Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
June 1, 2023
Boon-Ooi Lee, Laurence J. Kirmayer
7 citations
While some early studies suggested that spirit mediums were psychiatrically ill individuals who found a culturally sanctioned role, subsequent work has found that they are generally in good physical and mental health. While the calling to be a healer often involves an initiatory illness, practitioners go on to play demanding social roles, suggesting that involvement in mediumship may be...
Transcultural Psychiatry
December 1, 2020
Boon-Ooi Lee, Laurence J. Kirmayer
41 citations
This article explores the processes of transformation of the self in dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese spirit mediumship in Singapore, drawing on more than a decade of ethnographic research. In dang-ki healing, it is believed that a deity possesses a human, who is called a dang-ki, to help clients (i.e., devotees). Through the dang-ki, clients can interact with powerful deities in ways that...
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
September 1, 2016
Boon-Ooi Lee
39 citations
Since spirit possession in mediumship and shamanism resembles psychotic symptoms, early researchers perceived spirit mediums and shamans as psychiatric patients whose psychopathology was culturally sanctioned. However, other researchers have not only challenged this assumption, but also proposed that spirit possession has transformative benefits. The idiom of spirit possession provides cultural...
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
March 1, 2010
Boon-Ooi Lee, Laurence J. Kirmayer, Danielle Groleau
This study focuses on the therapeutic process and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki, a form of Chinese shamanistic healing, in Singapore. It aims to understand the healing symbols employed in dang-ki, whether or not patients find them helpful and whether their perceived helpfulness can be explained by the symbolic healing model (Dow, Am Anthropol 88(1):56-69, 1986; Levi-Strauss, Structural...