Sacred Psychotherapy in the “Age of Authenticity” Healing and Cultural Revivalism in Contemporary Finland 英文参考文献.docVIP

Religions 2011, 2, 566-589; doi:10.3390/rel2040566 OPEN ACCESS religions ISSN 2077-1444 /journal/religions Article Sacred Psychotherapy in the “Age of Authenticity”: Healing and Cultural Revivalism in Contemporary Finland James M. Wilce Department of Anthropology, Northern Arizona University, PO Box 15200, Flagstaff, Arizona, 86011-5200, USA; E-Mail: jim.wilce@; Tel.: +1-928-523-3180; Fax: +1-928-523-9135 Received: 26 July 2011; in revised form: 6 September 2011 / Accepted: 8 October 2011 / Published: 11 October 2011 Abstract: Like other European countries, contemporary Finland has witnessed an explosion of healing modalities designatable as ―New Age‖ (though not without profound controversy, [1]). This paper focuses on Finnish courses in lament (wept song, tuneful weeping with words) that combine healing conceived along psychotherapeutic lines and lessons from the lament tradition of rural Karelia, a region some Finns regard as their cultural heartland. A primary goal of the paper is to explicate a concept of ―authenticity‖ emerging in lament courses, in which disclosing the depths of one‘s feelings is supported not only by invoking ―psy-― discourses of self-help, but also by construing the genuine emotional self-disclosure that characterizes neolamentation as a sacred activity and a vital contribution to the welfare of the Finnish people. Keywords: authenticity and the ―age of authenticity‖; healing groups; lament; Finland; cultural revivalism 1. Introduction/Background The relations between religions/spiritualities new and old on the one hand and psychotherapies per se (as opposed to shamanism interpreted as a form of psychoanalytic intervention [2]) are complex and shifting. To grossly oversimplify, early (i.e., nineteenth century) psychiatry clearly reflected its roots in magic while doing its best to distance itself from those roots [3]. During the twentieth century that d