159
5
w
COOLING MUDPACKS: THE AESTHETIC
QUALITY OF THERAPY
I fi rst became aware of the importance of attending to the aesthetic quality of
the process of therapy one afternoon while I was at the Government Ayurveda
Mental Hospital observing the administrations of inpatient psychiatric proced-
ures. One patient who was undergoing talapodichil—the procedure described
in Chapter 2 wherein nurses apply a medicated “mudpack” to the patient’s
head and cover it with a banana leaf—joked about how silly his banana leaf
“hat” looked but also explained that the treatment provided a pleasant, cool-
ing eff ect. Meanwhile, patients who were receiving nasya laughed because of
the tickling they experienced as medicines were poured into their noses and
their heads were massaged. I thought how strikingly this diff ered from the
atmosphere I had observed around inpatient allopathic psychiatric procedures.
Electroconvulsive therapy, for example, was always a somewhat traumatic pro-
cedure. Far from being “cooling,” a common description for positive aesthetic
experiences in Kerala, electroconvulsive therapy was considered unpleasant or
painful, and humor was inappropriate.
I further examined patient appraisals of their aesthetic experiences in diff er-
ent therapies, and learned that adverse eff ects of medications and electrocon-
vulsive therapy have led some to discontinue allopathic psychiatric therapy and
pursue other types of treatment. In addition to discovering that patients prefer
a more pleasant process of therapy during psychiatric treatment, I realized that