The Supernatural Model of Abnormal Behaviours

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Over many years, people have been inquisitive about abnormal behaviours within their societies and beyond. A typical question pertaining to these behaviours is, “why is he behaving this way.” According to DSM-IV-TR, abnormal behaviour is defined as a person who experiences behavioural, cognitive or emotional dysfunction, associated with distress and atypical in his cultural context (Barlow, Durand, 2009). However, the quest for answers and remedies has drifted people from scientific models to traditional ones. One of such models is supernatural.

The supernatural model states that people believed and explained abnormal behaviours in terms of supernatural forces. In other words, abnormal behaviours are caused by demonic and evil spirits possessing the human body. These spirits take complete control of a person and manipulate their perceptions, feelings and actions. Treatment for these behaviours comes in the form of exorcism which is administered by “special” class of people such as priests (Lahey & Ciminero, 1980). The supernatural model is still prominently in some countries and Singapore is one of them.

During the 1980s, Singapore was deeply rooted in cultural and religious practices and this initiated more Singaporeans to believe in gods and spirits. These spirits hovered around them and they were seen as sources of blessing and punishment. When they were physically and mentally unwell, they sought “special” people such as mediums, bomohs and tangkis who could communicate with those spirits in the spiritual realm (Tan, Chee & Long, n.d). The main idea behind this was to establish the root cause and discover the remedy so that they could receive blessing instead of punishment. The popular case of Adrian Lim demonstrates t...

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... pleasures and motives (Lahey & Ciminero, 1980). In Adrian’s case, he carried out ritualistic massage on women’s naked bodies and copulated with them. In other instances, mediums charge their clients with large amount of money for certain types of rituals. A good example will be the fortune tellers who can be seen in popular streets such as Little India and Chinatown. From these scenarios, it is can be deduced that these mediums, themselves, can be suffering from psychological disorder and therefore, they use supernatural platform to either gain capital or satisfy their carnal pleasure.

Supernatural models, which are cultural specific and subjective, are still alive especially in Asian societies. When people experience problematic behaviours, supernatural models become more convincing than science. There must be fine line drawn between the supernatural and science

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