The sacred self

by Thomas J. Csordas

"How does religious healing work, if indeed it does? What is actually being healed by the performances of the shaman, the medicine man, or the faith healer? In this study of the contemporary North American movement known as the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, Thomas Csordas offers new insight into the experiential specificity that defines efficacy in therapeutic ritual performance. This is not only a book about healing, however, but also one about the phenomenology of self and self-transformation."--BOOK JACKET. "The Catholic Charismatic Renewal is a movement that incorporates Pentecostal practices into Catholicism. In the nearly three decades since its inception, the movement has developed a system that includes several genres of healing: physical healing, emotional healing, and deliverance from evil spirits. Blending ethnographic description and detailed case studies within these various healing genres, Csordas works out a theory of self and therapeutic efficacy grounded in the notions