Between representations, knowledge and practice. The art of shamans and other traditional practitioners

The art of shamans - in particular their form of medical treatment - consists in a form of interaction developing in a subtle way between a specific system of representations, applying structured practices and calling on various forms of knowledge.To demonstrate this, we have first to submit a minimal definition of shamanism, and then propound specific representations of the illness, nosology and therapy. We also have to introduce or question concepts such as threshold of anguish, therapeutic effectiveness, symbolic effectiveness, efficiency spectrum of simples, etc.The majority of examples comes from personal "on-field" experiments.