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It critiques explanations for the phenomenon offered in the existing historiography and whether this can be explained as a psychiatric diagnosis. It concludes that the berserker cannot be simply defined as a culturally bound or other psychiatric syndrome, or accounted for by psychogenic drugs alone. Instead, it proposes that berserk frenzy constituted a transitory dissociative state shared among a small warband steeped in religious\/spiritual ideology. In entering this state, the psyche of the berserker was reconstituted in an almost archetypal pattern. Further research is required into this phenomenon in other contexts, including modern conflicts.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/0957154x211014115","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,5,12]],"date-time":"2021-05-12T06:43:17Z","timestamp":1620801797000},"page":"308-322","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Wearing the wolf skin: psychiatry and the phenomenon of the berserker in medieval Scandinavia"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"32","author":[{"given":"Michael","family":"Heath","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Maidstone Hospital, Kent, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Max","family":"Cooper","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,5,12]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-0957154X211014115","unstructured":"Adshead G (2015) Things of Darkness: The Nature of Human Violence. 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