Illness and Enlightenment - Exploring Tibetan Perspectives on Madness in Text and Everyday Life

"Tibetan conception of nyonâe - 'madness'- encompasses a broad range of ideas about mind and body and an individual's place in the world. Here, Tantric and medical understandings of mind-body structure and (dys)functioning, and engagements with non-human entities, inform complex notions of the prevention, causation, and treatment of madness as an illness, as well as understandings of 'madness' as an indicator of Buddhist or Bon enlightenment. This work brings together interview material from ethnographic fieldwork in the Tibetan region of Amdo in northwest China, with an examination of Tibetan medical and religious texts, to explore the multi-faceted concept of nyonâe through key Tibetan concepts of wind, heart, and mind, as well as human-spirit relationships"-- Provided by publisher.

About the author

Susannah Deane completed her PhD at Cardiff University. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on mental health and illness within Tibetan communities in China and in exile. Her publications include Tibetan Medicine, Buddhism and Psychiatry: Mental Health and Healing in a Tibetan Exile Community (Carolina Academic Press, 2018).

Product details

• Authors: Susannah Deane
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.02.2025
• EAN: 9781805398400
• ISBN: 978-1-80539-840-0
• No. of pages: 288
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); SOCIAL SCIENCE / Disease & Health Issues, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Care of the mentally ill, Social and cultural anthropology, Care of people with mental health issues, Tibetan Buddhism, Medical Anthropology; Anthropology of Religion