ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a series of ceremonies which were conducted for one patient, Kou Swe, an alleged victim of an ouktazaun. The ceremony began with exorcist and patient making obeisance to the Buddha and then jointly reciting the Buddhist precepts. If the seance is psychotherapeutic, it should be possible to identify those of its components which, taken as psychotherapeutic agents, can explain the observed psychological changes in what would now designate as the psychiatric patient. Group support, then—emotional, cultural, social, and instrumental—is one of the factors which probably contributes to the efficacy of the exorcistic ceremony, viewed as a psychotherapeutic technique. The behavior of the exorcist in the seance is his second opportunity for exerting a therapeutic influence on the patient. In the seance described in the chapter, the exorcist persists in referring to the female nat—whom to be the personification of the patient's ego-alien drives—as "my sister", a term of endearment.
