Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces that Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave by Adam Alter

Author:Adam Alter [Alter, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-03-20T14:00:00+00:00

Cultural Maladies

The insecurities that produce aggressive displays of masculinity in some cultures also inspire culture-specific maladies that affect isolated pockets of the population. Anorexia nervosa sufferers who restrict their eating and fear gaining weight are concentrated in the wealthiest regions of the world, where thinness is a compelling cultural ideal. The disorder is almost unheard-of in poorer countries, and it barely existed before the 1950s. Meanwhile, women in the Middle Ages suffered from nervosa’s medieval cousin, anorexia mirabilis. These women similarly refused food to the point of death, but they were motivated by religious rather than aesthetic ideals. In a culture where asceticism was the key to religious enlightenment, fasting was next to godliness.

As the two versions of anorexia show, culture-bound disorders reflect the deep-seated fears and concerns that plague a cultural group at a particular point in time. One of the most famous recent cases is the West African genital-shrinking epidemic known as koro. Between 1997 and 2003, a koro epidemic spread through six West African nations and generated dozens of news articles. One article in the Nigerian Vanguard described the ensuing alarm:

Panic has gripped residents of the Plateau State capital [Jos], following cases of disappearing organs ostensibly for ritual purposes. No fewer than six of such cases have been reported in the last one week in different parts of the state capital, involving males and females whose organs allegedly “disappeared” upon contact with organ snatchers. A middle-aged man was almost lynched yesterday along Rwang Pam Street, after he allegedly “stole” a man’s private part through “remote control.” The victim allegedly felt his organs shrink after speaking to the suspect, who reportedly asked for directions.

While delusions affect people from every imaginable culture, koro sufferers were experiencing a specific symptom that had rarely been seen in other parts of the world. Psychologists noted that two West African cultural beliefs may have contributed to the so-called penis-napping epidemic. The first was the tendency to attribute unexplained events to malevolent witchcraft. The same unexplained events in other parts of the world might prompt question marks and head scratching, but West Africans are relatively quick to blame unwanted events on supernatural intervention. The second belief was that witches and other supernatural beings would steal and eat a man’s penis or a woman’s womb, sometimes holding it hostage until a financial bribe was offered. When the afflicted patients were examined, however, their organs seemed to be intact, despite frantic claims that their genitals had disappeared entirely. In the end, doctors explained that koro sufferers were enmeshed in a bout of mass hysteria, converting a frenzy of anxiety into the earnest delusion that their genitals were disappearing before their eyes. Of course, in another culture—one less fixated on the fear of genital shrinkage—these delusions would have been quite different, reflecting that culture’s own specific fears and preoccupations.

Culture-specific maladies abound, and each reflects the conditions that define the lives of its sufferers. A relatively new set of phobias has emerged in East Asia, where the demands of social etiquette are sometimes overwhelming and inflexible.

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