Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease

Since MacFarlane published Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England in 1970, there has been "fairly widespread agreement" among historians "that pre-industrial European witchcraft has enough in common with contemporary primitive forms to be accounted the same phenomenon." Although some historians emphasize that "the lowest common denominator is very low, and . . . divergences are very great," thus sidestepping the anthropological issue, anthropologists commonly regard European witchcraft as a regional variant of a general concept of witchcraft. Most historians also acknowledge that European witchcraft was, at some basic level, related to witchcraft in the rest of the world. As Briggs recently suggested, "Witchcraft beliefs are . . . so widespread across a huge range of societies, and share so many basic characteristics, that they provide good evidence for the existence of [psychological] universals which transcend contextual differences." ¹

Briggs speculates that the human psyche contains some sort of "witch detector" (analogous to a rabbit's "hawk detector"), which was hardwired into the human psyche during Paleolithic times, but he has not "to date . . . found a convincing reason why our Pleistocene ancestors would have needed such an instinct." Given his frustration with evolutionary biology, this article approaches the problem from a different point of view. Starting from a cross-cultural consideration of the belief in witches, it offers a new assessment of the importance of the mind/body connection in disease and of the social causes of the stress elicited by witchcraft, and concludes by examining specific cases from early modern Württemberg. ²

Psychosocial Features of Disease in Cross-cultural Perspective

Many cultures view witches as ugly old hags, but not all cultures ascribe special physical characteristics to witches. Even those that do often ignore them in practice. Similarly, although societies tend to typecast witches as people with limited social power, accusations often occur among equals, and sometimes arise to explain a person's success. Social status may play a role in defining a witch, but it is not central to the image or the process. The dominant factor in the characterization is a certain psychosocial orientation, a set of attitudes and relationships. Since the pathbreaking work of Evans-Pritchard, the central importance of interpersonal tensions has become a commonplace among anthropologists and historians. However, an accusation reflects more than just a sour relationship; witches evince patterns of behavior that appear to convey deep hostility toward people in general. Not even friendly, or virtuous, people are immune to accusation, but for the charge to stick, their outward demeanor must be exposed as a mask over a wicked core. A witch's hostility is seen as a threat to a whole community. ³

Suspicions often build through a series of minor conflicts, but generally a specific incident triggers an accusation. "Witches and their accusers are nearly always" members of the same community, and a denunciation "nearly always grows out of some personal antipathy," erupting when one person feels that he or she has been harmed. Accusers mostly ascribe damage of a personal, rather than general, nature to witches, sometimes blaming them for damage to property, but most frequently for causing injury to people or animals. They believe that witches cause such harm through an occult power manifested either on the spur of the moment or through ritual attack. Some cultures make a strong distinction between those who manifest their power spontaneously ("witchcraft," according to Evans-Pritchard) and those who use rituals to project it ("sorcery"), but not all societies make this distinction. The common notion of witchcraft includes an incorrigibly hostile person, or hostile persons, practicing sorcery and engaging in depraved activity in withdrawal from the community. The witch figure is an archetype of evil, an antisocial menace who betrays the bonds and the values of the community. ⁴

In contrast to the concern that people who believe in witches have about their behavior and attitudes, anthropologists and historians give the process of accusation and ostracism central importance in their interpretations. MacFarlane proposed...