Abstract
This master’s thesis compares Taoist folktherapy and Western psychiatry. Their characterization as magic and science in anthropological arguments on rationality focuses on the irrational aspect of magic, which logically consists of hyperrationalizing witchcraft and sublime sorcery. On the other hand, the subsequent theoretical combination of Simmel’s sociological analysis of sociability and Lacanian psychological theory of ethics emphasizes that sociable activities, which are practically not rational, meaning they seem not to have any particular aims, can yield a sublime ideal or authority which is in itself impossible to realize or obtain. but which is shared in the community. From these viewpoints, this thesis sheds new light on the doctor-patient relationship in Western medical settings in comparison with the folktherapy of spirit writing. My fieldwork research at a Taoist temple in Tainan city, which lasted about four months, helped me approach what was happening in the therapeutic ritual sessions between the ritual master and the supplicant, and also between them and their audience, particularly in the eyes of volunteer members, a role which I finally played in the ritual. Chapter 1 outlines the universal grounds of comparison between magic and science by clearing up confusions in anthropological arguments on rationality. Chapter 2 characterizes the fieldwork site with the descriptions of the ritual activities and the community organization of the temple. Chapter 3 then analyses ritual spirit writing sessions in terms of psychiatry. Next, Chapter 4 focuses on the sociable aspect of the religious community and characterizes ethical attitudes toward the deity in cases involving frequent supplicants. Subsequently, Chapter 5 views the ritual session as an enactment of Taoist ethics toward the audience and analyzes such function by applying analytical methods of tragedy, that is, another typical enactment of ethics. In conclusion, Chapter 6 reconsiders the sociable and ethical aspects of Western medicine and proposes a new understanding of ‘‘affective neutrality.’’ Although this concept can serve the original utilitarian aims of professional or commercial human relations, affective neutrality should give way to the sociable part of the relations, which have the potential to sublimate individual concerns or utilitarian motives into a common aim or ideal of sublime value.