Spirit Mediumship and Mental Health: Therapeutic Self-transformation Among Dang-kis in Singapore

Abstract

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 therapeutic for the practitioner. This study focuses on dang-ki healing, a form of Chinese spirit mediumship practiced in Singapore to explore whether participation in dang-ki healing is therapeutic for the mediums. We interviewed eight dang-kis from five temples about their life trajectories and assessed their mental health status with standardized psychological questionnaires. Most of the dang-kis did not appear to suffer from clinically significant emotional distress. Their narratives suggest that involvement in dang-ki mediumship may have therapeutic effects in which the embodied experience of self plays a central role. The dang-kis experienced changes in social identity, bodily experiences during spirit possession, and their overall sense of self through recurrent possession rituals. In general, the practice of spirit mediumship illustrates how the experiences and meanings of the self are constructed and reconstructed through body-world relations in ways that may confer a sense of wellness and social efficacy.

Appendices

Appendix

Mr. E’s Initiatory Story

When he was about 16 years old, Mr. E’s mother became confused and disoriented with medically unexplained symptoms after his father’s death. She consulted a deity and was told that she had been possessed and was destined to become a dang-ki. She subsequently trained as a medium under a dang-ki. Despite his mother’s experience, Mr. E did not believe in dang-ki healing and was baptized as a Christian at the age of 24.

At the age of 34, Mr. E began to suffer from marital problems, unemployment and financial difficulties. After his mother died the following year, he slipped into a depression with suicidal ideation. At a Taoist ritual performed for his late mother, he suddenly collapsed and fell to the ground. He recalled: “When lying on the floor, I was still aware of the surroundings. The only thing is that… I was unable to speak and move.” He regained his normal state after about 15 min. The Taoist priest interpreted the fall as a sign of liak-ki, which Mr. E angrily rejected: “I said nonsense! I am a staunch Christian, I pray to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit… I speak in tongues… How can I be a medium?” He believed he had fainted because of stress. Although speaking in tongues may be associated with traumatic experiences (Kennedy and Drebing 2002), Mr. E’s did not have any history of trauma before his baptism. When asked, he said that he was not traumatized by his father’s death.

After this incident, Mr E encountered many strange experiences at home, which he believed were induced by demons. His family members told him that he muttered unintelligibly to himself; he was preoccupied with death and kept talking about deceased people. “I didn’t know when the spirits would come… They simply came and then they left.” An exorcism performed by his church failed to help him. “I was very confused, hopeless… I didn’t know what I was doing. My wife and other people thought that I must be sick and advised me to see a doctor.” At the psychiatric hospital, he did not reveal his possession experiences for fear of being “labelled crazy”. Since he was not responsive to psychiatric treatments, his aunt persuaded him to consult the dang-ki who had trained his late mother. At the temple, the dang-ki said that his mother’s deity wanted him to continue the lineage of the mediumship because she had died before completing her “contract”. With no other sources of help to turn to, Mr. E reluctantly entered mediumship training.

Although he initially interpreted his possession experience from a Christian perspective as demonic, after becoming a dang-ki, he reinterpreted it as luan-ki (; chaotic possession). Luan-ki is caused by chao-bhok-shins (), which is a form of spirit possessing humans, non-human organisms, and non-living things. It can be evil or benign. He also reinterpreted his fall at his late mother’s ritual as a sign of liak-ki, which “opened” his body not only to a deity but also to chao-bhok-shins. He believed his mother had also suffered from luan-ki:

After my mother was caught by the god, many chao-bhok-shins came to disturb her… Her saliva dripped into the food that she was cooking… she even spat into it. She also bathed 18 times in a day… which means you’re not steady. During luan-ki, your soul and your spirit is very open, anyone can come in.

These reinterpretations suggest that Mr. E attempted to achieve a coherent sense of narrative identity by constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing his possession experiences based on various collective folk narratives. We can interpret Mr. E’s fall at his late mother’s ritual and subsequent luan-ki as pathological possession triggered by life stressors and grief. Chao-bhok-shins are embodied cultural meanings of discontinuities in the sense of self and agency. Expressing his personal experience in this cultural frame helped Mr. E to “bring some order to and control over” his psychological conflicts (Obeyesekere 1990:10). Mr. E felt reassured that his deities had protected him from chao-bhok-shins, and he was now in better control over his possession experiences. His life had become “smoother”. He had learned to control his temper, had become more energetic, was no longer restless, and had a more positive outlook on life. His marital relationship had also improved, and he enjoyed a better financial situation.

In his practice, Mr. E was concurrently possessed by three deities from his shrine. Mr. E said that this “3-in-1” possession was rare as dang-kis were usually possessed by one deity at a time. This form of simultaneous possession is reminiscent of the Christian concept of the Trinity. Asked if he still believed in Christianity after becoming a dang-ki, Mr. E replied:

If you say I don’t believe [in Christianity], it would not be true; after all, I had been a Christian for 8 years. I still believe in Christianity to some extent… but not totally… because I believe that every religion is good for people… I don’t dare to go back to church as I’m now a medium. I shouldn’t serve two masters at the same time. Now, since I am a dang-ki, I should have faith in Taoism, my current religion.

Mr. E seemed to reduce his cognitive dissonance by assimilating his longstanding Christian faith into the framework of mediumship. Through this embodied conciliation, he has developed a more cohesive self-identity. At the age of 37, he formally became a dang-ki with a more controlled form of possession:

When you want to be possessed by a god, you must make sure you agree to it. After becoming a dang-ki, we have proper control… and a proper set of rules. You should only go into a trance if you want to summon a god. He shouldn’t come if you didn’t invite him.

Despite his elevated scores on the CPAI-2 clinical scales, Mr. E did not appear to be clinically disturbed during the interview. At the time the research interview was conducted, he had slightly elevated DES score (11.07) but did not appear to have had any pathological possession beyond his initiation experiences; however, his scores on the CPAI-2 “Distortion of Reality” and “Paranoia” clinical scales were above the clinical cutoff. By engaging in mediumship, Mr. E may have improved his daily functioning even though he continued to experience clinical and subclinical symptoms. His experience may be an illustration of how it is possible to recover in mental disorder rather than from mental disorder (Davidson and Roe 2007).