Managing Distress
by Marine Carrin

This volume is based on papers read during a session on 'Therapeutic Cults' at the 13th European Conference of Modern South Asian Studies, Toulouse, France, from 31 August to 3 September 1994. The contributors to this volume draw on anthropology as well as psychotherapy in their case studies from South and South-East Asia. Possession, in various forms, is at the core of such healing rituals. Exploring multiple therapy systems, including allopathy, astrology and exorcism, this book shows that healing rituals allow communication between cultural codes. Acculturation may play a crucial role both as a source of disorder and a way of restoring harmony.

About the Author:

MARINE CARRIN, a senior researcher of the CNRS based at Toulouse, has worked among the Santals of Bengal and Orissa since the early seventies, and is the author of La fleur et l'os, on Santal ritual and symbolism, and Enfants de la Deesse, dealing, with marginal priesthood on the frontier of tribal and caste society. She is currently working on ritual and the image of the forest in coastal Karnataka.