A modern person is often interested in what amok is after reading a book by Stephen Zweig. What is it about and what is hidden under this word? The author parses the meaning in some detail. Let’s try to formulate briefly what this term is.
Where did the word come from
Another meaning of the term is “blind rage”. It appeared for the first time in the Malaysian language. In this language, it sounds like "men-amok", means falling into rage with the subsequent murder. This condition involves rabies that is uncontrollable. A person, having become a victim of such a state, destroys the environment, without controlling his actions.
At first, this concept was applied exclusively to Malaysians, Filipinos, and people living in neighboring lands. This term is used as local residents tend to behave aggressively. As the observations of the Europeans showed, they often attacked others, for no apparent reason.
Terms and History
Europeans began to think about what Amok was after observing the mysterious Asians. The understanding of the term described above came to European powers approximately in the seventeenth century and was popular with the general public until the nineteenth century. This is largely due to travel enthusiasts, more than once climbing into remote Asian regions. For example, Captain Cook made a significant contribution to the understanding of Amok.
The following fact is quite curious: until about the twentieth century, it was believed that only a person who was under the influence of narcotic substances could find out from his experience what amok is. It was such intoxication that made him prone to attack. But today, psychiatrists regard this phenomenon much more widely. Speaking about amok, they no longer take into account either a person’s nationality, or his tendency to use drugs, the fact that such substances affect the mind at the time of the action.
State specifics
In modern psychiatry, amok is a specific state of a person that cannot be controlled. Scientifically, the term is defined as the desire for destruction, the collapse of products, objects. A person subject to such a condition seeks to harm the people around him, to injure them. Very often, the amok ends in the death of someone around.
In psychiatry, determining what amok is, they describe the condition for which the reasons are not obvious. As a number of researchers believe the phenomenon, such rage in most cases is due to the betrayal of the chosen partner. A person, being a victim of adultery, realizes the failure of himself as a person, fears ridicule of others. Such an emotional state merges with a feeling of hatred towards the public. The combinatorial mechanism is activated, the behavior becomes pronouncedly aggressive.
Step by step
At some point, aggression builds up voluminously enough to cause an explosion. It is impossible to predict in advance at what point this event will happen. It is impossible to predict what will become the impetus for a person to fall into rage. After amok comes complete exhaustion. Some lose their memory.
In medicine, there are known observations of people subject to amoca and their acts committed against themselves and their health. Perhaps suicidal behavior.
Ethnospecific Syndrome
This word appeared from a combination of two Greek: ethnos, which means "people", and syndrome, that is, a combination. The term involves a complex of painful features caused by impaired consciousness and behavioral abnormalities. Such a syndrome is said to be when violations are recorded in some traditional society. Sources of disorders are fairly common for all people, so they determine pathopsychological conditions. A distinctive feature is in manifestation. This is determined by the biological factors of people united by some specific community. In this case, the influence of habitat factors on neurohumoral reactions plays an important role.
For ethnospecific syndrome (such is Amok), a cultural stereotype is characteristic. This term hides some specific nature of the interaction between community members, as well as educational features and specifics of community management.
Curious to know
Initially, ethnospecific syndromes were of interest to researchers because of the exotic nature of the human reaction manifested by a person belonging to some closed society. Further, the syndrome began to be evaluated as exceptional material, allowing us to conclude the mentality of the inhabitants of the area, the characteristics of a particular nationality. The study of syndromes allowed us to bring general bases for calculations devoted to general psychological research.
It is known that there are ethnospecific syndromes in which specific living conditions are most significant. For others, role-based behavior related to gender comes first. Some stereotypes are culturally based and suggest human emotions and reactions. Ethnospecific syndromes are especially important in the context of ethnospecific psychotherapy.