Singh Bhrigupati, Sharan Pratap
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Ashoka University.
Psychiatry, Carney Institute for Brain Sciences, Brown University.
Transcult Psychiatry. 2023 Jun;60(3):457-475. doi: 10.1177/13634615221078131. Epub 2022 Feb 24.
In this article, an anthropologist and a psychiatrist examine a Sufi shrine-based concept of affliction known as (an "effect" in Hindi-Urdu, "difficulty" in Arabic) and related practices of healing in urban north India. Rather than being located in an individual body, afflictions are shared, most often within a household or kinship group. Through surveys, clinical assessments, and ethnographic work, we track three different ways in which afflictions move between bodies, and the mechanisms at work in healing processes. Rather than a "collectivist" concept of the psyche, we suggest that a key role of shrine-based therapeutic processes is to manage a "suspicion system," related to experiences of psychic and economic injuries and conflict between intimates and kin. Through a multi-sited research design that moves across a leading Sufi shrine, an urban poor neighborhood in Delhi, and one of India's leading psychiatric facilities, we argue that within -related processes, psychic vulnerabilities are addressed by "re-combining" relations through forms of inter-subjective attunement within a smaller segment of the kin group, potentially making symptoms and the burden of care and conflict more livable. We suggest that shrine-based concepts and practices may be cross-culturally significant, even for secular understandings of the inter-subjective dimensions of mental illness.
在本文中，一位人类学家和一位精神科医生研究了印度北部城市中基于苏菲派圣地的一种痛苦观念，即“塔拉克”（在印地语 - 乌尔都语中意为“一种‘影响’”，在阿拉伯语中意为“困难”）以及相关的治疗方法。痛苦并非存在于个体身体之中，而是常常在一个家庭或亲属群体中共同存在。通过调查、临床评估和人种志研究，我们追踪了痛苦在不同身体之间转移的三种不同方式，以及治疗过程中起作用的机制。我们认为，基于圣地的治疗过程的关键作用并非是塑造一种“集体主义”的心理观念，而是管理一个与心理和经济伤害经历以及亲密关系和亲属之间冲突相关的“怀疑系统”。通过一个跨地点的研究设计，该设计涵盖了一座主要的苏菲派圣地、德里的一个城市贫困社区以及印度一家领先的精神病治疗机构，我们认为在与“塔拉克”相关的过程中，通过在亲属群体的一个较小部分内以主体间协调的形式“重新组合”关系来解决心理脆弱性问题，这可能会使症状以及护理和冲突的负担更易于承受。我们认为基于圣地的观念和做法可能具有跨文化意义，甚至对于从世俗角度理解精神疾病的主体间维度而言也是如此。
