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The Recruitment Of Spirit-Directed-Healers, Marilyn Mckillop Wells

Doctoral Dissertations

The research sought to identify individual and social factors associated with the recruitment of spirit-directed-healers in Sub-Saharan Africa. This type of traditional healer was defined as a person who: 1) elicits and uses spiritual direction and information in the diagnosis and treatment of illness, 2) attributes the ultimate source of his/her healing power to one or more anthropopsychic spirits, and 3) claims to have been called to healing by those spirits. The spirit-directed-healers' decisions, demands, and remedies are legitimized by their source--the directing supernatural entity.

Data gathered through observations and open-ended interviews with four traditional healers who practiced in a …