They stole your WHAT?

OK, so I can’t shut up for long, sorry. Interesting article in Harpers about penis theft in Nigeria. Don’t laugh, this is a form of mass psychosis that occurs around the world, it even has an accepted name, koro. Interesting because it illustrates the defining role of culture on our descriptions of mental illness and scary because of the fact that millions of people in places like Nigeria actually believe this is happening, that witches are stealing penises, and do not consider it a mental illness. We tend to assume that all the world’s people are brothers and sisters, that if we would just sit down and talk to them about the world’s problems we would solve them in no time. But how do you sit down and talk rationally with a man who thinks his penis was stolen by a witch? Or to all the others around him who are trying to lynch the poor woman who was next to him on the bus when he started getting his delusion and whom he accused of stealing his thing. (Note to women: these organs have a mind of their own at times, probably temperature and/or blood pressure related and a penis contracting and feeling as if the are retracting slightly into the body is something most men have experienced. It has nothing to do with erection or lack thereof) In most cultures of course, there is no psychosis associated with this. However we may have our own strange psychoses—the kernel of the article describes some studies of immigrants to the U.S. and the fact that mental health is generally greater among recent immigrants, declining quickly to the American norm in succeeding generations. One could look at this and say that of course America is a crazy place and these poor suckers and just buying into the craziness as they acculturate, but in fact that isn’t what’s happening. Most likely, all cultures anywhere have their own unique profile of mental illness and humans in one are no more or less likely to be nutso than in any other. But each mental cultural map is different; America has the types of illness described in the DSM IV and Nigeria has penis theft. So the recent immigrants are just off the map, American shrinks don’t recognize their symptoms. Psychologists are in fact very hidebound and culturally provincial without realizing it—I have told the story many times to my patient listeners about the professor I had who practically shouted me out of the room when I, newly returned from Japan, questioned the validity of Freud’s toilet training angst in a country where toilet training was traditionally unnecessary. “Freuds’s theories are universal! They apply to all cultures!” he shouted. He was nuts, but not by the rules of the Freudian psychologist subculture.

Anyway, what all this means to me is to underline the advice given by many yogins and zen teachers to abandon culture. What they mean is that the more closely you are tied to the mental map of any group of people which identifies itself as culturally different in any way the more you are blinding yourself to the universals and the possibility of transcending this existence. Heavy weird new age stuff? Not really, think how we laugh at the old movie cliché of the wannabe golfer arriving for the first time at the course in the entire costume of store-bought golf duds from plus fours to Scotch cap and being laughed at by the “real” golfers. We organize our lives and our world around subcultures. Look at a Facebook or MySpace profile—the profilee is expected to describe themselves in a few words and fit themselves neatly into a series of cultural categories such as: favorite music, interests, recently read books, etc. By creating a search algorithm you can sift through millions of like categories and find a person who is just like yourself! Amazing, and crazy. And dangerous—next time you are with a group of like-minded friends sitting around discussing whatever, try to notice how much of the conversation is devoted to defining the boundaries of the little group, to negotiating how much everyone agrees with each other and to what extent. Groups are small-minded, large groups are dangerous. Nazi-ism was just a beer hall conversation carried to extremes. No important scientific or philosophic discovery has ever been accomplished by a group. Groups by their nature limit thinking and emphasize mutual agreement and bonding. Humans are just bands of chimps who have evolved large heads--we use almost all of our mental capacity to organize our relationship to our group and the individuals in it. Ease yourself through the fence and walk away, head for the horizon. Your group won’t even know you are gone they will be so busy talking among themselves. And as you head across the prairie all alone, you will be free to think, maybe for the first time in your life.