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Family Expressed Emotion in a Javanese Cultural Context

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Abstract

This study aims at understanding the emotional milieu of families of psychotic patients, focusing on the concept of expressed emotion (EE). A combination of ethnographic and clinical methodology was employed. During the fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, nine participants diagnosed as having first episode psychosis and their families were followed closely over the course of 1 year in their natural home setting. Through ongoing engagement with families, the researcher was able to gather data on the diversity of family responses to illness. Despite the fact that most families in this research could be considered to have low EE, ethnographic observation provided a more complex and nuanced picture of family relationships. This article discusses four issues concerning EE in relation to Javanese culture: the role of interpretation, the coexistence of criticism and warmth, the interpretation of boundary transgression, and the cultural concept of warmth and positive remark.

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Notes

  1. Lebaran is the Javanese annual festival conducted after 1 month’s fasting during the month on Ramadan. It is also known as bodo.

  2. Some part of this section has been translated into Indonesian and published in Subandi (2008).

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Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks go to all participants and their family members involved in this research who allowed me to come to their houses and shared their experiences. I wish to thank to Professor Robert J. Barrett (Department of Psychiatry, University of Adelaide), Dr. Rodney Lucas (Department of Anthropology, University of Adelaide), and Professor Byron J. Good (Department of Social Medicine and Global Health, Harvard University) for their supervision of my dissertation from which this article is based.

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  1. Faculty of Psychology, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, 55281, Indonesia

    M. A. Subandi

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  1. M. A. Subandi
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Correspondence to M. A. Subandi.

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Subandi, M.A. Family Expressed Emotion in a Javanese Cultural Context. Cult Med Psychiatry 35, 331–346 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-011-9220-4

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