ABSTRACT
Narrative approaches to the study of illness and healing focus on 'the diverse interpretive practices through which illness realities are constructed, authorised, and contested in personal lives and social institutions'. Storytelling enables people to give voice to their experiences of illness to become 'wounded storytellers'. This chapter uses qualitative research methodologies such as ethnography and narrative methods. It uses the narrative theory in the author's own research on spirit possession in Mahanubhav healing temples in Maharashtra, India, to illustrate how people identified as 'possessed' actively work to construct a coherent narrative about being victims of possession. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in three temples of the Mahanubhav sect. The Mahanubhav sect is a sect in Maharashtra founded in the 13th century by Chakradhar during the rule of the Yadava kings. In the Mahanubhav temples, possession is understood as baher cha dukkha caused by 'outside' sources namely, forces related to the supernatural or spirit realm.
