Genre: non-fiction



Summary: A child of a family of Hmong Immigrants to the US has epilepsy, and cultural misunderstanding contributes to overmedication, culture clash, and a tragic result for the young girl.



Commentary:

The group read this along with Linda Voigt's "Bodies," an excerpt from article on Medieval Model of the Humours



The group responded enthusiastically to the Fadiman book, especially its fair-minded and balanced presentation of both the Hmong and the American medical perspectives on the case of epilepsy patient Lia Ly.



While there was much sympathy for the devastation wrought by the language barrier when two such different cultures collide, there was a sense that things have improved, at least a little, in health care facilities over the past twenty years. "We have learned something" was said a couple of times, referring to the need for intercultural understanding.



The materials on the humours -- which were thought to control bodily health, personality, and one's position in the world -- was a revelation to some participants. I had included it to make the point that, until the 17th century, the Western European model of the body and its functions, the psyche, and the relation of the individual to the cosmos, would be as alien to modern Americans as the Hmong model is.



After the first session in which individual difference was emphasized, this session on cultural differences seemed a logical development in the seminar themes. Many participants commented in later sessions how much The Spirit Catches You meant to them -- how it helped them step back from a cross-cultural therapeutic encounter to assess whether they were really understanding what was going on or what the client was trying to say. (Kathy Ashley, Maine)