From distress to disease: a critique of the medicalisation of possession in DSM-5.
Anthropology & medicine December 1, 2017 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1080/13648470.2017.1389168 via PubMed
Summary
The paper critiques how the DSM-5 categorizes possession as a form of dissociative identity disorder, arguing that this medicalizes a non-pathological condition. In Kerala, individuals experiencing possession at a temple view it differently, seeing it as a culturally acceptable phenomenon rather than a mental illness. This pathologization alters the understanding of distress and healing, reducing cultural practices to biomedical explanations while ignoring alternative views on possession.
Study at a glance
| Design | ethnographic fieldwork |
|---|---|
| Population | individuals manifesting possession at a temple in Kerala, South India |
| Key finding | The DSM-5's classification of possession converts a culturally accepted form of distress into a disease, limiting understanding to a biomedical framework. |
Abstract
This paper critiques the category of possession-form dissociative identity disorder as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-5) published in 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The DSM as an index of psychiatry pathologises possession by categorising it as a form of dissociative identity disorder. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, this paper argues that such a pathologisation medicalises possession, which is understood as a non-pathological condition in other contexts such as by those individuals who manifest possession at a temple in Kerala, South India. Through medicalising and further by creating distinctions between acceptable and pathological possession, the DSM converts a form of distress into a disease. This has both conceptual and pragmatic implications. The temple therefore becomes reduced to a culturally acceptable site for the manifestation of a mental illness in a form that is culturally available and possession is explained solely through a biomedical framework, denying alternative conceptualisations and theories which inform possession. By focussing on the DSM-5 classification of possession and the limitations of such a classification, this paper seeks to posit an alternative conceptualisation of possession by engaging with three primary areas which are significant in the DSM categorisation of possession: the DSM's conceptualisation of self in the singular, the distinction between pathological and non-pathological forms of possession, and the limitations of the DSM's equation of the condition of possession with the manifestation of possession. Finally, the paper briefly highlights alternative conceptualisations of possession, which emerged from the perspective of those seeking to heal possession at the Chottanikkara temple.