3 - Madness, vice and tabanka: popular knowledge of psychopathology in Trinidad

Summary

Before describing Mother Earth's experiences against the criteria of biomedicine one needs to consider those existing local representations of illness which recall the psychiatrist's field of interest, for it is these ideas which reflect back upon and shape, stigmatise or amplify any personal psychopathology.

Five relatively discrete patterns are identified which we can map for the moment by not dissimilar biomedical categories: doltishness (broadly recalling mental handicap and senility), malkadi (epilepsy), vices (addictions and abnormal personality), madness (psychosis) and tabanka (a context-specific ‘depressive’ reaction). Although each may be regarded locally as akin to physical sickness, emphasis is placed on their ultrahuman and personalistic aetiology and on their social context, both rather different from the illnesses treated with everyday bush medicine. They cannot, however, be considered in isolation from physical sickness for there are recognised mechanisms in common, idioms which evoke significant local values, productive relations and shared history. The images of nature, power and selfhood which madness reveals make it as good a starting point as any for examining the institutions which are transformed by Mother Earth.

Bush medicine

Popular medicine in Trinidad employs bush – the leaves, flowers, shoots, barks and roots of a variety of plants – which can be used in conjunction with commercial oils and essences. Medicinal plants are grown in the house yards or are easily found in the forest or cocoa estates which surround the villages. Every adult in the village of Pinnacle has a working knowledge of some bush and most can describe the properties of between thirty and a hundred.