Ethnographic, micro-social and structured interview methods are combined in a study of the practices and experiences constituting dissociative episodes in Tibetan monastic meditation training and ethnopsychiatry. Case studies are conducted with two groups of subjects, one drawn from monks being trained in meditation, one drawn from subjects currently in ethnopsychiatric treatment for a dissociative syndrome. All subjects will have recently experienced at least one dissociative episode fitting at least one of three types of dissociative phenomena: Identity discontinuity, depersonalization/derealization, or imaginative involvement. Outcomes will include a descriptive analysis of Tibetan practices and experiences around these types of dissociation, an interpretive motivational analysis of the organization of these practices and experiences, content, thematic and narrative-structural analyses of experiences, and a preliminary comparison between Tibetan diagnostic practices and those of Western biomedical psychiatry, the latter represented by the outcomes of administrations of the SCID-D (Structured Clinical Interview Diagnosis - Dissociative). Cross-sectional comparisons will be made between SCID-D diagnoses for subjects in the monastic meditation training and those in ethnopsychiatric treatment; also between expert Tibetan diagnoses for these two groups. A diachronic comparison will compare original SCID-D and Tibetan diagnoses with 6 month follow-ups.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 14 publications
