Week 2 - Tony Tran

Mediumship, Spirit Possession, and Personal Transformation

This reading talked about how mediumship improved the overall quality of life for people that practiced interacting with spirits. However, how I see it is that becoming a medium and having a temple to meet up with people and practice whatever things they do provides a safe space for those people to do things that may seem weird or alien in the real world.

However, believing in spirit possession allows people to think that bad things happen to them for a reason. How I think of it is that the person needs to feel spirits in order to perceive their stress. An example can be seen by Jenny who experienced uncontrollable emotions and saw spirits only after losing her job and having a financial crisis (Fjelstad and Maiffret 113). Due to the stresses of reality piling on top of her, she has a mental breakdown and tries to find the source of the issue. In this case, she would believe that a spirit possessing her is angry or not satisfied in which she then strives to appease them.

However, I feel a true benefit of mediumship is that it helps people keep doing positive things in life. In a sense, it converts stress into a problem that can be fixed by spirit rituals.

Additionally, it indirectly keeps people from possibly doing negative things such as gamble, seclude the self, use drugs, etc. This results in people having a mediumship that are able to establish priorities in which they are not only just try to work and survive, but they have another goal in life which is to maintain the spiritual balance of the family and group (Fjelstad and Maiffret 122).

Last of all, I finally get the sense that mediums are are the resource of mental health-care for Asian societies. The difference is unlike conventional model of western counselors and therapists, mediums associate their mental issues with spirits as a thing that they can appease or fix. It is known that “As an Asian, you don’t come out and say that you have a problem and try to seek help” (Fjelstad and Maiffret 124). Therefore, it makes sense to re-associate mental issues of the self as spiritual problems to legitimize the problem.

Question: I wonder what possessed people are feeling or thinking about right before the possession. I feel like there is no reason for spirit possession if you are preoccupied with thoughts about real world issues or if you are happy/content in your current living situation. If that is the case, it would lead me to think that spiritual possession only occurs because the person is depressed or mentally unstable.

There is a need in balance of the well being of the body, mind, and spirit in order to be healthy. If one part is damaged (body or mind), then need more spiritual support to help uplift the other parts in order to become healthy again.

References

image-http://www.newbridgerecovery.com/mental-emotional-spiritual-health-related/

Fjelstad, Karen, and Thi Hien Nguyen. Possessed by the Spirits: Mediumship in Contemporary Vietnamese Communities. Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell U, 2006. Print.