Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-8zxtt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-11T04:22:34.951Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - “The Spirits Enter Me to Force Me to Be a Communist”

Political Embodiment, Idioms of Distress, Spirit Possession, and Thought Disorder in Bali

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2014

By
Robert Lemelson
Edited by
Devon E. Hinton  and
Alexander L. Hinton
Robert Lemelson
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Devon E. Hinton
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Alexander L. Hinton
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, New Jersey
Get access

Summary

Introduction

The question of how to frame extraordinary experiences that resemble the symptoms of schizophrenia or related mental illness, yet have other polyvalent cultural meanings that may make such psychiatric evaluations irrelevant or orthogonal to the lived experience and subjectivity of the person concerned, is one of interest to social scientists and clinicians attempting to interpret the relations among culture, psychiatric illness, and phenomenology. This chapter explores this issue through an in-depth case study of an older man in rural Bali who has struggled for much of his adult life with the intrusion of what he terms “shadows” or apparitions (in Indonesian [Ind.], bayangan).

“Nyoman” is a 53-year-old Balinese Hindu rice farmer. He was born and has lived his entire life in a small rural village located at the center of the southern Balinese rice bowl – a densely settled part of Bali about thirty kilometers north of the capital city Denpasar, and one of the most agriculturally productive areas of Indonesia. This village is situated on a major road linking a number of tourist destinations and has witnessed the massive changes Bali has gone through in the past generation as it has been transformed into Indonesia’s premier vacation spot. Geographically and figuratively, village life bridges vast changes brought on by electrification, nationalization, the impact of mass media, and globalization, on the one hand; and rural time, which is marked by a complex ritual calendar, adherence to village customary law (Ind., adat), and the daily and cyclical routines of wet rice irrigation, on the other. Nyoman still lives in his patrilocal natal family compound with his wife and two adult children and their families, as well as other extended kin. He has worked all his life in the fields, farming several hectares of rice land and occasionally taking additional construction jobs. His wife works in the market selling religious offerings.

Type
Chapter
Information
Genocide and Mass Violence
Memory, Symptom, and Recovery
 , pp. 175 - 194
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Browne, K. (2001). (Ng)amuk revisited: Emotional expression and mental illness in Central Java, Indonesia. Transcultural Psychiatry, 38, 147–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connor, L. (1982). The unbounded self: Balinese therapy in theory and practice. In Marsella, A. (Ed.), Cultural conceptions of mental health and therapy (pp. 251–67). Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connor, L., Asch, P., & Asch, T. (1986). Jero Tapakan: Balinese healer. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cribb, R. (2004). The Indonesian genocide of 1965–66. In Totten, S. (Ed.), Teaching about genocide: Issues, approaches, and resources (pp. 133–42). Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.Google Scholar
Donkin, S., & Williams, P. L. (2003). Neurotoxicity: Toxic responses of the nervous system. In P. L. Williams, R. C. James, & Roberts, S. M. (Eds.), Principles of toxicology (pp. 146–56). New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Dwyer, L. (2004). “Pathetic souls” and restless remains: Ritual politics of reconciliation in Bali, Indonesia. Paper prepared for the seminar Truth, Justice and Redress in Post-Conflict Societies, Harvard University Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, November 1–3.
Dwyer, L., & Santikarma, D. (2004). When the world turned to chaos: 1965 and its aftermath. In Gellately, R. (Ed.), The specter of genocide: Mass murder in historical perspective (pp. 289–306). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ebihara, M. (1968). Svay: A Khmer village. New York: Department of Anthropology, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Eisman, F. (1990). Bali: Sekala and niskala. Berkeley, CA: Periplus Editions.Google Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Geertz, H. (1994). Images of power: Balinese painting made for Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.Google Scholar
Hinton, D. E., Hinton, A., Chhean, D., Pich, V., Loeum, J. R., & Pollack, M. H. (2009). Nightmares among Cambodian refugees: The breaching of concentric ontological security. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 33, 219–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hobart, A. (1997). The people of Bali. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hollan, D., & Wellenkamp, J. (1994). Contentment and suffering: Culture and experience in Toraja. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Howe, L. (1984). Gods, peoples, witches and spirits: The Balinese system of person definition. Bijdragen vor den Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, 140, 193–222.Google Scholar
Jennaway, M. (2002). Sisters and lovers: Women and desire in Bali. New York: Rohan and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Jensen, G., & Suryani, L. K. (1993). The Balinese people: A reinvestigation of character. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Keyes, C. (1977). The golden peninsula: Culture and adaptation in mainland Southeast Asia. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Laderman, C. (1991). Taming the wind of desire: Psychology, medicine and aesthetics in Malay shamanistic performance. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemelson, R. (1999). Re-checking the color of chickens: Indigenous, ethnographic and clinical perspectives on obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome in Bali. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Lemelson, R. (2003). Obsessive-compulsive disorder in Bali: The cultural shaping of a neuropsychiatric disorder. Transcultural Psychiatry, 3, 377–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lemelson, R., Kirmayer, L. J., & Barad, M. (2007). Trauma in context: Integrating biological, clinical and cultural perspectives. In L. Kirmayer, R. Lemelson, & Barad, M., (Eds.), Understanding trauma: Integrating cultural, psychological and biological perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lemelson, R., & Suryani, L. K. (2006). Cultural formulation of psychiatric diagnoses: The spirits, penyakit ngeb and the social suppression of memory: A complex clinical case from Bali. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 30, 389–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mead, M., & Bateson, G. (1942). Balinese character. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Robinson, G. (1998). The dark side of paradise: Political violence in Bali. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ruddick, A. (1986). Charmed lives: Illness, healing, power and gender in a Balinese village. Providence, RI: Department of Anthropology, Brown University.Google Scholar
Sack, H., Clarke, G. N., & Seely, J. (1995). Posttraumatic stress disorder across two generations of Cambodian refugees. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 34, 1160–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Santikarma, D. (1995). Koh ngomong, the Balinese tactic and the spirit of resistance. Fourth International Bali Studies Conference, Sydney University.Google Scholar
Santikarma, D. (2003). Dari stres ke trauma: Politik ingatan dan kekerasan di Bali. Kompas, July 30.
Suryani, L. K. (l984). Culture and mental disorder: The case of bebainan in Bali. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 1, 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wikan, U. (1989). Illness from fright or soul loss: A North Balinese culture-bound syndrome? Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 13, 25–50.CrossRef
Wikan, U. (1990). Managing turbulent hearts: A Balinese formula for living. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×