Artistry's Altered State and Shaman Criticism

I remember, quite vividly, how my career as a writer began. It was just after I had begun college, and the process of fitting into my new environment had not gone very well. I had been met harshly by virtually everyone outside my dorm room (and even my first roommate), and so my sense of isolation grew greater. So, to relieve some stress, I began to write. Almost meditating into these fantastic worlds I was writing about, I found myself unaware of any other events surrounding myself. It became my life, and I found myself delving into this altered state of intense concentration on my work more and more often. I took that out of the Hughes piece this time around. I instantly resonated with the idea of focusing on work rather than any outside sources, and in turn, that produced various fictions, poetry, and screenplays that I feel could not have been attained in other circumstances. I lost all care for the rigors of college dorm life (and thankfully escaped that after my first year) and developed my own voice as a writer, which had been dormant all that time.

Walsh's writing seemed a bit of a response to the criticisms of Shamanism, as I have noticed in some previous chapters. He states that Shamans have been labeled as being mentally ill by various physicians and psychologists, but I understand now that that may be due to the lack of taking alternate perspectives to analyze subjects, that psychologists tend to take. Actually, on a related, outside note, I remember (when I was still a psychology major) learning about various schools and methods of the field (such as Skinner or Freud), and it just now occurred to me that by setting one's beliefs and methods in one school, claiming it to be right, are they not limiting their perspective on these problems they claim to diagnose? Therefore, Shamanism cannot be simply diagnosed as a mental derangement. In fact, one aspect of this reading that really resonated with me is the "placebo" effect that many doctors employ without problem, yet the shaman is met with intense criticism when he/she uses such methods. Perhaps a change of perspective for the common people is in order.