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Ratings: ★★★★★ (4.9 / 5)
Genre: Anthropology, Psychoanalysis, Religious Studies, Sri Lankan Studies

Book Review:
Medusa's Hair is a landmark work in psychological anthropology by one of Sri Lanka's most distinguished scholars, Gananath Obeyesekere. In this brilliant and deeply insightful essay, Obeyesekere takes us to the pilgrimage center of Kataragama in southeastern Sri Lanka, where a new class of Hindu-Buddhist ecstatic priests and priestesses have emerged, their long locks of matted hair serving as a powerful personal symbol of their devotion.

Through detailed case studies of individuals who engage in fire-walking, tongue-piercing, hook-swinging, and trance-induced prophesying, Obeyesekere explores the complex relationship between personal experience and cultural symbolism. He challenges the conventional distinction between personal and cultural symbols, showing instead how they are always in dynamic reciprocity. The matted hair (like the serpents of Medusa) becomes a symbol that speaks both to the individual's inner psychological world and to the publicly shared religious culture.

Praised by Jacques Maquet as ''a remarkable and important book'' that addresses fundamental questions in the social sciences, and by Religious Studies Review as ''exceptionally intelligent,'' this work makes a provocative advance in our understanding of possession states, religiosity, and the symbolism of guilt.

For anyone interested in anthropology, psychoanalysis, South Asian religions, or the nature of religious experience itself, Medusa's Hair is an essential and thought-provoking read. It is a testament to Obeyesekere's theoretical sophistication and his profound concern with the relationship between public culture and individual emotion.