(Ng)amukRevisited: Emotional Expression and Mental Illness in Central Java, Indonesia

Researchers of ‘amuk’ behavior in Southeast Asia have normally adopted either a psychiatric or ethno-behavioral position, both of which impose an outside theoretical model. An ethnopsychological view of (ng)amuk in Java reveals it to be a poetic idiom of distress, reflecting cultural anxieties about mental illness, aggression, loss of control and vulnerability of the self. Ngamuk as mental/social suffering in Java occurs in a political context that promotes strong repression of emotion and dissent. A model of ngamuk as an exegesis of mental/social distress, reflecting everyday experiences of anxiety, vulnerability, danger and transgression, is proposed.