Customer Reviews

Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing

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An earlier reviewer asks the question, "Why isn't this book more widely read?" and theorizes it is too controversial. Controversy is rarely a stumbling block to finding a wide readership. Occam's razor demands a simplier answer - it is tedious reading. The topic is fascinating, Winkelman knows his stuff, and he has drawn together a wide array of research material to build his argument for a neural-psychological theory of shamanism which is combined with an economic-evolutionary theory of how it evolved and has largely disappeared, or at least been sublimated, in more complex organized cultures.

Problem is, Winkelman is addicted to academic jargon, both his own and that of his sources (He loves terms like "cross-modular integration," "polymodal information integration" "Neurogenesis," "symbolic penetration" (there's alot of penetrating going on)but especially "-mentation" neologisms - "Emotiomentation," "Paleomentation," and "Protomentation." Combine that with Winkelman's long, convoluted writing style, and at times ideas have to be forcefully extracted from the tangle of terminology and verbosity. An exemplar sentence, in which Winkelman's thought is intertwined with a source, goes as follows: "The mammalian adaptation of solution (except for monotremes and echidna) for achieving learning without a large prefrontal cortex was "off-line processing" of REM sleep, where associations of recent memories was achieved during periods of sleep. The "off-line" process processing faciliated use of the pre-frontal cortex for advanced cognitive and perceptual activities."

This is a valuable book, full of useful information and piquant theories, but it could have benefited from an editor - one without a technical background in neuroscience or bio-anthropology - who could have simply said, "Michael, this sounds really interesting but I can't make sense of it; re-read Strunk and White and simplify this paragraph"

I can do justice to this book

It is simply delicious reading

content rich and a sorely needed next step in getting to the core of what mechanism shamanism exploits to engage the integrative healing processes

Anyone whoes been looking into this subject will have seen how much crap is out there, and here on these topics.
So much of it displays faulty scholarship and poorly argued and defined writing, much of it stinks of a work half finished and published to catch a ride on a popular wave of interest. Much of it has no enduring worth. They will be the landfill and animal bedding of the future
You can spend $100 on a few of these or you can get quality in this book. This book will be in the libraries of the future and will surely influence tommorrows visionaries
The density of quality in the book should make it as heavy as lead and yet it is held up by the poetic and fluid integration of winkelmanns' brilliant literary ability

so why isnt it more widely read, even recommended as a text?

I asked this of a proffessional scholar and they responded it was too controversial

Winkelmann?!! what are you trying to do? train shamans?