Can Phi Pob Speak? ANZSHM NSW Seminar with Krittapak Ngamvaseenont

You are invited to join the NSW Branch of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine for our last guest seminar of the year. Our guest speaker, Historian of Medicine and PhD candidate at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Manchester, Krittapak Ngamvaseenon, will present his exciting research on transcultural psychiatry in Thailand. His paper is titled, Can Phi Pob Speak? Spirit Possession, Psychoanalysis, Transcultural Psychiatry, Buddhism, and Cold War Thailand.

Members and non-members alike are welcome to join this event. A Zoom link will be sent to registered participants closer to the date.

Abstract

Phi Pob is a rural ghost from Northeast Thailand, a region that has been culturally and politically subordinated by the Thai state. Rural spirits and their associated practices are often deemed exotic and irrational, leaving them without a voice in the official narratives of the Thai state. Yet, with the introduction of transcultural psychiatry in the late 1960s, Phi Pob and other rural Thai spirits became both audible and visible within the psychiatric domain.

Transcultural psychiatry in Thailand began with the work of Sangun Suwanlert and his team. Their projects coincided with the broader effort of Thai psychiatry and mental health professionals to define their own identity and establish Thailand as a distinctive model for mental health on the global stage. Through his research on various regional spiritual beliefs and indigenous healing practices, Suwanlert made these rural ideas possible within psychiatry. However, not all rural spirits received equal attention. Suwanlert’s team selectively unmuted and muted certain spirits and healing practices—a process shaped by his complex position as both a Northeastern-born individual and an agent of the Thai state. The success of transcultural psychiatry in the 1970s was later disrupted by the growing influence of Buddhism at the end of the decade. The use of psychoanalytic language facilitated the reinterpretation of Buddhist concepts, allowing Buddhism to emerge as a new ethno-nationalist framework that countered Western psychiatric domination while simultaneously subordinating rural voices. Even Suwanlert’s transcultural psychiatry projects were later silenced and omitted from the official history of Thai psychiatry.

This paper explores the complex entanglements between Thai psychiatry, rural beliefs, Buddhism, transcultural psychiatry, and psychoanalysis in the 1970s. It argues that the political and cultural context of the Cold War momentarily created conditions that made rural beliefs visible and audible within Thai psychiatry,  while ultimately giving rise to a new ethno-nationalist ideology that re-subordinated those same rural voice

About the Speaker
Krittapak Ngamvaseenont graduated with a BA in History from Chiang Mai University. As a historian, his academic interest lies in the history of risk and medicine. He later trained as a medical sociologist and earned an MSc in Medicine, Science, and Society from King’s College London. During his time in the UK, he developed his academic interest in the sociology of psychiatry and neuroscience. Upon returning to Thailand, he worked as a researcher on a project titled “Changes in Thai ‘Rural’ Society: Democracy on the Move” for a year. He now holds a full-time teaching position in the Department of History at Chiang Mai University. As a lecturer, he has led two research projects: “Depression: A Key Challenge for Thai Society in the 21st Century,” and “The History of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Behavioural Economics: From Aaron T. Beck to Richard Thaler.” The latter was published as a book in 2022. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the University of Manchester. His PhD project focuses on the transformation of psychiatry in Thailand during the Cold War.