That's the hope, at least. And it's the reason I went to Bali to talk to people who might have OCD. (I say "might" because few Balinese receive a formal diagnosis for a mental illness. For 3 million Balinese, there are fewer than 10 psychiatrists and just one psychologist.) The culture of Bali is quite different from that found anywhere else. The society has been influenced by a blend of Malay, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian cultures. This blended society is one that prizes friendliness and grace. Indeed, visitors are struck by what a pleasant place Bali is.
The Balinese follow a distinct brand of Hinduism combined with elements of Buddhism and other ancient beliefs; and that religion plays a large role in everyday life. Temples are numerous, and Balinese frequently honor their ancestors or appease local gods. But belief in sorcery and witchcraft is also very strong; the flip side of Balinese friendliness is, for some, a constant vigilance for signs of offense and a fear of retribution through black magic or sorcery.
As part of a study of mental health in Indonesia sponsored by the World Health Organization, I interviewed 19 Balinese who were gathered from a survey and displayed the symptoms of OCD. Many of these people were obsessed with several of the same anxieties as was Gede Sudiasih. Some of the obsessions that trouble Gede would be familiar to a Westerner: He checks and rechecks the locks on his front door and constantly asks coworkers the time to ensure that his watch is working. Gede hordes empty bottles of medicine, hiding them in his bedroom to keep family members from throwing them out; and he is compelled to keep himself clean to avoid passing along a contagion to his village.
But Gede's obsession with collecting information about people who pass his house or dead chickens seems utterly alien to us. This compulsion to uncover certain facts is seldom seen in the West, but it is one of the most common manifestations of OCD seen in Bali. Again and again, I met people who were obsessed with knowing the business of everyone they saw. One man, Made Balik, was so concerned that he carried around a little notepad: When a person wearing a motorcycle helmet rides through his village, he quickly jots down the license plate number so that he can use that as a lead to find out the rider's identity.
Even the briefest encounter can haunt Made for days. He told me about a woman he met on a bus. "I said to myself, 'I think I know her from somewhere.' She could have been one of my coworkers or maybe someone I knew before. I could not put her face out of my mind. It was an obsession for me to know who she was." For days afterward, Made asked his friends about the woman. It drove Made to such distraction, he couldn't sleep. Then he had a break: Someone who had also been on the bus remembered the woman and told Made when she climbed aboard and where she got off. A great weight was lifted, and soon Made got some long-delayed sleep.
Another man I interviewed, a 60-year-old retired chauffeur who lives with his family, Wayan Mukti, was obsessed with more than simply the strangers he met. Whenever he watched television, he was compelled to discover the name of every actor, official or news reporter who appeared on the screen. Even the songs played during the programs had to be identified. If he had not discovered the answer to all his questions by bedtime, he woke up family members and pestered them with questions. "I can't think of anything else," Wayan told me.
It isn't just information that bedevils Balinese with OCD. I met a wood-carver who became obsessed with his tools—even though he had been working with wood for a number of years, he now thought that if he picked up his tools, he would stab himself. Another man, who had suffered a serious motorcycle accident (and may have suffered brain damage), became compelled to create small figures out of rice and place them at "dangerous" places, such as intersections and homes of people who had recently died, to appease local spirits. While this was a common Balinese offering, this man recognized that he was spending far too much time on his rice people, but was unable to stop.
To a Western psychologist, such behavior would seem, at first, to border on delusional. But this obsession with rice people makes a kind of sense from the Balinese point of view. Millions of ordinary Balinese make religious offerings every day to please deities and demons; the man's obsession is just an exaggerated form of a normal activity. Spirits and symbolic objects play a role in everyday life, and that makes it difficult for a Western observer to tease apart the boundary between normal and abnormal behavior.
As I noted, anxieties about cleanliness and contamination—so common in the West—are seldom found as primary obsessions in Bali. Instead, I found obsessions centered on information, especially information about people, and on objects of symbolic importance. Again, that makes sense in the Balinese context: On an island steeped in ritual, with a strong, often unspoken fear of black magic and the possible evil intentions of others, a stranger in town presents another person whom you might inadvertently offend. The best way to protect yourself, in the mind of a Balinese with OCD, is to find out everything you can about him.
Tags:
amulet,
balian,
balinese culture,
black magic,
broken glass,
compulsion,
compulsions,
dead chickens,
exact time,
fellow villagers,
government employee,
impulses,
indonesian island,
island of bali,
mental illness,
minute details,
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
ocd,
piece of glass,
purification ritual,
repetitive tasks,
traditional healers,
uncontrollable thoughts
