagues (2007), aimed to test the resiliency of this “faux connection” by comparing responses from two sample groups, one from Germany, the other from Novosibirsk (Russia). Their results showed that no association of split personality and schizophrenia was found in the Russian sample, unlike the other (German sample) where it is the most common response; this implies that the misunderstanding of schizophrenia is a