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The Role of Superstition in Psychopathology

Article in Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology · September 2008

DOI: 10.1353/ppp.0.0195

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 The Role of
Superstition in
Psychopathology
Abstract: This article attempts to show the importance
of the concept of superstition in understanding a range
of psychological problems. With this aim, we critically
analyze several constructs that, without actually using the
term “superstition,” concern this phenomenon and its role
in the development of mental disorders. First we discuss
“Thought–Action Fusion” and “magical thinking,” two
concepts from the cognitive tradition that view superstition
as basically an ideational phenomenon. Second, we look at
“Experiential Avoidance,” a post-Skinnerian concept that
understands superstition as a type of avoidance behavior
for certain private events. Third, we discuss superstition
as an emotional phenomenon, in particular, Jean-Paul
Sartre’s phenomenological analysis of emotions as magi-
cal operations. Finally, we review a cultural approach to
superstition and its influence on psychopathology. In this
perspective, superstition is seen as a cultural form linked to
the historical–social context, which is fostered by certain
social practices or institutions, including (perhaps surpris-
ingly) certain features of modernity.
Keywords: Superstition, Thought–Action Fusion,
magical thinking, experiential avoidance, emotion,
cultural perspective
From Research on
Hallucinations to
Superstition
O
ur research group has recently pub-
lished an empirical study (García-Montes
et al. 2006) in which superstitious beliefs
© 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
José M. García-Montes,
Marino Pérez Álvarez,
Louis A. Sass, and
Adolfo J. Cangas
and beliefs about punishment and responsibility
emerge—rather surprisingly—as key factors in
the understanding of both auditory hallucinations
in psychotic patients and obsessive–compulsive
disorder (OCD). Despite the apparent novelty of
the results, this relationship between psychopatho-
logical disorders and superstition may be consid-
ered classical to some extent. Odier (1947/1956)
interpreted superstition as a way of dealing with
anxiety. Schizophrenia was considered in this
perspective by Eugen Bleuler (1916/1934), who
spoke of “omnipotence of thought,” and by Geza
Roheim (1955), in his theory of ‘magical psycho-
sis.’ Such views of superstition were not, however,
incorporated into the mainstream of current psy-
chopathology, perhaps because they failed to fit in
with accepted conceptualizations. In recent years,
interest in “superstition” as an important element
in psychopathological phenomena has reemerged
(Dag 1999; Eckblad and Chapman 1994; Sica,
Novara and Sanavio 2002). Two concepts in the
cognitive–behavioral tradition are relevant, even
though they do not mention the term “supersti-
tion.” These are Thought–Action Fusion (TAF), a
cognitive perspective, and Experiential Avoidance
(EA), a post-Skinnerian behavioral notion.
The overall purpose of this paper is to draw
attention to the importance of superstition in
psychopathological phenomena as reflected in
the various approaches presented. We also review
228 ■ PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
several different perspectives on the issue, and
suggest a concept of superstition that illustrates
two key themes developed elsewhere in this special
issue of Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology:
the potential for synthesizing phenomenology and
behaviorism (Pérez-Álvarez and Sass, 2008) and
also the relevance of a sociocultural perspective
on psychopathology (Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, and
García-Montes 2008). With this in mind, this
paper is divided into four sections. The first deals
with the cognitive (or cognitive–behavioral) no-
tion of TAF, its relationship to superstition, its role
in psychopathology, and some of its limitations.
The second section analyzes the behavioral con-
cept EA in a similar fashion. In the third section,
we compare the theoretical assumptions of EA
with those underlying Sartre’s phenomenological
analysis of emotions as magical transformations
(Sartre 1965/1971). The fourth section argues
that a phenomenological analysis of the emotions,
combined with a radical form of behaviorism,
offers a conceptually powerful approach to the
phenomenon of superstition and its relevance. The
fifth and final section discusses a cultural concep-
tion of superstition that resituates it in the context
of biography and personal circumstances. All of
this leads to our understanding that certain forms
of superstitious behavior can represent culturally
agreed-upon forms of dealing with life that are
classified in Western societies as psychological
problems (Szasz 1960). In this respect, we sug-
gest that certain kinds of advertising messages
and also certain psychological viewpoints and
therapies, which are now widespread, may them-
selves depend upon, and also foster, superstitious
processes.
Scheibe and Sarbin (1965) suggest a useful
broad conception of superstition. According to
their definition,
a superstition may be said to exist whenever an individ-
ual persistently or repeatedly behaves as if his subjective
estimate of the result of that behaviour is significantly
different from an objective (scientific) estimate of the
effect of that behaviour. (p. 145)
In the best-known cases of superstition, the effect in
question concerns external physical objects or events,
but, as we shall see, the effect or result in question
may also be more psychological or “inner.”
Superstition as Cognition:
Thought–Action Fusion
TAF refers to the belief that thought and behav-
ior (or action) are inextricably linked (Berle and
Starcevic 2005). TAF can be classified into two
types, one pertaining to moral judgment, the other
to probability estimates. In “Moral TAF,” a person
believes that bad thoughts are morally equivalent
to the actual act. “Probability TAF” refers to the
subject’s assumption that a mere thought increases
the likelihood of something actually happening
(Rassin et al. 2001; Shafran, Thordarson, and
Rachman 1996). These two kinds of TAF are not
mutually exclusive for, as Shafran et al. (1996)
point out, if someone believes that certain thoughts
increase the probability of something bad happen-
ing, this person may also be inclined to believe that
such thoughts are immoral.
Since its origin, the TAF concept has been linked
with OCD (Rachman 1993; Rachman et al. 1995;
Shafran et al. 1996). Research on TAF has not,
however, been circumscribed to OCD. Two recent
reviews (Berle and Starcevic 2005; Shafran and
Rachman 2004) show that TAF plays a role in
other anxiety disorders, as well as eating disorders
and depressive symptomatology. TAF also seems
to be associated with the presence of disorders in
childhood and adolescence (Berle and Stracevic
2005). In our study of auditory hallucinations
and metacognition (García-Montes et al. 2006),
TAF was not formally measured; superstition and
related beliefs about punishment and responsibil-
ity for one’s thoughts did, however, emerge as
the only metacognitive factors that significantly
influenced (by increasing) the predisposition to
hallucinatory experiences.
One might wonder whether TAF is in fact
equivalent to the more classical concept of “magi-
cal thinking” (Freud 1919; Piaget 1929). After all,
magical thinking, like superstition, is understood
as attributing causal influence on an event to ac-
tions or thoughts that do not, in fact, have any
actual causal relationship to that event (Rothbaum
and Weisz 1988; Zusne and Jones 1989). Based
on this concept of magical thinking, “probability
TAF,” at least, might be considered an example.
Along this line, the empirical research of Einstein
 García-Montes, Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, & Cangas / Superstition in Psychopathology
and Menzies (2004a, 2004b) seems to indicate
that, both in university students and clinical
populations, “probability TAF” could be under-
stood as a particular type of magical thinking. For
example, in a study on the relationship between
magical thinking, TAF, and obsessive–compulsive
symptoms in an undergraduate sample, statistical
analyses showed that “the TAF likelihood scales
and the Superstitiousness scales were related to
obsessive–compulsive symptoms by virtue of their
relationship with the MI [Magical Ideation] scale”
(Einstein and Menzies 2004b, 177). The authors
therefore conclude that “magical thinking has been
shown to be the central construct underpinning
TAF and superstitions” (Einstein and Menzies
2004b, 178).
Like TAF, magical thinking has been associ-
ated with neurotic symptoms in children and
adolescents, including symptoms of OCD, panic,
agoraphobia, separation anxiety, and generalized
anxiety (Bolton et al. 2002; Evans et al. 2002).
Moreover, it would seem that adult patients with
a schizophrenic disorder have a stronger tendency
to magical thinking than either the normal popu-
lation (Tissot and Burnard 1980) or nonschizo-
phrenic psychiatric patients (George and Neufeld
1987). In this regard, magical thinking has been
considered one of the most influential predictors
of later development of a schizophrenic disorder
(Eckblad and Chapman 1983), and has been
linked with the appearance of visual and auditory
hallucinations (Chadwick and Birchwood 1994;
Close and Garety 1998). Although none of these
data show that magical thinking has a causal role
in the appearance of a mental disorder, it does
show that, like TAF, magical thinking is at least
related to certain psychological problems.
One difference between TAF and magical think-
ing is that TAF is usually considered normal in that
it occurs to a greater or lesser extent in everyone
(Shafran and Rachman 2004), even though, on an
extreme level, it can lead to various psychopatho-
logical disorders. Magical thinking, on the other
hand—although seemingly common in children up
to age 11 or 12 (the stage of concrete operations
when they begin to distinguish clearly between
fantasy and reality [Piaget 1929])—is supposedly
found among adults only in so-called primitive
■ 229
cultures and, in the modern West, in populations
with psychopathological disorders. In the DSM
IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association 2000),
magical thinking is one of the defining character-
istics of schizotypal personality disorder.
Empirical research does not, however, seem to
support the notion that magical thinking disap-
pears upon entering adolescence (Bolton et al.
2002), nor that the Western adult population is
free of magical thinking (Subbotsky 2001, 2004;
Subbotsky and Quinteros 2002). In their study
of magical thinking in a rural Mexican popula-
tion and British undergraduates, Subbotsky and
Quinteros (2002) conclude that individuals do not
‘reject’ “magical beliefs and practices” when their
official culture becomes dominated by scientific
rationality:
at a certain level (i.e., in the condition in which the
individual is strongly personally and emotionally in-
volved), the individual can deviate from the beliefs of
technological civilization. When acting at this level, a
person can retreat into practices (like magic) that are
viewed as ‘left behind’ in history by the person’s official
culture and education. (p. 540)
In our opinion, these remarks by Subbotsky and
Quinteros (2002) could be related to José Ortega y
Gasset’s distinction between what he terms “ideas”
and “beliefs” (Ortega y Gasset 1946/2002). Ac-
cording to Ortega y Gasset (1946/2002), ideas are
thoughts about reality, that is, explicit descriptions
we are able to evaluate and examine consciously.
Beliefs, on the other hand, are latent convictions
that play a crucial foundational or background
role in modulating how we actually deal with
things. Thus, when we really believe something,
we do not have an “idea” about it, but simply take
it for granted. Thus, for Ortega y Gasset, whereas
ideas are something the person has, beliefs are part
of a deeper ontological substrate on the basis of
which the persona acts and exists.1
People in developed countries may, then, have
(and operate on the basis of) certain beliefs that are
inconsistent with the explicitly held ideas that are
reflected in their oral responses. Such beliefs, as in-
timate forms of perceiving and dealing with reality,
would be better revealed by what they do than what
they say, that is, by actions rather than words (not
forgetting that saying is also a form of doing).
230 ■ PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
Most psychological research and discussion of
both “magical thinking” and TAF has, however,
concentrated on reported ideas rather than on
“superstition” as a way of acting and feeling, of
living in or relating to the world. In contrast, the
concept of EA (Hayes et al. 1996; Luciano and
Hayes 2001), as analyzed in the following section,
refers directly to behavior (specifically, avoidance
behavior).
Superstition as Behaviour:
Experiential Avoidance
The EA concept is part of a post-Skinnerian
behaviorist theory (Relational Frame Theory) that
is based on basic experimental research on human
language and cognition (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes,
and Roche 2001). The associated therapy, which
has considerable empirical support (Hayes et al.
2006), is known as Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy (Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 1999; Wil-
son and Luciano 2002).
Hayes et al. (1996) define EA as “the phe-
nomenon that occurs when a person is unwill-
ing to remain in contact with particular private
experiences and takes steps to alter the form or
frequency of these events and the contexts that
occasion them” (p. 1154). Although this pattern
of behavior may often be effective in the short
term, it can easily become chronic and, in the
long term, may seriously restrict a person’s way
of life (Luciano and Hayes 2001). Like TAF, EA
was not conceived to explain the phenomenon of
superstition. But whereas TAF has been linked
with “magical thinking” (Berle and Starcevic
2005; Einstein and Menzies 2004a, 2004b), EA
has not, to our knowledge, yet been related to
either magical thinking or superstition.
EA is usually understood, not as a discrete be-
havior, but rather as a behavior class, in Skinnerian
terms: that is, a general pattern or way of dealing
with numerous problems, both psychological and
physical, including emotional, anxiety, eating, and
impulse-control disorders, psychotic symptoms,
and pain (Hayes et al. 2004; Luciano and Valdivia
2006). The factor common to all these problems
would be the presence of a private experience
(thought, feeling, memory, etc.) that the patient
tries to avoid in an attempt to overcome a sense
of anxiety or unease. Although often fruitful in the
short term, such attempts at avoidance may cause
a paradoxical increase in the targeted experiences,
due to the well-known “rebound effect” (Rassin
et al. 2000; Wegner 1989, 1994), namely, the fact
that when subjects are asked to suppress certain
thoughts, this may actually increase the number
of such thoughts.
Another problem associated with such attempts
at systematic avoidance is that they may lead to
a “narrowing” of patient’s life style. A person
who tries to avoid certain private experiences will
probably end up ceasing to do any activity that
could bring about the feared feelings, thoughts,
or memories. This “withdrawal” from certain
activities may further reduce the opportunities for
gratification to which the person would otherwise
have access.
From our perspective, a rigid pattern of EA be-
havior could be described as superstitious because
there is a substantial difference between the subjec-
tive and objective estimates of the results (the core
of Scheibe and Sarbin’s definition, quoted above).
A person who engages in such a rigid pattern of
EA is ultimately trying to control and optimize
what happens in his or her life, for example, to get
along better with people or to speak confidently
to a large audience. The person tries to control
unpleasant private experiences to direct his or her
life more effectively, but only succeeds, in fact, in
having more of the same type of experiences. But
unlike more prototypical forms of superstition,
(e.g., drinking water from a spring to ensure a
happy marriage), EA focuses on an internal event.
The emphasis on the “internal world” characteris-
tic of EA is perhaps a consequence of the “spirit of
the age,” that is, of the modern Western concern
with individuality, private experience, and the
“inner self.” It is worth noting, however, that al-
though the post-Skinnerians who proposed the EA
concept call themselves “contextualists,” they pay
no more than lip service to the role of the “social/
verbal community” and the cultural context. Their
research focuses almost exclusively on laboratory
experiments, and does not consider the important
role of particular social practices and contexts,
such as modernity. This is in surprising contrast
 García-Montes, Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, & Cangas / Superstition in Psychopathology
to with the work of Skinner himself, who did ex-
amine such topics as cultural evolution (Skinner
1971/1986) and psychotherapy as an agent of
social control (Skinner 1953/1986).
Experiential Avoidance and
Phenomenological Analysis
of Emotion: Points of
Agreement and Disagreement
In our opinion, the Sartrian analysis of emotion
shares some of the strong points of EA, but with
several additional advantages. To begin with, both
Sartre and the proponents of EA share a holistic
and contextualist view of behavior. According to
Hayes et al. (2006), psychological events must
be understood “as ongoing actions by the entire
organism interacting in and with historically and
situationally defined contexts. These actions are
whole events that can only be broken up for prag-
matic purposes, not ontologically” (Hayes et al.
2006, 4). Similarly, Sartre opposes any psychology
that would break emotion down into different
domains, such as bodily reactions, emotional
behavior, states of consciousness, and so forth
(Cabestan 2004).
Second, both behaviorism and Sartrian phe-
nomenological analysis see final causes (purposes)
as the key to understanding behavior. Thus Hayes,
referring to philosopher Stephen Pepper’s World
Hypotheses, stresses that “acts like ‘going to the
restaurant for lunch’ have what Pepper calls a
satisfaction (what behavior analysts like myself
might call a consequence or a reinforcer)” (Hayes
1993, 13). For his part, Sartre argues that “emo-
tion can only be understood by seeking meaning
in it. This meaning is by its very nature functional,
which leads us to speak of a purpose of emotion”
(Sartre 1965/1971, 63).
A third point where these perspectives coincide
concerns their shared opposition to an overly
intellectual vision of human experience. Sartre
acknowledges that it is always possible to become
conscious of emotion as an affective structure of
awareness, to notice that we are angry or afraid,
for example (Sartre 1965/1971), yet he argues that
emotional awareness is not primarily reflective or
self-directed in nature, but, rather, is primarily a
■ 231
kind of awareness of the world. Likewise, Hayes
et al. (2006) point out that, although it is not at
all necessary for successful behavior, the verbal
community, at least in the modern Western world,
frequently requires a person to justify his or her
behavior based on thoughts or feelings that pre-
cede or accompany them. This type of practice
may foster a tendency to live “in one’s head”; as
a consequence, one’s behavior may become more
and more rigid and less sensitive to the present
moment.
Despite these theoretical affinities, there are
certain differences which, in our view, make the
Sartrian phenomenological analysis of emotion
more relevant than EA. The first of these is Sartre’s
robust interest in everyday situations, that is, his
focus on the actual personal contexts in which
emotion is inscribed, rather than on experimental
studies in language and cognition (Hayes et al.
2001) that may lack ecological validity (given our
view of psychological events as ongoing actions
of the entire organism interacting in and with a
historically defined context).
Another advantage of Sartre’s analysis of
emotions as magical operations is the emphasis
he places on finalité, or purposiveness. In con-
trast, post-Skinnerian behaviorism has often
downplayed the purposiveness of emotions—and
thoughts—by construing them, not as operants,
but more as reactions associated with certain situ-
ations, either directly through classical condition-
ing, or indirectly through language.
Superstition as Emotion:
The World of Magic
According to Sartre, the world can be experi-
enced by the subject in two different ways. First,
it can appear as an organized complex of utensils
and instruments. In this configuration (which
corresponds to the workshop-world described
in Heidegger’s Being and Time [Cabestan 2004])
the lived meaning of any tool or other element is
profoundly contextual. Each instrument refers
to others, which in turn refer to still others, and
so on, to infinity. This corresponds closely to the
contextualism of the radical behaviorist concep-
tion of the world (Pérez-Álvarez and Sass 2008),
232 ■ PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
in which operant or instrumental behavior acts on
a given configuration of elements (discriminative
stimuli, context) to cause some change (reinforcer)
that, in turn, serves as a condition of possibility of
still other, ensuing configurations. But for Sartre
the world can also appear as a non-instrumental
totality, that is, as directly modifiable, without
the need for real-world action. This would be the
world of magic and of emotion. Sartre describes
emotion as occurring “when the world of uten-
sils suddenly disappears and is substituted by the
magical world” (Sartre 1965/1971, 124). Sartre
illustrates how this transformation from reality
through emotion-magic works with the follow-
ing example:
I lift my hand to pluck a bunch of grapes. I cannot do
so; they are beyond my reach; so I shrug my shoulders,
muttering: ‘they are too green’, and go on my way.
The gestures, words and behavior are not to be taken
at face value. This little comedy that I play under the
grapes, therefore conferring this quality of being ‘too
green’ upon them, serves as a substitute for the action
I cannot complete. (p. 89-90)
This “project” that emotion has, the immediate
and direct transformation of the (experienced)
world, is what, according to Sartre, would dif-
ferentiate emotion from other kinds of affective
life which he also studied, such as mood, nausea,
and anxiety (Cabestan 2004).
Thus, with regard to emotions, Sartre
(1967/1971) distinguishes between passive and ac-
tive forms, for example, fainting in fear versus flee-
ing, but he emphasizes that in both cases the aim
of the emotion is the same, to magically transform
one’s experience of the world (Cabestan 2004).
For Sartre, both the person who faints in fear of a
wild animal and the one who runs away are trying
to negate a real-world object in a magical way. It
may seem as though there is no strictly magical
behavior in flight, but rather instrumental behavior
that attempts to get as far away as possible from
the object feared. But for Sartre, if it were simply
a case of getting away from danger, we would
speak not of fear, but of prudence. For Sartre,
fleeing in fear is similar to the behavior of rookie
boxers who throw themselves at their opponent
with their eyes closed, symbolically, magically,
removing their opponent’s fists (Cabestan 2004).
They do act, but in doing so they also engage in
a form of superstitious denial.
The person affected by emotion thus falls into
his own trap. Sartre compares the magical con-
sciousness into which we fall by emoting to “the
consciousness of sleep, dream, and hysteria” (Sar-
tre 1965/1971, 108). The analogy, as Scarantino
(2005) understands it, derives from the fact that
in such states one tends to take the world as it
appears, as we are inclined to do when the world
appears frightening, infuriating, or sad. Sartre ar-
gues that to believe in magical behavior, one must
be in a highly disturbed state (Sartre 1965/1971).
Or, in other words, the extent to which the person
appears disturbed shows the “seriousness” of emo-
tion. As Cabestan remarks:
Just as there is a spiral of violence or a spiral of obses-
sion, there is a spiral of emotion. Taken up by the world
it has constructed, consciousness believes it; conscious-
ness cannot doubt in the least, and, forgetful of its own
spontaneity, it illusorily discovers in the world the
principle of its captivity; it is, henceforth, the frightful
world that makes it fear. (2004, 92)
In the same way, certain psychopathological
disorders also “capture” a person, who comes to
see his behavior as the only possible action. The
subject with, say, a person with OCD, would see
his compulsions not as voluntary or otherwise
under his own control, but rather as mechanical
behavior that is somehow imposed upon him.
Thus, just as the person who fears has the sense
that, not his fear, but certain frightening features of
the world are making him afraid, so the individual
with OCD will feel that, not his own perspective,
but the “contaminated” world is forcing him to
constantly wash his hands.
This being the case, we might ask what it is
that moves a person to shift from an instrumen-
tal mode of “being-in-the-world” that obtains
practical-effective results, to a superstitious mode
that changes little objectively and envelops the
subject in his own self-blinding logic. In our view,
the answer to this question lies partly in Sartre’s
conception. According to him:
When the paths laid out for us become too difficult, or
when we cannot discern the paths, we can no longer
remain in such an urgent and difficult world. All the
roads are cut off, but we still have to act. It is then that
 García-Montes, Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, & Cangas / Superstition in Psychopathology
we try to change the world, that is, to live in it as though
the relationship between things and their potentiality
were governed not by deterministic processes but by
magic. (1965/1971, 85)
What is proposed here, then, is the genesis of
emotion–magic as a response to something that
cannot be dealt with otherwise. To a certain extent,
Sartre’s view coincides with that of Malinowski
(1954), who observed that Melanesian island-
ers engaged in magical rituals mostly when they
had to face some situation leading to danger or
uncertainty.
It is surprising, however, that in his Sketch for
a Theory of the Emotions, Sartre did not develop
this concept further. Although his phenomeno-
logical analyses are often brilliant, he seems to
overlook the question of the genesis of those
phenomena. Perhaps if Sartre had gone more in
depth into the thought cited and analyzed in detail
the situations that at a particular historical mo-
ment make it seem to a person that all the roads
are cut off, a new perspective on emotion could
have emerged. Such a new perspective could not
be very far from Averill’s conception of emotions
as social roles. Following Averill, “emotions are
responses that have been institutionalized by so-
ciety as a means of resolving conflicts within the
social system” (1980, 37). Thus, as we see it, the
Sartrian analysis of emotions would benefit from a
sociocultural perspective emphasizing the conflicts
that envelop persons within particular historical
situations. Such a perspective would go beyond
phenomenology, as typically conceived, by situat-
ing a person’s experience within the framework of
his historical and social context (Pérez-Álvarez &
Sass, 2008). We consider one possible application
of this approach in the next section.
Superstition as a Cultural
Form
To begin with, it should be stressed that ways
of being superstitious, such as in developing
psychological problems, or feeling emotions, are
culturally governed. It is not only that cultural
factors affect the incidence of superstition, psycho-
pathology, or emotion, but that culture functions
as a kind of formal cause in the sense of providing
■ 233
models for the construction of such phenomena
(Devereux 1970/1973; Pérez-Álvarez 2006; Pérez-
Álvarez et al. 2008).
As far as superstition is concerned, it seems
evident that certain institutionalized ways of
“being superstitious” can be linked to the rest of
a culture’s institutions. Steiner (1944/2006) men-
tions the example of a small Catholic village in the
Alps in which it is the custom, if a part of the body
or organ is diseased, to make a wax model of that
body part and leave it in front of the image of a
particular saint to be cured. Here we are clearly
dealing, not with simple individual behavior, but
rather with standardized behavior, a kind of ritual
whose elements cannot be separated out and stud-
ied in isolation from their sociocultural context.
Consequently, Steiner (1944/2006) would not be
inclined to call such behavior “superstitious,” al-
though he does find others, such as throwing salt
over one’s shoulder which could be labeled “su-
perstitious,” because, in his opinion, they have no
relationship with social norms. In our opinion, this
distinction Steiner draws between behavior that is
part of a certain sociohistorical fabric (which he
considers non-superstitious) and mere individual
behavior (which can be superstitious) is difficult
to sustain. As Ratner points out:
Individuals thus selectively draw from their culture as
well as being organized by it. This selective utilization
of one’s cultural milieux allows for individual differ-
ences in thinking, feeling and behaving. . . . However
real such individual variations are, their variety must
not be exaggerated. Individuals do not freely create
behaviour. (1993, 178)
We, therefore, understand that the best way to
distinguish the superstitious nature of behavior
cannot be by determining whether it is social or
individual. It seems rather that each culture has
its own ways of being superstitious, and that such
forms are interwoven, in one way or another, into
the socio-historical context in which people, and
their conflicts, are situated. For, as Scheibe and
Sarbin (1965) note:
It is as if each culture presents its participants with
a rule book with standard beliefs about what leads
to what. These standard beliefs may be regarded as
major premises that stand ready—under conditions of
uncertainty—to instantiate a potentially threatening
234 ■ PPP / Vol. 15, No. 3 / September 2008
or disturbing event in such a way as to bring it under
control. (p. 151)
Thus, for example, a quite widespread form
of superstition in Western societies would be
to consider control over one’s emotions and
thoughts to be crucial for successful living. This
type of superstition—more “privatized” than the
superstitious behaviors of other eras—fits in per-
fectly with a society that is highly technological,
individualized, and secular, with bureaucratized
and impersonal institutions. In such a society
(as, perhaps, in most societies), individuals may
have little control over their environment, yet an
important role is typically attributed ideologi-
cally to individual autonomy and the “internal”
world. It is understandable that, in a context of
this type, people tend to act on the only things they
can change, at least in the short term, which are
their thoughts and their emotions. In this respect,
OCD could be understood as a disorder that
manifests superstitious forms—individualized,
private, and secular—that are typical of modern
societies. Related to this, it is worth mentioning
that Mancini, D’Olimpio, and Cieri (2004) found,
in a sample of normal volunteers, that an increase
in perceived personal influence induces slowness,
hesitation, and checking behaviors, without
enhancing performance. Expectation of failure
also exacerbates obsessive-like behaviors, again
without affecting performance. So it seems that
certain features that characterize life in Western
societies (a strong sense of personal responsibility
combined, at least in many people, with little real
expectation of success) may be playing a role in
maintaining psychological disorders such as OCD
and the suffering they cause.
Of course, this would not be the only psycho-
pathological phenomenon, nor the only form of
superstition, of a society such as the one described.
Altering one’s consciousness through the ingestion
of some psychoactive substance, or seeking an
exaggerated (and culturally specific; see de Rouge-
mont [1983]) kind of romantic love that allows the
world to be seen “through rose-tinted glasses”—
these too can be ways of bringing about changes
that are more apparent than real, more magical
than effective. Because they cause changes that are
subjective in nature (e.g., euphoria, a positive view,
heightened self-confidence), Peele (1982) believes
that love, sex, and drugs may, in certain cases,
be examples of what he calls “magical solutions
to life.” Thus, as argued by Peele (1982), the use
of alcohol and other drugs may have a magical
character when the intention is to flee from some
anxiety-inducing situation. In such cases, as long
as the effect of the drug lasts, the person’s percep-
tion of the situation may be changed. However,
once the effect has passed, reality returns to what
it was before substance consumption, in line with
Sartre’s proposal of emotions as magical opera-
tions. A similar argument could be made about
a person who has to have sex to avoid certain
emotional states or who needs repeatedly to fall in
love to be able to confront each day with a sense of
hope. We find, then, that such “magical solutions
to life” seem to fit Scheibe and Sarbin’s (1965)
definition of superstition as instances in which the
individual’s subjective estimate of the results of
some action or attitude seem very different from
a more objective, scientific, or inclusive estimate
of the effect of that action or attitude.
Furthermore, in our culture, magical solutions
to life’s problems are strongly promoted by the
advertising industry (Williamson 1978) and, in the
field of mental health, by antidepressant advertis-
ing (Stepnisky 2007). Such advertising typically
suggests (especially in the United States) that the
consumption of antidepressants, as if by magic,
will provide you with a new “self,” free of the bur-
dens and imperfections of the present. As pointed
out by Stepnisky from a narrative perspective:
In contrast to, for example, religious and psychoanalytic
narratives that sought to incorporate incomprehensible
and disturbing experiences into the ongoing story of
self, antidepressants are presented as the kind of tech-
nology that allows people to skip over, or put aside,
distressing components of their self. Antidepressants
are magical in the sense that they help people perform
feats of self-completion that in other contexts would
require exhaustive and challenging self-examination
and narrative reconstruction. (2007, 26)
In this regard, it should be noted that certain
currents in psychology also greatly encourage the
implementation of magical solutions, while leaving
the world intact, for example, the “movement for
enhancing self-esteem” (Baumeister et al. 2003;
Ratner 1993), “self-help and positive thinking”
 García-Montes, Pérez-Álvarez, Sass, & Cangas / Superstition in Psychopathology
(Stivers 2001), and many elements of the new
“positive psychology” (Held 2004). Here we will
consider only the “movement for enhancing self-
esteem.”
It may well seem plausible that high self-esteem
could foster the confidence to tackle difficult
problems and enable people to derive satisfaction
from progress and success. Based on assumptions
such as these, numerous school programs have
been developed to improve student performance.
But after an exhaustive review of the literature,
Baumeister et al. (2003) conclude that
the results do not support the view that self-esteem has a
strong causal effect on school achievement. Indeed, most
of the evidence suggests that self-esteem has no impact
on subsequent academic achievement. The few studies
suggesting any positive causal impact of self-esteem gen-
erally found only tiny effects. Some findings even point
(again weakly) in the opposite direction, suggesting that
high or artificially boosted self-esteem may detract from
subsequent performance. (pp. 13–4)
In fact, it seems reasonable to suggest that, if
heightened self-esteem is not based on real accom-
plishment (which is probably rather common), it
may well risk turning into a mere sense of (narcis-
sistic) entitlement. Another potential problem is
that a program for enhancing self-esteem could
have the paradoxical result of exacerbating the
invidiousness of all comparisons, thereby boost-
ing the deflationary effects of any experience of
not being successful. It is arguable, then, that an
increased focus on self-esteem and positive think-
ing might actually contribute—indeed, might have
already contributed—to the twin and (in all like-
lihood) complementary epidemics of narcissism
(Lash 1979; Twenge et al. 2008) and depression
(Elliot and Chambers 2004; Medawar and Hardon
2004) that seem to be endemic in the contempo-
rary Western or developed world.
In this sense we may say that, despite their in-
ward focus, certain of the characteristic modern
ways of pursuing happiness or success may, in
fact, be no less superstitious (and perhaps rather
more counterproductive) than are some of the
more obviously “magical” strategies of many
traditional societies. The notion that working on
one’s own inner psychological state is what is most
crucial in life is now widespread: It has become, in
Ortega’s (1946/2002) terms, both an “idea” and
■ 235
a profoundly determining, foundational “belief.”
But this tendency to overemphasize the subjective
or inner dimension is, in a sense, a form of supersti-
tiousness—one that can easily foster various forms
of self-defeating behavior and experience.
Acknowledgments
This work was financed with a research project
from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technol-
ogy (ref. SEJ2005-24699-E/PSIC) awarded to the
third author.
Note
1. It is worth noting that Ortega’s use of the term “be-
lief” differs from that of Wittgenstein, who discussed a
similar set of issues. Wittgenstein used the term “belief”
to refer to explicitly held notions, roughly the equiva-
lent of Ortega’s “ideas”; he distinguished these from
the presupposed and unquestioned, taken-for-granted
assumptions that constitute the deeper foundation of
our acting (what Ortega calls “beliefs”).
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