Blindfold the cow and everything will be fine
Amir Afkhami, an American psychiatrist, gets to meet a “faith-healer” in Iraq and watch him doing his stuff.
The path of a faith healer is arduous, Mullah Eskandar told us, speaking in Kurdish. “Such a calling,” he said, “is best reserved for a religious and spiritual man.”
Right. Religious and spiritual because there is no actual knowledge or technical skill involved, and man because it’s women who get fucked up by misogynist religions and traditions. Totally makes sense.
He went on to recount his 15-year apprenticeship to a renowned senior healer, who taught him the basics of spiritual treatment and the essentials of Koranic law and prophetic traditions. His description reminded me of my own long and difficult years in medical school and residency training.
Except for the difference in the acutal substance of what you learned compared to what Mullah Eskandar learned.
“Over 80 percent of my patients are females,” he continued. “They struggle with insomnia, headache, depression and marital problems.”
Gee I wonder why!
“Ours is like your profession, which has both good and bad doctors,” he continued: “those who care about patients and those who are in it for worldly rewards.”
Nooooo, not exactly. The difference between good and bad doctors isn’t just caring.
The first patient to enter his reception room was a young woman in red flowing garb typical of the rural inhabitants of eastern Kurdistan…Like most unmarried Iraqi women, she was accompanied by family: a heavy-set, mustachioed father and a watchful mother.
The mother explained that the day her daughter became engaged to a relative, she had developed fainting fits, nightmares, foul moods and an inability to walk. Her family had consulted a general practitioner, who referred them to a neurologist, to no avail. She continued to faint at the talk of marriage — even became agitated at the prospect of her younger sister’s impending betrothal.
Yes. She doesn’t want the marriage. The way to cure her is to call off the marriage and let her run her own life.
But the mullah didn’t suggest that. He
began to chant a Koranic verse into her right ear, imploring God’s help and warning of the devil’s temptations.Then he explained that the young woman was possessed by a jinn, one of the race of evil spirits that the Koran blames for sowing mischief and illness in the world — in this case, spreading discord in the young woman’s family by disrupting her marriage. To banish the jinn, Mullah Eskandar prescribed a regimen of prayers, daily bathing and rosewater perfume. And he counseled the patient on the responsibilities of a daughter to marry and the happiness that awaited her once she had a family of her own.
It struck me that Mullah Eskandar’s rituals, particularly his reassuring counsel, appeared to mimic our oft-practiced supportive therapy in Western medicine. His authoritative opinion and his apparent empathy, coupled with his ability to realign the young woman’s vision to a more positive outlook, appeared to give her some degree of comfort immediately.
Well isn’t that sweet. The mullah conned the young woman into resigning herself to her horrible unwanted fate, and the American psychiatrist watched in cheery approval. The mullah talked away some of the young woman’s symptoms while leaving the cause entirely untouched, and the medical professional was impressed.
I’m not.
You know, if you would’ve told me that prescription was meant as a punishment instead of a cure, I would’ve believed you too.
I’m not, either, OB.
You have to admit that as news stories go, this one is a peach! It’s got everything: the unquestioning acceptance of medieval mores; the misogyny of “diagnosing” a young woman who rebels against such mores as having “conversion disorder;” the cynicism of the “faith healer” who has a “secular outlook” but thinks crazy religious woo is good enough for the hoi polloi; the condescencion of the American doctor who thinks crazy religious woo is good enough for the backward people of Iraq; and lastly, the fact that said American doctor is the one who wrote the recommendations for mental health care in Iraq, which looks to me like saying the constitutional prohibition against state support of religion is out the window when it comes to foreign policy. It doesn’t get better – or worse – than this!
Sounds disturbingly similar to a diagnosis of Victorian-era female hysteria.
“It struck me that Mullah Eskandar’s rituals, particularly his reassuring counsel, appeared to mimic our oft-practiced supportive therapy in Western medicine.”
Anyone care to write to have that moron’s license to practice revoked? Why are people promoting such bullshit? They obviously don’t take the opportunity to learn while at school.
I’m absolutely flabbergasted. This guy should totally have his license revoked. What the fuck.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Camus Dude, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Blindfold the cow and everything will be fine http://dlvr.it/CGw49 […]
I just wrote an angry email to the NYT.
Religion poisons everything. Why isn’t this obvious to more people? Simply everything! Everywhere it makes its appearance religion suppresses the natural impulse to ask questions. It provides answers. This may be why people take to it so easily, but the answers it gives are, in every case, irrelevant to the reasons for asking the questions in the first place. For an excellent example of this read the book of Job, listen to Job’s questions, and then listen to the voice of god speaking through the whirlwind. Completely irrelevant. As Herman Tonneson says, god is a cosmic cave-dweller, a primitive, without any understanding either of the complexity of the human, or any care for what moves us. Sure, this guy should be cashiered. He’s a bit like the “scientist” at the U of Chicago, who thinks that science and religion comprise separate bodies of knowledge (see WEIT on U of C prof and NOMA).
Man, that really says something about psychiatry, doesn’t it?
Hmmm. If the purpose of psychiatry is to adjust personality outliers to conform with expected social norms, and if this guy’s prayers and perfume had that effect, I’d say he was (by his cultural standards) and exceptionally-successful psychiatrist.
Granted, I personally find his societal norms to be repugnant and stupid on any number of levels. It’s all a matter of definition.
I suppose Afkhami is so busy trying to prove that he can be understanding and sympathetic to “another way of knowing” that he hypnotises himself into a pink haze of gooey self-righteousness which prevents him seeing the “patient” in any objective way at all. He only sees the charlatan and his own egotistical “benevolence”. Nobody sees her, in fact. They’re all blind, and he most wilfully and unforgiveably.
My italics.
The man is completely incompetent. This must be a classic case of self-righteous self-delusion.
That’s the purpose of psychiatry? We already have brain-washing, prisons and priests. Why do we need psychiatry? Oh, of course, so that we can do our mental repression in a nice way.
She appeared to gain some degree of comfort? Well, I guess a single antecedent related by a person of the same religion as the healer is the only evidence I need!
Was there something I missed or was this article as asinine as I read it to be?
There was nothing you missed!
@Willis: I don’t know what the actual purpose is (vs. the stated purpose), which is why I started the sentence with the word “IF.”