Therapeutic Processes and Perceived Helpfulness of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dang-Ki</Emphasis> (Chinese Shamanism) from the Symbolic Healing Perspective

This study focuses on the therapeutic process and perceived helpfulness of dang-ki, a form of Chinese shamanistic healing, in Singapore. It aims to understand the healing symbols employed in dang-ki, whether or not patients find them helpful and whether their perceived helpfulness can be explained by the symbolic healing model (Dow, Am Anthropol 88(1):56–69, 1986; Levi-Strauss, Structural anthropology. Basic Books, New York, 1963). Although many researchers have applied this model to explain the efficacy of shamanistic healings, they did not directly provide empirical support. Furthermore, the therapeutic process of a shared clinical reality as proposed by the model may be achievable in small-scale traditional societies that are culturally more homogeneous than in contemporary societies that are culturally more diversified due to globalization and immigration. Patients may hold multidimensional health belief systems, as biomedicine and alternative healing systems coexist. Thus, it would be interesting to see the relevance and applicability of the symbolic healing model to shamanistic healing in contemporary societies. In this study, ethnographic interviews were conducted with 21 patients over three stages: immediately before and after the healing and approximately 1 month later. The dang-ki healing symbols were identified by observing the healing sessions with video recording. Results show that dang-kis normally applied more than one method to treat a given problem. These methods included words, talismans and physical manipulations. Overall, 11 patients perceived their consultations as helpful, 4 perceived their consultations as helpful but were unable to follow all recommendations, 5 were not sure of the outcome because they had yet to see any concrete results and only 1 patient considered his consultation unhelpful. Although the symbolic healing model provides a useful framework to understand perceived helpfulness, processes such as enactment of a common meaning system and symbolic transformation are complex and dynamic, and may be carried over several healing sessions.     

The Power of Words: Healing Narratives among Lubavitcher Hasidim

The debate concerning the relation between magic and religion has a long history. Instead of separating religion and magic as separate domains, recent work on ritual examines how symbolic and pragmatic acts interrelate. After discussing current theories of religious healing and, specifically, the power of words in healing, this article examines how a group of Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews deals with sickness and the relation between the group's use ofbiomedicine and religious healing. According to the group's mystical text, Tanya, there is an intrinsic link between the physical and the spiritual and between religious words and the body. At times of sickness Lubavitchers communicate with the Rebbe, who instructs them to examine their religious texts. The manipulation of religious words mediated by the Rebbe results in bodily healing. The data confirm the Malinowskian hypothesis that symbolic measures come into play when pragmatic actions fail. Can Lubavitchers be characterized as holding a well-defined model of the healing process? [Lubavitch, Tanya, text, healing]     

Objectified Selves: An Analysis of Medicines in Andean Sacrificial Healing

This analysis of medicines used in a Quechua soul-calling ritual in the southern Peruvian Andes demonstrates that the items in sacrificial bundles (despachos) embody the identity of patients. The manipulation of these medicinal objects gives insight into the meaning of the concept of embodiment in the Andean cultural context and expands Western conceptions of embodiment. An examination of the material representation of the body, the sacrificial object, illuminates the components of embodied identity in this particular cultural context. Analysis of the manipulation of medicines further illuminates the potency and efficacy of symbolic healing to transform the phenomenological world of the patient. [ethnomedicine, Andes, embodiment, symbolic healing]     

Transforming Signs. Iconicity and Indexicality in Russian Healing and Magic

In this article, the ethnography of magic and healing in contemporary Russia is analyzed using the basic concepts of Peircian semiotics. Indigenous terms of affliction used in magical diagnostics of misfortunes, as well as pantomimic gestures in hand healing are regarded as iconic and indexical signs. Their mode of signification is pragmatic presentation rather than textual representation, which underlies their capacity to effect transformations in consciousness. It is shown, however, that it is cultural conventions of their symbolic meanings that form these signs as icons and indexes.     

Aboriginal spirituality: Symbolic healing in Canadian prisons

Symbolic healing is a complex phenomenon that is still relatively poorly understood. This paper documents a process of symbolic healing which is occurring in Canadian penitentiaries, and which involves Aboriginal offenders in cultural awareness and educational programs. The situation is compounded, however, by the existence of offenders from diverse Aboriginal cultural backgrounds with differing degrees of orientation to Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian cultures. Participants must first receive the necessary education to allow them to identify with the healing symbols so that healing may ensue, and both the healers and the patients must engage in a process of redefining their cultures in search of a common cultural base.The research upon which this paper was based was funded by the Correctional Service of Canada contract No. 1990/91-PRA-306. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the staff at the Regional Psychiatric Centre (Prairie region) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, especially Drs. Art Gordon and Steve Wong. A special thank you must be extended to the Elders, Native Liaisons and patients who participated in the research, but who must remain anonymous.The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily represent the views of the Correctional Service of Canada, its staff, or the Elders and patients. The author alone is responsible for the content.     

Scars of experience: the art of moxibustion in Japanese Medicine and Society

Beliefs and practices surrounding moxibustion, a cautery technique used in Japan, are analyzed to demonstrate that the concept of holism is culture-bound and that the practice of East Asian medicine is often reductionistic.Pluralistic traditional medical belief systems of historical and contemporary Japan are discussed with reference to moxibustion. Moxa is used in popular family medicine, for ritual purification, as a technique to cure disease or as part of a holistic approach to healing; its symbolic meaning changes according to its usage and it serves to unite disparate medical beliefs.Socialization practices concerning attitudes towards illness reflect pluralistic values derived from traditional medical systems. One dominant set of values encourages patient and family responsibility during the healing process, adaptation to psychosocial relationships regarded as causal in disease occurrence and avoidance of verbal analysis of problems. These concepts, fundamental to East Asian medicine, cannot be readily adapted in the West as part of a holistic approach to health care.     

Kiyang-yang,a West-African Postwar Idiom of Distress

In 1984, a healing cult for young barren women in southern Guinea Bissau developed into a movement, Kiyang-yang, that shook society to its foundations and had national repercussions. “Idiom of distress” is used here as a heuristic tool to understand how Kiyang-yang was able to link war and post-war-related traumatic stress and suffering on both individual and group levels. An individual experience born from a traumatic origin may be generalized into an idiom that diverse sectors of society could embrace for a range of related reasons. We argue that, for an idiom to be understood and appropriated by others, there has to be resonance at the level of symbolic language and shared experiences as well as at the level of the culturally mediated contingent emotions it communicates. We also argue that through its symbolic references to structural causes of suffering, an idiom of distress entails a danger for those in power. It can continue to exist only if its etiology is not exposed or the social suffering it articulates is not eliminated. We finally argue that idioms of distress are not to be understood as discrete diagnostic categories or as monodimensional expressions of “trauma” that can be addressed.     

Certainty levels in the nullity method of symbolic logic: application to the pathogenesis of congenital heart malformations.

Investigating the pathogenesis of complex human congenital heart malformations involves special difficulties not usually encountered in studying human disease. Most malformations develop before clinical investigation is feasible, and reliable animal models are few. Virtually all advances in this field have come from thoughtful correlations of embryologic and patient observations. Symbolic logic is a natural medium for incorporating information of this nature into a mathematical and computer analysis, and has been recently employed in a study of the pathogenesis of the tetralogy of Fallot. The chief drawback of the symbolic logic approach, however, is its inability to handle uncertainty. This paper introduces an extension of the nullity method of symbolic logic which sorts patient observations and pathogenetic hypotheses into levels of certainty ranging from real data to reasonable preferences. A computer algorithm is presented which evaluates these levels of certainty, and the completeness and closure of this algorithm are proved mathematically. This computer algorithm identifies problem cases which are poorly explained by a given pathogenetic theory, and thus provides the initial step for refining the theory.     

Symbolic Healing of Early Psychosis: Psychoeducation and Sociocultural Processes of Recovery

This article analyzes sociocultural processes of recovery in a Danish mental health service providing two years of integrated biopsychosocial treatment following first-episode psychosis. The study is based on ethnographic research in the service and person-centered involvement with 15 clients. The analysis applies Dow's [1986 American Anthropologist 88:56-69] model of universal components of symbolic healing to elucidate sociocultural aspects of therapeutic efficacy that are alternatively disregarded as placebo or nonspecific effects. It is demonstrated how staff engaged with clients to deliver "psychoeducation" that provided scientific and biomedical theories about mental illness, constituting a shared "mythic world" that was accepted as an experiential truth and used to explain clients' illness experiences. The analysis highlights the need to supplement attention in Dow's model to the healing procedure with consideration of variability in the healing process. Depending on individual responses to the intervention, the staff's professional backgrounds and staff-client relationships different recovery models were applied. One suggested "episodic psychosis" and full recovery, and the other suggested "chronic schizophrenia" and the necessity of comprehensive life adjustments to the mental illness. The recovery models influenced clients' perspectives on illness and self as they engaged in identity work, negotiating future plans and individual life projects by including also alternative systems of explanation from the wider cultural repertoire.     

Multiscale phenomena related to diabetic foot

Diabetes is a group of metabolic diseases causing a system disorder, i.e.; it cannot be explained or understood by phenomena on single material scale. The diabetic foot is studied as flexible multibody structure by nonlinear finite element method. The physical and geometrical multiscale heterogeneity is solved by multilevel finite element approach. The diabetic tissue is described by internal coordinate's formalism, as complex multiscale process in tissue. The accompanying problem of the axisymetric wound healing is solved numerically. Some results related to foot deformity, stress and strain concentration and wound healing are presented.     

Evolution of language: attempt at synthesis

There are at least three traits that distinguish modern Homo sapiens from his closest relatives: bipedal locomotion, the unusual size of his brain and the ability to use symbolic language. To this day the emergence and evolution of these traits have not been explained sufficiently. New research in anthropology, linguistics, cognitive science and other disciplines shows, that the evolution of the human language faculty is a complex field that was influenced by a wide variety of factors. This paper tries to show the width of these factors and to work out the demands that are to be met by a theory of language evolution. After the introduction, in Section 2 the evolutionary principles and their role in the evolution of symbolic communication will be reviewed. Section 3 gives an overview of the results and controversies of brain evolution research, while Section 4 introduces our current knowledge of the neuronal basis of language. In Section 5 the controversies that had the greatest impact on the field and development of ways to solve them are reviewed before Section 6 summarizes the most important preadaptations for the evolving language faculty.     

Diaspora and its discontents: A Caribbean fragment in Toronto in quest of cultural recognition and political empowerment

The essay examines the role of The Ontario Society for Services to the Indo-Caribbean Community [OSSICC], a historic organization that sought to assert the dignity and re-discover the identity of Indo-Caribbean persons as a fragment of the Caribbean diaspora in Toronto, Canada. While it points to the achievement in representing the interests of its members for symbolic cultural recognition, it underscored the limitations in the political arena for empowerment, power sharing, and equality in employment opportunities and for an equitable share of the resources of the state. Further, it describes how the ethnic conflict in the homeland persisted in the new site of the diaspora, about lost opportunities for healing, and about inter-generational discontinuities in the reconstruction of the Caribbean self. On a larger scale, the article is about membership and citizenship in the new homeland of the diaspora, its seductions and betrayals in the new frontier of Canadian multiculturalism.     

Controlling domestic life and mental illness: Spiritual and aftercare resources used by Dominican New Yorkers

This research addresses the differential use of spiritual and mental health resources by 15 Dominican migrant women with major psychiatric disorders in Northern Manhattan. Methods included interviews and participant observation with patients, kin, and mental health staff. Structured instruments were used to examine patients' networks and functioning. Folk and popular healing traditions, adopted by some patients and kin through private observances or through a connection with a healer, yielded symbolic supports, companionship for patients, and ways of communicating and coping with distress. Episodes of health-seeking revealed multiple participants competing for control of the patients' lives and illness careers. Consultations with healers offered family members potential mastery over illness and domestic life, with no surrender of centrality, dignity or control in the quest for care.     

Bone morphogenetic protein 2-induced cellular chemotaxis drives tissue patterning during critical-sized bone defect healing: an in silico study

Critical-sized bone defects are critical healing conditions that, if left untreated, often lead to non-unions. To reduce the risk, critical-sized bone defects are often treated with recombinant human BMP-2. Although enhanced bone tissue formation is observed when BMP-2 is administered locally to the defect, spatial and temporal distribution of callus tissue often differs from that found during regular bone healing or in defects treated differently. How this altered tissue patterning due to BMP-2 treatment is linked to mechano-biological principles at the cellular scale remains largely unknown. In this study, the mechano-biological regulation of BMP-2-treated critical-sized bone defect healing was investigated using a multiphysics multiscale in silico approach. Finite element and agent-based modeling techniques were combined to simulate healing within a critical-sized bone defect (5 mm) in a rat femur. Computer model predictions were compared to in vivo microCT data outcome of bone tissue patterning at 2, 4, and 6 weeks postoperation. In vivo, BMP-2 treatment led to complete healing through periosteal bone bridging already after 2 weeks postoperation. Computer model simulations showed that the BMP-2 specific tissue patterning can be explained by the migration of mesenchymal stromal cells to regions with a specific concentration of BMP-2 (chemotaxis). This study shows how computational modeling can help us to further understand the mechanisms behind treatment effects on compromised healing conditions as well as to optimize future treatment strategies.

     

Shellfish, Gender, and Status on the Northwest Coast: Reconciling Archeological, Ethnographic, and Ethnohistorical Records of the Tlingit

Archeological, ethnographic, and ethnohistorical data provide ambiguous evidence of the dietary and economic importance of shellfish in Northwest Coast cultures. In the case of the Tlingit, I find that understanding shellfish from an emic perspective is critical to reconciling these equivocal data on economic importance. The Tlingit associated shellfish with poverty, laziness, and ritual impurity, and those who sought to be "ideal" persons avoided shellfish. An individual's rank and gender determined the degree to which such dietary guidelines were actually followed. The social and symbolic meaning of shellfish in Tlingit culture is partly explained by ecological factors, including the danger of paralytic shellfish poisoning. The analysis also reveals a number of biases inherent in the ethnographic and archeological data.     

American acupuncture and efficacy: meanings and their points of insertion

By its very definition, efficacy's meanings remain fluid, their particularities contingent on context. The change seen as significant may occur on a symbolic level or through the removal of physical symptoms. It may address conditions of a social body. Some discussions differentiate between "healing" and "curing." Many of these meanings surface when examining what efficacy means in the practice of acupuncture in the United States. This complex phenomenon is possible largely because acupuncture draws on the qi paradigm on the one hand, allowing for the most ephemeral dimensions of experience to be included in considerations of efficacy. On the other hand, in the most material sense, acupuncture is also susceptible to being conceptualized as a device, independent of that same paradigm, allowing for the insertion of biomedical models and criteria. Pluralism within acupuncture itself intersects with, and even embodies, the medical pluralism of U.S. culture.     

The interface between medical anthropology and medical ethnobiology

Medical anthropology is concerned with both the causes and consequences of human sickness, and its various theoretical orientations can be grouped into four major approaches: medical ecology, critical medical anthropology, interpretative medical anthropology, and ethnomedicine. While medical anthropologists of all theoretical persuasions have examined why people get sick, the analysis and understanding of patterns of treatment has been largely confined to ethnomedicine. Historically, more emphasis has been placed on the personalistic or supernatural aspects of ethnomedical systems than on naturalistic or empirical components. While this focus has produced valuable insights into the role of ritual and belief in healing, it has led to the impression that traditional medicine is primarily symbolic. Moreover, it ignores the theoretical bases of traditional healing strategies and the practical means by which most of the world heals itself, namely plants. Recently there has been more interest in the empirical character of ethnomedical systems, and in this paper we consider the role that medical ethnobiology has played in this shift of focus. We begin with a brief history of medical anthropology to illuminate why naturalistic medicine was neglected for so long. We then review exemplary research in two areas of medical ethnobiology – ethnophysiology and medical ethnobotany – that address the study of naturalistic aspects of medical systems. We conclude with suggestions for future research at the interface between medical ethnobiology and medical anthropology that will contribute to both fields.     

Rats exhibit asymmetrical retention functions for hedonic samples

Rats were trained in a symbolic delayed matching-to-sample task to discriminate hedonic sample stimuli that consisted of food or no food. Retention functions decreased more rapidly on trials initiated by a food sample than on trials initiated by a no-food sample when retention intervals were manipulated within session. The asymmetrical functions could not be explained in terms of mediation of choice responding by magazine head-entry behavior during the retention interval. Unlike within-session changes in retention interval, between-session changes did not result in steeper forgetting functions for food samples. These results in rats are consistent with previous findings reported for the presence and absence of visual samples in pigeons (Wixted, 1993).     

Symbolic Numerical Magnitude Processing Is as Important to Arithmetic as Phonological Awareness Is to Reading

In this article, we tested, using a 1-year longitudinal design, whether symbolic numerical magnitude processing or children’s numerical representation of Arabic digits, is as important to arithmetic as phonological awareness is to reading. Children completed measures of symbolic comparison, phonological awareness, arithmetic, reading at the start of third grade and the latter two were retested at the start of fourth grade. Cross-sectional and longitudinal correlations indicated that symbolic comparison was a powerful domain-specific predictor of arithmetic and that phonological awareness was a unique predictor of reading. Crucially, the strength of these independent associations was not significantly different. This indicates that symbolic numerical magnitude processing is as important to arithmetic development as phonological awareness is to reading and suggests that symbolic numerical magnitude processing is a good candidate for screening children at risk for developing mathematical difficulties.