Taming the wind of desire : psychology, medicine, and aesthetics in Malay shamanistic performance / Carol Laderman.

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.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.

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 cere

Notes de l'auteur

Laderman Carol :

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).

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An elegant and convincing account of a major shamanistic genre, the "Main Peteri" performances of the Malay Peninsula. In the course of these performances, healers place patients in trance and explore the nature of their personality types. These types, together with the myths and stories surrounding each, powerfully express to each person his or her nature, to be lived with and compensated for, not abandoned. The performances also involve long dialogues between healer and an interlocutor, which are entertaining and instructive to the audience. Laderman successfully combines the detailed analysis of the content of these performances with a persuasive analysis of how they are effective. Of special note are the annotated texts of three performances that make up the second half of the book. These texts will convey to any reader the humor and creativity of the healer. Suitable for undergraduates and above.-J. R. Bowen, Washington University

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