ABSTRACT
Primitive societies, with a dominant magical or magical-religious ideology, already distinguished involuntary behaviours that violated their rules in ways that we now know to call psychotic disorders (Opler, 1959; Kiev, 1964; Kleinman, 1980; Jenkins and Barret, 2004). They attributed a wide range of unnatural causes, such as loss of soul, sin from breaking taboos, introduction of objects, harmful spirits or demons in the body, harmful effects of witchcraft and magic from other human beings and also resentment and dissatisfaction from the deceased.
