ABSTRACT
There is an expectation that therapeutic cultures will speak to and in the language of psy-expertise. This paper presents some disruptions to this script by attending to the practices of faith-based healing in India. Situated between the discourses of Global Mental Health and Traditional Medicine, faith healing is haunted today by questions concerning the treatment and cure of distress and affliction whilst itself deploying very different therapeutics. In this paper, we will locate how faith healing practices are interpellated by contemporary mental health discourse. It will focus on a specific shrine in India that has witnessed how the interaction between the two is carried out on the ground – the Mira Datar Dargah, and take a closer look at the therapeutic culture of this shrine to examine what faith healing has to offer to and against the psy-disciplines. Thus, in this chapter we will approach mental health care in India not through the hegemonic frame of psychotherapeutics, but through the invitation posed by faith healing practices.
