Acknowledgements

It is not easy to know where to begin with acknowledgements. Perhaps I should start by acknowledging the support of Nancy Pollock, my MA supervisor in anthropology, at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, who first encouraged me, many years ago, to go on to undertake a PhD. I then went on to study psychoanalysis. It was in 1987 that I met Roland Littlewood and Jafar Kareem and undertook a Diploma in Intercultural Therapy with them at University College London and Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre. It was at this time that my two interests, psychoanalysis and anthropology, came together, and when I first thought about undertaking a PhD that covered both fields.

I have to thank Roland Littlewood, my main supervisor at University College London for his support of my PhD thesis. I note his patience in wading through somewhat unreadable drafts and for tolerating the Lacanian gloss of the thesis. I, also, acknowledge the help of Charles Stewart, my second supervisor. I appreciated the detailed examination and discussion of my thesis by my examiners Maurice Lipsedge and Piers Vitebsky. I am grateful to my psychoanalytic mentors, Bice Benvenuto and Richard Klein, for their support over the years in my use of both psychoanalytic and anthropological thinking in my work.

Dr Zaw and the managers of the Huntercombe-Stafford Hospital deserve recognition for granting me leave to carry out the project.

Without a doubt, I have to thank my wife, Mee Ying, for introducing me to Chinese culture in the first place and showing me what a Chinese family is like. Her patience and endurance in putting up with my anxiety, irritability, obsessionality and, I dare say, hysteria over the four years of caring out the project has been outstanding.

I am grateful to my brother-in-law, Paul [Dage- elder brother]; sister-in-law, Dajie [elder sister] and Adrian and Kelvin for their help, support and for making me at home in Singapore. I also thank my brother-in-law, Lee Chin and sister-in-laws, Erjie [second sister] and Sanjie [third sister] for their support. Erjie showed great patience in tolerating my slowness in learning Mandarin in her daily tutoring sessions. I appreciate her help in teaching me Mandarin, her advice on cultural matters and help in interpreting.

There are many other people who gave me assistance: Harry, who introduced me to the first tang-ki I met and took me to visit various shrines and who, with Jennifer and his friends, made me feel very much at home in Malaysia; Kim Seng who also made me feel at home and who introduced me to the temples he was acquainted with; Mrs Lai who introduced me to the Ang Mo Kio shrine.

However, most of all, I have to thank those people at the various temples I visited in Singapore and Malaysia, especially those at the Redhill and Ang Mio Kio shrines in Singapore. I, also, appreciate the support from Mr Nai, his shifu and other members of a third temple I sometimes attended. There are too many people here to mention them all by name, but I must particularly mention Anna and Wei to whom I am extremely grateful for their hospitality, openness, friendship and willingness to share their knowledge and experience. As Anna said, she kept her promise made at the beginning of our first meeting to help me as much as she could. There was also the help given by Mr Juay, another tang-ki, and also two other tang-kis who when in trance were possessed by Guanyin and Nezha. I am very grateful to all these people.