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a pleasant, aesthetically engaging process could also in itself serve as a kind of
“cure” or resolution for some patients’ problems. After speaking with the fam-
ily of a woman who had had behavioral problems for years and who was seek-
ing relief simply by praying at Vettucaud church, I realized that several people
we met had sought relief for their problems for several years—often including
several stays at mental hospitals—and had been living for an extended period
at a mosque, temple or church. Perhaps these individuals had given up on
treatment to a certain degree and found a resolution, a paradoxically nonteleo-
logical “solution” to their problems by remaining in a pleasant environment, a
scenic setting with music, chanting, incense, fl owers and a chance to engage
one’s spirituality. Some of these people, who have been struggling with mental
problems for years and could be considered incurable in psychiatric terms,
had found a resolution to their problems that was distinct from the ideal of
cure. Th ey found a way to cope with an intractable illness by living with their
problems in the aesthetically engaging setting of a mosque, temple or church,
essentially living in a pleasant process of therapy.
Th is attention to the process of healing further problematizes the concepts
of cure and healing. Th e cultural contingency of the idea of cure and the goals
of treatment are highlighted by patients’ and their caretakers’ descriptions of
the variety of states that are attained through therapy, such as improvement,
living in the process of therapy and achieving a better-than-normal state. Th is
analysis suggests that an overemphasis on curing in allopathic psychiatry may
obscure attention to the aesthetic quality of undergoing a therapy.
Considering the pleasantness of the process of treatment, which refers
not just to pleasant sensations but to the relative degrees of pleasantness and
abrasiveness in undergoing treatment, reworks our understandings of healing
in two ways that are signifi cant for researchers and practitioners who work
on mental health. First, and simply, one ought to consider how pleasant or
painful it is to undergo therapy. Patients appreciate a pleasant or less violent
method of therapy, and the pleasantness of the therapeutic process aff ects
patients’ choice of therapy and their decision to continue treatment. Second,
the fact that some people who are suff ering distress in Kerala have found a
way to manage their problems by continuing to live with an intractable ill-
ness in a pleasant environment and others feel they have achieved a state that
is somehow better or higher than their normal, healthy state, suggests that
researchers should broaden their understanding of what is accomplished in
treatment. Practitioners should meanwhile be aware of how the ideals of cur-
ing might aff ect treatment and consider a more diverse realm of therapeutic
dispensations, including less teleological orientations, in coping with mental
suff ering.