ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the changing minds: Hysteria and the History of Spirit Mediumship in Telefolmin. It draws an idea to understand the history of spirit mediumship among the Telefolmin, a population of swiddeners living in the mountains of Papua New Guinea's West Sepik Province. The chapter examines the role of hysteria and its differential interpretation, which the chapter approaches by comparing spirit meris to others for whom hysteria was frankly pathological and symptomatic of alienation. Spirit mediumship is not a traditional Telefol practice, and the emergence of spirit meris was something new. Spirit meris have recurrent episodes of shaking that are virtually identical to bouts of hysteria experienced by others both before and after the advent of Rebaibal. Rebaibal transformed Telefol society and its moral order with a program predicated on the abandonment of the traditional men's cult and replacing it with a Christian church answering to God.