Taming the Wind of Desire
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A01=Carol Laderman
aesthetics
ancient greece
anthropology
Author_Carol Laderman
body and soul
Category=JHM
Category=JMT
Category=MKZ
comparative studies of health systems and medical care
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
harmony
healing
healing ceremony
healing seance
humans and spirits
illness
india
indigenous medical tradition
indigenous peoples
inner winds
islam
japan
malay medical lore
malay medicine
malay shaman
medicine
multicultural
muslim
performance
performance of healing
psychology
relive pain
shamanism
southeast asia
spirit world
trance
Product details
- ISBN 9780520082588
- Weight: 544g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 10 Mar 1993
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Charged with restoring harmony and relieving pain, the Malay shaman places his patients in trance and encourages them to express their talents, drives, personality traits--the "Inner Winds" of Malay medical lore--in a kind of performance. These healing ceremonies, formerly viewed by Western anthropologists as exotic curiosities, actually reveal complex multicultural origins and a unique indigenous medical tradition whose psychological content is remarkably relevant to contemporary Western concerns. Accepted as apprentice to a Malay shaman, Carol Laderman learned and recorded every aspect of the healing seance and found it comparable in many ways to the traditional dramas of Southeast Asia and of other cultures such as ancient Greece, Japan, and India. The Malay seance is a total performance, complete with audience, stage, props, plot, music, and dance. The players include the patient along with the shaman and his troupe. At the center of the drama are pivotal relationships--among people, between humans and spirits, and within the self. The best of the Malay shamans are superb poets, dramatists, and performers as well as effective healers of body and soul.
Carol Laderman is Professor and Chair of the Anthropology Department at the City College of the City University of New York and the author of Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia (California, 1984).
