Post by JaniPost by Steve HayesOne of the speakers, Trevor Majoro, introduced himself as beuing trained
in
Western medicine and also a traditional lealer.
Very interesting! I was just writing a reply to your previous post, in which
I was going to point out that there are studies in the UK, regarding health
service provision for ethnic minority groups, which specifically mention
traditional healers as being more effective, in some cases, than mainstream
medicine. Also, that if there's a strong psychological element involved
which is culturally-specific, this may in part account for the efficacy.
Yes, I think the culturally-specific part is important.
Some 35 years ago I had a letter from a group of do-gooders in America who
wanted to send a bunch of shrinks to Namibia, because they thought there might
not be enough psychotherapeutic resources for people in Namibia, and they
wanted to make good the deficiency.
I replied to the effect that that would probably be as useful as sending
witchdoctors from Namibia to suburban Chucago.
I didn't hear from them again, but the fact is that even in "scientific"
Western medicine there are a great many cultural assumptions that people are
often not aware of, and when it comes to "psychotherapy" the cultural
assumptions become almost overwhelming. "Psychotherapy" that was developed for
Chicago suburbanites is very much tied to their cultural assumptions, and
cannot simply be applied willy-nilly to Namibian pastoralists, just as the
cultural assumptions of Namibian pastoralists would make little sense to
Chicago suburbanites.
And it's not just a black-white thing either. A couple of years after the
Chicago letter I spoke to a white South African Anglican priest who had been
on a course at the Menninger Institute for Religion and Psychiatry in the USA,
and came back saying he didn't think he would be able to apply it, because
South African middle-class whites did not have a culture of paying for
"counselling". Americans might say "my shrink" and "my lawyer", but the
closest that white South Africans would get to that kind of thing would be
saying "my gynae".
I think this quote puts it rather well:
Demonization.
Source: Anderson 1990:256.
"An experience that a premodern person might have understood
as possession by an evil spirit might be understood by a
modern psychoanalytic patient as more mischief from the Id,
and might be understood by a postmodern individual as a
subpersonality making itself heard - might even, if you want
to get really postmodern about it, be recognized as all
three."
And the distance between the West (as represented by the Chicago
psychotherapists) is almost as great from the East (as the following excerpts
show) as it is from the South:
Orthodox psychotherapy.
Source: Hierotheos Vlachos 1994:17.
Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos explains his choice of
title as follows:
"The title 'Orthodox psychotherapy' has been given to the book
as a whole because it presents the teaching of the Fathers on
curing the soul. I know that the term 'psychotherapy' is
almost modern and is used by many psychiatrists to indicate
the method which they follow for curing neurotics. But since
many psychiatrists do not know the Church's teaching or do not
wish to apply it, and since their anthropology is very
different from the anthropology and soteriology of the
Fathers, in using the term 'psychotherapy' I have not made use
of their views. It would have been very easy at some points to
set out their views, some of which agree with the teaching of
the Fathers and others of which are in conflict with it, and
to make the necessary comments, but I did not wish to do that.
I thought that it would be better to follow the teaching of
the Church through the Fathers without mingling them
together."
Orthodoxy & Western psychotherapy.
Source: Schmemann 2000:104.
Discussion with his wife & Fr Tom Hopko about "an Anglican
priest, psychotherapist, who wants to convert to Orthodoxy and
'help' in the field of psychotherapy. I need to sit down and
carefully think through my instinctive aversion to this whole
area with which others are becoming increasingly obsessed.
What stands behind it? What is its attraction? Tentatively
(but I might be quite wrong), it seems to me that the cult of
psychotherapy is difficult to reconcile with Christianity
because it is often based on a monstrous egocentricity, on
preoccupation with one's self. It's the ultimate expression
and product of 'I, myself,' i.e. of the sin from which one
must be saved. Psychotherapy reinforces that basic
egocentricity, which is its basic principle. When
psychotherapy penetrates religious consciousness, it distorts
it. The result is often a search for 'spirituality' as a
distinct entity. Hence, the darkness and narrow-mindedness of
many spiritualists, hence the confustion of teaching, pastoral
work, care of souls, with psychologizing. The principle on
which Christianity is built -- 'Christ saves, revives, cures'
-- is opposed by 'What saves and cures is understanding one's
self.' 'To see one's self in the light of God' is replaced by
'to understand oneself and be cured.'"
Post by JaniAfter I read your post, I found an article on Trevor Majoro,
http://www.vuvuzelaonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=267&Itemid=51
in which he says "the psychological and spiritual importance of traditional
healers is something that is essential in dealing with the issue of
HIV/Aids" although he is also very clear that traditional healing is not
meant to *replace* western medicine where the latter is more effective (as
in, the use of drugs to combat HIV/AIDS).
Thanks for the link, it looks useful.
One of the problems here is that many people believe that Aids is caused by
witchcraft, and their first recourse is therefore to the witchdoctor
(isangoma), and then, possibly to to the herbalist (the term "traditional
healer" encompasses both, and a few more besides).
They might take modern Aids drugs together with traditional medicines, and
these are often incompatible, and can cause serious illness. And even if that
doesn't happen, they may attribute the improvement to the traditional medicine
and stop taking the other drugs, with fatal results.
Post by JaniPost by Steve HayesOne comment he made was that if he gave penicillin to someone who was
allergic, and the person died, that would undoubtedly be regarded as
witchcraft in the world of traditional medicine. Western medicine is more
polite, and merely calls it negligence.
And that works the other way around too; if you hex someone and they die,
western medicine calls it psychology :)
See comments above!
Post by JaniMind you, all that being said, I suspect Matthew wasn't really referring to
traditional healing when he spoke of witch-doctors, but of malificent
*witches*; not quite the same thing.
No, of course not, but there is an enormous amount of confusion about the
subject (some propagated quite deliberately, even in this newsgroup), so it is
worth the effort to try to clarify it, I think.
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk