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Self Systems, Cultural Idioms of Distress, and the Psycho-Bodily Consequences of Childhood SufferingUniversity of California, Los Angeles dhollan{at}anthro.ucla.edu In this article, I examine the effects of childhood suffering in two cases – one from my anthropological fieldwork in the central highlands of Sulawesi in Indonesia and one from my psychotherapeutic practice in Los Angeles. I argue that although people will always carry with them the psycho-bodily signature of their past social experience, these signatures are affected by the cultural idioms of distress into which they are woven and from which psycho-bodily attention is channeled and given meaning (or not). However, I also suggest that past social experiences are related to life trajectories in very complicated ways. For example, while the enactment of a cultural idiom of distress may help to resolve or give meaning to a form of illness or distress, it also may cause or exacerbate other forms of suffering – depending on how it is used and articulated by any given individual.
Key Words: childhood suffering • cultural idioms of distress • sado-masochism • self-systems • Toraja
Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 41, No. 1,
62-79 (2004) This article has been cited by other articles:
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