Black intrapsychic survival skills: alteration of states of consciousness

Abstract

Psychiatry tends to be interested only in states of consciousness as they relate to psychopathology. In this paper the author presents the thesis that the ability to alter one's state of consciousness is in fact a survival skill useful in coping with the physiologic and psychologic effects of stress. Furthermore, he discusses techniques indigenous to black culture for altering states of consciousness and gives phenomenologic black transcultural evidence that black culture is quite sophisticated in the area of intrapsychic survival skills.