Theatres
of the Mind
YOU ARE ONLY AS HEALTHY AS YOUR IDEA OF WHO YOU ARE
The
education I received as a student of Anthropology in London was in my opinion
is the best Education I was given and I was able to receive it. I had read
Medicine and had become dutifully bound to remember everything and had done well
in my examinations. The nagging question reminded, the Cartesian dualism of
Health (Disease Care) and the neglect of the patient as an important player. An
encounter with Native American Indians (Meskwakia) made me realize that all the
biomedical knowledge is not sufficient for me to follow the path I had decided,
to work with Indigenous peoples around the world.
I
studied Anthropology with a major in Medical Anthropology in London.
I
voraciously read all the books recommended as I was entering another world and
vocabulary and another way of thinking from the biomedical orientation and
certainty to the world of lived in chaos and uncertainty.
I
think it was my teacher Cecil Helman from Cape Town who had recommended that I
read the book by the New Zealand/British psychiatrist Joyce McDougall
From
her obituary, she died aged 91 in 2011
In Theatre of the Mind: Illusion and Truth On the
Psychoanalytical Stage (1982), she went back to her favourite metaphor,
presenting patients enacting fantasies on a kind of inner stage, in response to
the pain of earlier parts of their life. The perverse sexual act functions like
a dream, a kind of hallucinatory creation of an alternative reality and serves
as a solution to avoid painful internal conflicts.
In a landmark contribution to the study of psychosomatics,
Theatre of the Body: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Psychosomatic Illness (1989),
McDougall presented a bold revision of the approach to the question of the
relationship between the mind and the body. She created the term
"disaffectation", a form of what was later to be known as alexithymia
– the inability to put words to feelings – to describe those who had
experienced overwhelming emotion that threatened to cause a breakdown in their
sense of identity. Such individuals, unable to repress the ideas linked to
emotional pain, simply ejected them from consciousness by "pulverising all
trace of feeling, so that an experience which has caused emotional flooding is
not recognised as such and therefore cannot be contemplated". These
patients were not suffering from an inability to experience or express emotion,
but from "an inability to contain and reflect upon an excess of affective
experience".
I
enjoyed the books but what still sticks with me are our outward manifestations
of Identity and also the role we assign our minds to conduct our daily affairs
and how these things affect our health.
Face
is the window to the mind, the bard was quoted as saying but in this postmodern
state of affairs, our faces do not betray our identities or our ways of
thinking. The Question where are you from has no meaning to many people and
also it does not define any budding relationships or romances. But certainly
WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE FROM? Would open a box inside the person.
In
this modern day and age we are open and tolerant and of course to have these
neutral identities and nurtured by ourselves is very important.
I
see this among Muslims living in the West (or Malaysia and recently in Cambodia and
Thailand). By dressing in a certain way, they are closing the possibilities of
interactions with the wider world we live in and also the chance to learn from
each other.
This
certainly creates conflict, which is later expressed in the bodies of the
person.
I
wear a Longyi and a shirt and in Yangon no one questions my origins. A small
investment of about 10 dollars and you can be Burman too (I can.). More Muslims
wear Hijabs and Burqas in FRANCE than their original countries such as Morocco.
What was traditional once upon a time now is made to manipulate the identity
and the person you are. Obviously if you are in KL and you see a man wearing
religious clothes, whether the saffron of a Brahmin, or the Malay traditional
dress, we are not expecting really a discussion on Madness by Foucault but we expect
a discourse about Mahler from a short and shirt clad Chinese intellectual.
Sadhguru
had written about how to be a director of your own mind. How can you do that if
you can’t go beyond the first step, that of your dress? Dress as Division
rather than pride or humanity or interest in the other while claiming to be the
other.
These
are the thoughts when I was studying in London, a most cosmopolitan society on
earth, where Saudi Arabian Post graduate students said they really don’t have
to learn much as it is already been exposed in the Koran.
I
asked my teacher, Cecil, how come so many Jews are so prominent in the field of
Anthropology
He
replied
Anthropology
is the study of human beings and understands the conflict of being the other,
who is best, suited to study the OTHER, than us, the Jews, who have been
treated as Other for millennia.
How
do these conflicts lead to ill health? I have many examples but will illustrate
one or two.
If
you can answer the following health related questions, with a cross-cultural
anthropological understanding, I commend you for your openness.
Who
has the highest rate of Cardiovascular Disease in the USA?
If
I were to say to that it is the migrants from India Pakistan Bangladesh Sri Lanka,
you have to open your mind and find an answer.
Can’t
be the religion
Sri
Lankans are Buddhist
Indians
in the majority are Hindu
Pakistanis
and Bangladeshis are Muslim.
It
has to be with the loss of identity or the striving for some imagined identity
created by the pressures of living in the USA
Why
are the Malays more obese than Indians and Chinese in Malaysia and hold the
dubious honour of having the fattest kids in Asia?
This
in face of their favoured Bumiputra status and access to services from the
government.
Identity
if not well-understood can create conflict and if you have not resolved this
within yourself, this conflict can lead to ill health.
Listen
to Sadhguru even if you are Muslim or Buddhist. I am willing to listen to Dalai
Lama or Sadhguru or Giles de Leuze as long as I am able to understand their
reasoning. If I cannot understand it, the problem is not with them, but with
me.
Two greats of French Philosophy, DeLeuze left and Foucault right . You may recognize some others.
Each
one of us have a scriptwriter in our heads, as I write this the script writer
directs the words. When I talk to others, the scriptwriter is the one who
sculpts the words that comes out of my mind.
When
you have a problem either with comprehension of what is happening outside of
you, or what is happening inside of you, it is as if you have a metaphoric form
of schizophrenia, in which the scriptwriter packs up his PC and leaves your
mind and brain and the stage is empty. The other actors or the audience bored
by the absence of your scriptwriter pack up and leave to.
Without
understanding why
You
begin to eat industrialized food
Drink
a bit too much wine or spirits
Worse
still a little bit of experimentation with drugs
As
nature abhors a vacuum ..
Why
is that heart attacks have become quite common in some parts of Asia, why do
you see young people struck down by Stroke
You
cannot always look for a biological answer but look deep and find the
underlying cause that is causing the biology of your body to misbehave.
A gift from my friend YMC in KL .
On page 50, Sadhguru says:
The quality of our lives is determined by our ability to respond to the varied complex situations that we encounter. If the ability to respond with intelligence, competence, and sensitivity is compromised by a compulsive or reactive approach, we are enslaved by the situation. It means we have allowed the nature of our life experience to be determined by our circumstances, and not by us.
Ever since I had been introduced to the Yogic Philosophy by Vandana Yadav when she was visiting KL in 2009, I have marvelled at the similarity between the philosophy of the American Indian and the Oriental mystic teachings.
The quality of our lives is determined by our ability to respond to the varied complex situations that we encounter. If the ability to respond with intelligence, competence, and sensitivity is compromised by a compulsive or reactive approach, we are enslaved by the situation. It means we have allowed the nature of our life experience to be determined by our circumstances, and not by us.
Ever since I had been introduced to the Yogic Philosophy by Vandana Yadav when she was visiting KL in 2009, I have marvelled at the similarity between the philosophy of the American Indian and the Oriental mystic teachings.
It
is coming up to 4 pm in Siem Reap and I am eager to leave for KL in two days
time to spend some time with my best friend in Asia and her entourage.
