Friday, March 12, 2010
Today is Honoring Ancestry at Unity Center in Berkeley.
Blessed rain all the way.
Monday, Katrin arrives and will have lectures around the Bay Area and
LA. If you have a chance to catch one of her talks, go for it. It's a rare opportunity.
Check these out!!
I will also present the Sikolohiyang Filipino based program of a culture sensitive tourism that I developed as a student of Virgilio Enriquez, as well as a number of places earmarked for the fut
Blessed rain all the way.
Monday, Katrin arrives and will have lectures around the Bay Area and
LA. If you have a chance to catch one of her talks, go for it. It's a rare opportunity.
Check these out!!
1)
FILIPINO RESEARCH APPROACHES— WHAT MAKES THEM DIFFERENT?
IS THERE A NEED FOR INDIGENOUS RESEARCH APPROACHES?
SOME SIKOLOHIYANG FILIPINO METHODS
Research dealing with the indigenous mind has largely to tackle subjective issues. These can be better understood through broad and in-depth examinations. For example, the pervasive elasticity of Filipino / indigenous cultural expressions (i.e. multiple word meanings, situational contexts; the flexible concept of time; etc.) produces data that calls for proper integration. But to the present day, the scientific methods of dominant academic communities are based on eliminating ambiguities. This “intolerance of ambiguity” (Lagmay, 1976) maintains the self-serving, industry backed western academe, which spawns unsustainable progress global-wide.
Filipino Research Methods are suitable for accumulating complex, tacit, multi-modal and “messy” data, which eventually will be ordered and interpreted along emerging variables. I postulate that the Filipino data-gathering procedures are “systematic methods”, even though, or precisely because, these approaches do not follow the pathways of linear order.
According to Webster's definition, a method is “a defined way to accomplish an end.” Responding to the obvious lack of descriptions of the indigenous ways of data collection, I did my research with the research approaches proposed by Santiago and Enriquez (Enriquez, 1992). European social science paradigms provided underpinnings for a better understanding of these methods (de Guia 206).
2)
INDIGENOUS WAYS OF HEALING IN THE PHILIPPINES
As the heirs from ancestral communities, many people in the Philippines maintained a holistic mindset. This is concomitant with the Filipinos kapwa orientation (Enriquez 1992), as well as the primary process of knowing (constructivist theory in psychology). In line with this, traditional Filipino concepts of health and healing are always tied in with notions of balance and harmony. According to old Tagalog texts, a body is healthy when the four basic qualities that make up life—hot, cold, wet & dry— are in internal (loob) and external (labas) equilibrium. A nation is healthy when all its different parts work together in unity (Agpalo, 1981). People are doing well when they are in harmony with nature, spirits and God. The traditional Filipino idea of healing is thus paramount to restoring the spiritual, psychological and physical harmony of individuals.
In this perspective, the essence of healing is reminding the body of previous healthy conditions through prophylaxis (initiation), massage (hilot), herbal medicine (gamot) and/or actively restoring psychological balance therapy (rituals, sacrifices/offerings, exorcism, etc.), hypnotic suggestions, trance, dreams, or psychic surgery. The same goes for nature and communities. Sickness and healing has much to do with attitude and feeling, as well as with belief and self-image. The healer knows this and strengthens images of wellness in the other through intuitive resonance (pakiramdam). Good healers ignite their clients’ powers of self-healing and claim no healing powers for themselves.
Internal and external balance is also the basic principle behind “The Ritual of Daily Living”, an ingenious indigenous approach to wellbeing and holistic self-healing that was conceptualized by the Ilonggo culture-bearer artist Perry Argel (de Guia 2005).
3)
INDIGENOUS COGNITIVE STYLES
Filipino cognitive styles are indicative of the primary process of knowing (Guidano & Liotti, Mahony, Bara): They are embedded in the messy principles of randomness, spontaneity and creative improvisation. Yet they are closure seeking and anchored in continuity.
Continuity, like the beat of the heart, the tides of the sea, or the phases of the moon, spells out the age-old rhythms of life, which, in their entirety, can only be comprehended as process. Continuity in the everyday relates the profane to the sacred and links the past to the now and into the future. This timeless, archaic continuity is at the core of the indigenous cognitive style of Filipinos.
The cognitive styles discussed are knowing through mirroring, searching for and reading signs, learning through osmosis (saling-pusa) and immersion (kataalan), concluding through “piling up” Information, learning as a give-and-take process, deciding and verifying via collective consent, talinhaga— communicating through metaphors and sampalataya (faith). The cognitive styles are discussed in the light of Sikolohiyang Pilipino Research, the Filipino personality theory and personal experiences with Filipino artists.
4)
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY IN THE INDIGENOUS CONTEXT
Psychopathology has its being within the narrow boundaries that are defined by the western academe. Its constructs and labels, many of them born during the Victorian age, use metaphors of sickness and confrontation: mental disease, deviance, ab-norm-ality. Restriction and chemical control are the cures widely administered in mental institutions. Most of these are funded by governments and the pharmacological industry— in the US, in the Philippines, and elsewhere.
Deviant behavior in the Philippines is often still treated with traditional means by the babaylan. Some indigenous concepts and methods of treatment are discussed (Magos, 1992, etc.). The alternative therapy of a Filipina psychotherapist is presented, which highlights the importance of involving the family and community in the healing (Cabado-Espanola, 2008).
Filipino rival paradigms to the western disease model of psychiatric disorders and a case study on this topic (de Guia, 2002) conclude the discussion.
5)
THE FILIPINO ARTIST AS BABAYLAN/SHAMAN
Father Demetrio (1976), who studied the ways of Visayan shamans and their role in society, links their function to psychologists. Shamans knows human nature and, as psychics, are especially sensitive, said Demetrio. Usually quiet and introvert (mabait or buotan), such individuals nevertheless have the earmarks of the ones not given to trivial matters. Demetrio also points out the artistic talents of the shamans, which is often exercised only during ecstasy.
While all Filipino babaylans are artists by default, not all culture-bearing Filipino artists are babaylans, although some wish to believe so. The dividing line between the babaylan and the culture-bearing artist is psychological maturity, cultural training and a commitment to serve that is also recognized by the community.
Yet, Filipino dividing lines are never black and white, but accommodate many shades of grey. And my lecture would present stories of conscious and unconscious manifestations of culture-bearing artists wanting to be, posing as, doing the work of, learning from, acting like and being trained as babaylans.
Issues of shamanic disease, shamanic lineage, psychopomps versus healers and other topics relating to animist knowledge are discussed. Culture-bearing and the Filipino personality theory, (rather than art theory) are the frame work of this lecture, which is based on years of research and immersion with Filipino artists.
6)
CULTURE AS CROSS IN CROSS-CULTURAL MARRIAGE
30 years of cross-cultural marriage linking a German artist and a Filipino artist: What did I learn? What did I teach? How to avoid the snags of cross-cultural misunderstanding?
My university carrier started with a paper wherein I examined 500 cultural biases / divides that come to play in a mixed marriage between the East and the West.
The Filipino Personality Theory of Virgilio Enriquez and the constructivist theory in psychology are the frameworks underpinning my discussion.
7)
CULTURE SENSITIVE TOURISM
This lecture will describe the activities and plans of the Heritage and Arts Foundation of the Philippines Inc. and my motivations and work as the founder.
I will discuss the pilot projects of the Foundation, the two conferences on Kapwa Psychology that HAPI has so far organized and our future plans. Prospects and difficulties of the implementation of heritage academies will be discussed.
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