In relation to difference and diversity, European observers have long entertained an anthropological interest in regional phenomena and their effects on local Third-World populations. Sadowsky (2003), however, identifies that anthropology as a discipline is itself a product of colonial encounters with new cultures; and that arising from these the concept of cultural relativism has developed.
Cleary and Eaton (1992) and Ong (1995) argue that in Borneo and Malaya anthropology served to aid the efforts of the colonialists in enforcing social control through the categorisation of races. In Sarawak, this led to the eventual segregation of ethnic groups (Cleary and Eaton, 1992). Racial categorisation was also a feature of mainland Malaya under colonial rule; however, the sinister overtone of a eugenics-style agenda at play is questionable. The colonial objectives, articulated in the negotiations for Independence, were to afford ‘inalienable genealogical and geographical right to the land and its fruits to the bumiputera’ to protect their interest from the entrepreunial successes of the tenacious migrants from China and the Indian subcontinent, for example (Baba et al., 2010; Chua, 2007: 271). Despite the ironies of such migration having been encouraged by the colonial authorities in the first place, in order to assist in the development of the economic infrastructure, and to more effectively exploit the resources of the Malayan archipelago, these protective policies were summarily adopted by the new postcolonial government.
The fruitful alliance between anthropology and psychiatry continues, as evidenced, for example, by the renowned work of psychiatrist anthropologist Arthur Kleinman. Emile Kraepelin, for instance, carried out extensive travels in Java and Malaya, noting regional manifestations of mental disorder (McCulloch, 2001). In Sarawak by the mid-twentieth century the position of the ‘Government specialist alienist’ and director of the Sarawak Mental Hospital was filled by Dr. K.E. Schmidt who brought with him from Europe many of the experimental advances in psychiatric therapies prevalent in that period. In addition, throughout most of his career in the region, Schmidt, infected, it would seem, with the true zeal of the stereotypical colonial psychiatrist, was busily engaged in the study of the ethnic and cultural peculiarities amongst patient populations and published widely on that topic (Chiu et al., 1972; Nissom and Schmidt, 1961; Schmidt, 1964; Schmidt, 1967).
In addition, the psychoanalytic tradition drew inspiration from the colonial enterprise where a bi-directional influence of psychological interpretations can be detected. Although Khanna (2003) rightly insists on parochialising the psychoanalytic tradition as located within a specific historical-cultural moment, the penetrating and appropriating objective of colonialism offered, appropriately, a rich source of symbolic terrain to probe. The alien and unknowable quality of Africa was symbolically used by Freud in describing women’s strange sexuality as the ‘dark continent’ in reference to phraseology by the nineteenth century explorer, Henry Morton Stanley (Khanna, 2003: 49). Psychoanalysis was typically preoccupied with the irrational fixations and neuroses of the immature mind, those of children and potentially women and primitive people as well (Khanna, 2003). Transported from Europe, psychoanalysis rooted tentatively in India and there evolved to reproduce a new indigenised interpretation of Freudian analysis, such as in relation to the Oedipal Complex, where it is the father, rather than the son that is castrated; allowing Keller (2001: 303) to make a pointed political commentary on the patriarchy of the British Raj and attitudes towards it. Pathological conditions exerted a fascination for Europeans abroad, but where madness, unlike in Europe, does not appear to have been viewed as a particularly feminised condition, especially if based on the numbers of admitted women to asylum across ethnic boundaries. Accordingly, Laura Stoler, in reference to Edward Said’s analysis of Orientalism, indicates that Asian women preoccupied the fantasies of ‘the imperial voyeur’ in a different context from that which tended to animate the amateur anthropologist of this period (Stoler, 1991: 54). However, as Keller (2001) elucidates, Ernst (2010) explains this anomaly as the constructed notion of the symbolic feminisation of the subject nation yielding inevitably to the masculine authority of the imperial powers. (2010). Instead, the conditions of indigenous women in relation to mental disorders were subsumed under those of generic male conditions, with rare exceptions, such as that shown towards the phenomenon of latah in the Malayan regions, defined as a nervous affliction characterised by involuntary verbal and bodily repetitions, frequently obscene in nature (Winzeler, 1995).
Latah, in its passive, imitative, non-voluntary and mechanical manifestations, was seen primarily as a disorder of Malay and eventually Dayak women (Spores, 1988; Winzeler, 1995). Ronald Simons (1996) by contrast, argues that latah is not a condition confined to a specific culture or region solely, but is far from being unknown as a startle response in the West as well. Culture merely dictates the form and degree of the reaction, as well as conferring whatever benefits (or otherwise) may be conferred upon the ‘sufferer’. If correspondingly downplayed in the West, latah appears to have a distinct social role to play in Southeast Asia (Simons, 1996). In this vein, Aihwa Ong (1990) describes how latah, once traditionally associated with older Malay women, has become a common feature amongst young Malay, female industrial workers caught between conflicting, cultural gender norms. Here latah appears to act both as a generalised indicator of tension as well as a possibly that of resistance to these political and cultural contradictions.
Colonial enthusiasts, both contemporary and historical, have long expressed curiosity about such local phenomena as koro: an hysterical anxiety that the sufferer’s genitals or nipples are fatally receding, and the phenomenon of amok as well. These were being increasingly viewed as simply bizarre local manifestations of known European disorders, albeit demonstrated at a more basic, primitive level (Littlewood, 2001; Mo et al., 1995); although one serious outbreak of koro in Singapore was noted as late as 1967 (Ng and Chee, 2006). Winzeler (1995) goes on to argue that this perceived tenuous commonality with Europeans and their mental disorders would not suspend European value judgements concerning Malayan people and their propensities towards mental illness.
In Malayanist versions of Orientalism, sensuality and femininity … were seldom raised, but instability was given great emphasis. It was axiomatic that Malays, Javanese and other Malayan peoples were by nature ‘sensitive to the slightest insult,’ ‘volatile,’ preoccupied with maintaining balance and composure and so forth. Such psychological tendencies were held to be in part a matter of inherent character and in part a consequence of despotic political rule and a rigidly hierarchical social order that was to be changed through the creation of a new way of life under European guidance (Winzeler, 1995: 4).
In this analysis, therefore, colonial rule could be seen as imposing a fundamentally civilising and benevolent power on territorial possessions that would sweep away regional and traditional tyranny, and bring order and medical help to local populations, a view which Ernst (2010) dismisses as mere mythology. The issue of amok demonstrates this point in its description, as attributed to an English physician in 1891, as being a ‘blind furious homicidal mania’ that was ‘peculiar to the Malay race’ (J Teoh, 1971: 20).
Amok was considered not only a disorder of the Malay (as well as the Javanese) individual but one that was peculiar to men and dishonoured men at that.
When the Malay feels that a slight or insult has been put upon him … He broods over his trouble, till, in a fit of madness, he suddenly seizes a weapon and strikes out blindly at everyone he sees - man, woman or child, often beginning with his own family (Swettenham, 1906: 143).
Murphy states, however, that incidents of amok increased in parallel with the colonisation of settlements by Europeans in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century (1973). Although in rural areas amok was still considered an honourable response to intolerable triggers, in the Europeanised urban areas, the social factors were ignored in favour of explanations pointing towards insanity or perhaps somatised physiological conditions.