Latah in South-East Asia

"Latah," the Malayan hyperstartle pattern, has fascinated Western observers since the late nineteenth century and is widely regarded as a "culture-bound syndrome." Dr Winzeler critically reviews the literature on the subject, and presents new ethnographic information based on his own fieldwork in Malaya and Borneo. He considers the biological and psychological hypotheses that have been proposed to account for "latah," and explains the way in which local people understand it. Arguing that latah has specific social uses, he concludes that it is not generally appropriate to regard it as an "illness" or "syndrome."

First sentence: The earliest European account to be cited as an actual or possible reference to latah (by Yap 1952: 516; Murphy 1972: 43) is contained in J. R. Logan's journal of his trip from Melaka into Naning, published in 1849.

Year

1995

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

2

Pages

188

ISBN

9780521472197

Data source: Wikidata