Heidi E Fjeld

Chasing dön spirits in Tibetan medical encounters: Transcultural affordances and embodied psychiatry in Amdo, Qinghai.

Transcultural Psychiatry October 1, 2023 Tawni L Tidwell, Heidi E Fjeld 3 citations

Although spirit possession is generally considered a psychiatric illness, the class of conditions designated as dön (Tib. gdon, "afflictive external influences," often glossed as "spirit affliction") in Tibetan medicine represents a distinctive paradigm for an etiology where physical and mental facets inhere in every illness. This study draws upon ethnographic fieldwork in eastern Tibet to...