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The Pharmakos Phenomenon

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The Pharmakos Phenomenon The pharmakos phenomenon Mary. E. Murray M. Pharm. A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August, 2004 M.E. Murray 2004 Dedication In memory of my father, Victor Murray, who encouraged me to think about these things. Acknowledgements The seed for this work as a PhD thesis was sown in the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in Uppsala in 1993 in conversation with Sven Hamrell. It is fitting that the final stages of the thesis were completed in Uppsala where the staff of the Foundation, and Karl-Eric Ericson, provided assistance in the copying and binding of the manuscript. Special thanks are due to Olle Nordberg, Executive Director, for wisdom at each hurdle and for a place to write and draw on Gotland. The ideas grew in the back of my mind during the many fascinating discussions with members of the International Dialogue on Health and Pharmaceuticals and I am grateful to each of them for lengthy conversations during 1999 and to colleagues in policy work in Australia for sharing their experiences and for their encouragement. The process of image-making was shared at key moments with Anna Huenecke with whom I spent many happy hours in her studio experimenting with colour, texture and technique. Glenda Cloughley created opportunities to present the pharmakos as a dramatic story in collaboration with other artists. Elizabeth Cameron Dalman provided creative assistance to express in movement the dynamics of the pharmakos engagement, with Peter Cameron’s exhilarating landscape paintings as backdrop. There are many who gave me practical support and encouragement throughout the process. Kristos Nizamis, Stephanie Murray and Steve Shann read drafts and gave me valuable feedback. George Webeck proofread and corrected punctuation through many months with good humour. Special thanks are due to those who sat through the dark hours with me: Steve Shann, Jo Karmel, Peter Rafferty and Tony Henderson. I am grateful for my family’s support: to David and Stephanie Murray for many discussions about the ideas; to Jock and Bronwyn Murray for good humoured calls to clarity; to Don and Wendy Murray and the Hodge’s for listening, for places to stay and for IT help. The journey was shared in a special way with my mother Joan Murray, who was writing a PhD at the same time and a sympathetic fellow student in the good and bad times, and my daughter Emma who always understood what I was trying to say. I would not have managed to complete the work in any sense without the love and friendship of Helen and Ian Cathles - including the 31 days of the bushfire emergency when everything stopped. I am grateful to the University of Western Sydney for the assistance of an Australian Postgraduate Award to undertake the work, and to staff and fellow students for exchanges of ideas. I will always treasure the lively teaching and intellectually stretching conversations with my supervisor, David Russell, and his patience and belief that it could be done. Statement of Authentication The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original, except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. …………………………………… Table of Contents Summary 1 Prologue: First Pharmakos Ritual 3 Chapter 1: Introduction 4 Chapter 2: The Myth, Ritual and History of the Pharmakos 24 Chapter 3: Reverie on the Pharmakos: A Bachelardian Approach 49 Chapter 4: Phenomenology: Methods and Philosophy 69 Chapter 5: Preparing to Enter Scapegoat Territory 89 A Second Pharmakos Ritual 105 Chapter 6: The Scapegoat 109 Chapter 7: The Goat 132 Chapter 8: The Fig 158 Chapter 9: Conclusion 187 List of References 193 Appendix 1: Visual Image-Making of the Pharmakos 1–17 Appendix 2: The Scapegoat in Modern Life: Reforming and Reinforcing a Vicious Cycle? 1–15 i 1 Summary The impetus for this thesis came from experience in the worlds of medicines, urgent and disturbing aspects of health, and people meeting to find ways through conflict and complex problems about them. The author facilitated policy making and dialogue between people from very different backgrounds, for a number of years. The thesis is an engagement with ambiguous and contradictory human reactions to stress while being-in-the-middle of threat and differences of many kinds. These trigger both scapegoating and an urge to mate. The phenomenon is embodied in the symbol and ritual of the pharmakos. The pharmakos ritual is ancient in human experience where in times of crisis, a human being was beaten with fig branches, and led throughout the community to receive the pollution prior to being killed or banished. It has been interpreted as the means of purifying a community of pollution - the scapegoat. There is something more to this phenomenon than purification and the scapegoat. The aim of the thesis is to engage with the phenomenon of the pharmakos, in order to bring back its symbolism and practice to conscious attention in dealing with many demanding situations today. The pharmakos can be approached as a rich experience of moving through membranes between territories or states: of threat and anxiety where suspicion of pollution and causes of contagion must be eliminated; of previous catastrophe evoked in images, forms and associated feelings from memory (personal, cultural and archetypal); of curiosity and roaming in the underworld to observe the unknown close to the edge of life, death, discomfort and disorder, both psychologically and actually; of a psychological preparation of one’s elements for mating, not knowing from where the elements to be mated with will come. Such images are possible and encountered in a journey of the pharmakos through these states, undertaken in reverie of a kind practised by Gaston Bachelard. The study describes the phenomenon of the pharmakos through four perspectives (historical, psychological, neurological and biochemical) using data in literary, scientific and cultural texts. In the tradition of psychological phenomenology in general, and in the tradition of Les Todres in particular, it 2 will seek meaning in a “more than words can say” experience of the body. Thus the data from texts is amplified by the experiential encounter with the pharmakos held in the body of the author, and her lengthy experience of facilitating many dialogue and multi-stakeholder processes in health and medicines in Australia, developing countries and international settings. The thesis demonstrates how the metaphors of the scapegoat and pollution (predominant in the historical perspective of the pharmakos) can be de-formed by imagination and penetrated to a closer point of contact between the experience within, and interaction with objects or people encountered in the world (in psychological, neurological and biochemical ways). This liberates a capacity for curiosity in the moment of greatest threat (the goat held within the scapegoat metaphor). It uncovers a thirst for creative fertilisation in a complex reality (akin to the biology of the fig held within the images of figs hung around the neck of the pharmakos, and the beating by fig branches in the ancient ritual) where opportunities are out-of-synch with one another, and one feels the discomfort and even horror of being scarred, pierced and betrayed by those who are different. Thus the thesis organises itself around the images of the scapegoat, the goat and the fig which were the visual images encountered in the journey of the pharmakos. The narrative follows these metaphors in the sequence in which they arose experientially, as the pharmakos sought gaps and crossed between them. By attending to the pharmakos symbol, one can stare at what constitutes danger: at guilt in the air surrounding those attracting an accusation and exclusion; at the threat and emotion felt in the space between life and death, suffering and cure, the trauma of life as it is, and its infection in memory. New metaphors of the pharmakos bring an awareness of falling into oneself in the face of crisis, difference and destabilising change to make and reach for a connection of fertile elements. With inner and outer recognition of the work of the pharmakos, one can step into the middle of these dynamics within oneself and between people of great difference in values and experience in facilitating encounters with difference and change. 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The pharmakos ritual is ancient in human experience. It has been said by classical scholars that the practice removed pollution and its contagious source from a community.1 It was thus a means of purifying a community experiencing threat. In modern times the pharmakos phenomenon still appears in circumstances, major or minor, of conflict, crisis or destabilising change. A personal experience of the pharmakos arose in the author after a period of rest and reflection, following many years of working in the field of health and medicines as a facilitator, leader or organiser. There is something more to the pharmakos phenomenon than the removal of pollution and the cause of stress. The aim of the thesis is to describe a phenomenological engagement with the experience of the pharmakos from several perspectives, so that the observer may recapture the different aspects of its symbolism that may be attended to in demanding situations today. The ritual is recounted in its basics as the Prologue to the thesis. It appeared to have become a regular and unsentimental practice in ancient times. The thesis explores the intriguing role played in this by the pharmakoi and the notion that they became conduits or porters to the edge - to the underworld - to the gap - of fragility.
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