Madness or Transcendence? · A Psychoanalytic Account of Chinese Tang-Ki Spirit Medium Healing

In popular Chinese religion in Singapore, people are said to consult gods through possessed spirit mediums (tang-kis). Many psychoanalytical anthropologists have considered such possessive states to be madness. In this book, the author, using a Lacanian psychoanalytical approach, goes against this view. He argues that tang-ki activity can be seen to be a creative healing process, working on issues of desire, identity and what it means to be a subject living in a world of multiple discourses, including a strong state -supported discourse of 'instrumental rationality'. In his research, the author found the practice of self flagellation; tales of opium smoking spirits, a goddess of uncertain gender and a god that never grew up. He encountered an Indian man of Chinese upbringing possessed by a Malay spirit. Such tang-ki phenomena can be seen as countering or deconstructing fixed stable identities and conventional ways of addressing problems and enabling people who consult tang-kis to find other ways that help them cope with the madness of life.