Folk Therapy Research Articles

沖縄住民における祖先崇拝行動と保健医療行動の関連性に関する質問紙調査

Okinawa prefecture is remote 500 km from southern tip of mainland Japan. The unique characteristics of the traditional culture in Okinawa are ancestor worship which includes various kinds of ceremonies, folk therapy, the Yuta (shairman and traditional healing practitioner) and the great burial tombs. In this study, to clarify how ancestor worship is related to the health/medical behavior of the people in the prefecture, a questionnaire survey was carried out on 176 mothers of students in 4 classes of 6th grade in 2 elementary schools in Urasoe city and in Yomitan village. The frequency of participation of each respondent in anniversaries concerning ancestor worship was used to indicate the magnitude of belief in ancestor worship. The mean of this frequency was higher for Yomitan village than for Urasoe city. The mean was also related to bio-social parameters such as family size, fertility, an extended family household, and the dependency on folk therapy such as the Yuta. It was also revealed that people prefer thinking according to traditional beliefs about ancestors for solving various distress problems such as a serious illness.

La medecine populaire dans le Plateau Central D'Haiti. 2 Inventaire ethnopharmacologique

An ethnomedical and ethnopharmacological research on the traditional use of plants to cure human diseases was carried out in the Thomonde area located in the Central Plateau of Haïti. Part 1 of this publication was an ethnomedical study of the traditional folk therapy system. In this second part, we list 161 local plants, distributed in 64 botanical families, currently used for treating 38 common diseases. These 161 species were collected and identified. Their latin names, local names, local medicinal uses, the used part of the plant and the form of remedy are described.

The Tīsīyāhī klinīk: A nepalese medical centre in an intracultural field of relations

In this paper I present a detailed case study of an exorcist in rural Nepal who has abandoned the explanatory paradigm of exorcism and taken up certain aspects of Brahmanical tradition, medical science and temple healing in order to establish a place of medical resort, called the Tīsīyāhī klinīk. In particular, I investigate the intracultural field of relations of the exorcist and analyse the way in which these different health systems, each with its own domain and powers of explanation, were brought together to form one system at the clinic. In conclusion, I argue that these other health systems served to authenticate and legitimate the folk therapy of the exorcist so that his rural clinic might be seen by villagers as a medical centre of southern Nepal.

"Ex-Gays": Religiously mediated change in homosexuals.

The authors evaluated 11 white men who claimed to have changed sexual orientation from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality through participation in a pentecostal church fellowship. Religious ideology and a religious community offered the subjects "folk therapy" experience that was paramount in producing their change. On the average their self-identification as homosexual occurred at age 11, their change to heterosexual identification occurred at age 23, and their period of heterosexual identification at the time of this study was 4 years. The authors report 8 men became emotionally detached from homosexual identity in both behavior and intrapsychic process; 3 men were functionally heterosexual with some evidence of neurotic conflict. On the Kinsey 7-point sexual orientation scale all subjects manifested major before-after changes. Corollary evidence suggests that the phenomenon of substantiated changed in sexual orientation without explicit treatment and/or long-term psychotherapy may be more more common than previously thought.

An analysis of contemporary East African folk psychotherapy.

In an effort to identify the characteristics of folk psychotherapy that could account for its tenacity in East Africa, a total of 31 Tanzanian shamans were studied. It was found that patients with emotional problems make use of both the folk and Western therapists and that a clear conceptual distinction is made between the services offered. The range of techniques used, style of service delivered, and the fundamental (or underlying) model of causation were all analysed. It was concluded that folk therapy is an effective approach to psychosocial disorders which, in the future, should be considered a dynamic supplement to Western practices. Additionally, based on the appeal of the medicine man, new directions for Western psychotherapy were suggested.

Needed Research in Parent-Child Fixation

THE IDEA of parent-child fixation doubtT less comes from Freud though he seldom or never used the term. For him, the Oedipus Complex was an instinctive and therefore specific and universal form of libido fixation. FlUgel uses the term often and may be largely responsible for its widespread currency. However, the literature contains little rigorous or systematic discussion of the concept. It is commonly used without definition, as if everyone knew its meaning; its implications are not developed; very little careful research has been done. As is true of so much social theory, the general idea of parent-child fixation is found in folklore and colloquial expressions.2 Freud recognized this and found a good Greek myth to typify it. However, one does not need to go to the Greeks. Parental fixation is suggested by such phrases as mama's darling, sissy, tomboy, apron strings, too big for his britches, chip off the ole block, just like his father (or mother), dad can lick your dad, dad is the richest, smartest, strongest, etc., man in the world, I am I owe to my dear old mother, childhood is the happiest time of one's life, and so on. Many proverbs express similar ideas somewhat more sententiously. While not so dramatic as a gory Greek myth, much of this folk-talk probably is closer to social reality. Many adult users of these sayings believe the inherits the traits in question. Most studies of problem children at the turn of the century were based on heredity and instinct under the influence of the recapitulation theory and the then current concepts of biological evolution. little later, mental testing, Mendelian genetics, the semi-mystical instinct theories of MacDougall, and the instinctual psychoanalysis of Freud all contributed to delay the present trend toward a sociological explanation of personality formation and deformation. In i896, E. W. Bohannon made an extensive study of peculiar children. He implied that their traits were almost wholly inherited. In this study, he discovered something which led to his famous paper, Only Child in a Family (i898). Many mothers, school teachers, social workers, and even some social psychologists are still suffering from the effects of this paper, even as they still suffer from Freud and mental testing. Bohannon thought children were the result of procreative weakness and probably were biologically handicapped thereby.3 Whatever may have been true in the nineties, it is almost certainly true today that children are not due to procreative weakness. It probably is true that most of the social and biological traits of Bohannon's children were due to socioeconomic status and parent-child relations rather than to anything biologically or sociologically inherent in the only child situation. We now know that children are not doomed either to social maladjustment or biological inferiority.4 1J. C. Fligel, The Psycho-Analytical Study of the Family. London: International Psycho-Analytical Press, 1921, esp. 226 ff. As early as page 5I, he states that parent-fixation is a common usage for the Oedipus-Electra (cross-sex) form of fixation. 2 some time, I have been working on a paper which attempts to show that many psychopathic and some sociopathic concepts have counterparts in the partial truths of folklore, adage, proverb, slang, and cliche. Much of these sayings is obvious nonsense but there is also muGh sound observation in this folk psychopathology and therapy. similar relation exists between weatherwisdom and meteorology. See W. J. Humphreys, Weather Proverbs and Paradoxes. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1923. 'E. W. Bohannon, A Study of Peculiar and Exceptional Children, Pedagogical Seminary and Journal of General Psychology. October, 1896, 4: 3-60; Only Child in a Family, ibid., April, I898, 5:475-496. 4Norman Fenton, Only Child, Journal of General Psychology. December, I928, 446-456. The best general summary of the literature on this subject I have seen is in Jessie Bernard, American