Letting off steam at a 'latah' session

By Myra Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): The women had worked hard all day to make the party a success and now it was time for fun.

Seated around the betelnut box, they started to let go of themselves. One woman shoved the betelnut box to her neighbor, who exclaimed a string of words in startled response. Everybody laughed. Another woman followed suit with her own verbal stream. It continued around the room, back and forth, until the expressions became increasingly vulgar. Yet the muttering of usually forbidden expletives, the "dirty" words never heard in polite company and seldom expressed by women, only seemed to add to the hilarity.

The uninitiated would no doubt be shocked at the sight of a group of middle-aged Malaysian women dissolved in laughter at their deliberate use, or misuse, of language. Yet they were taking part in a latah session, a socially sanctioned means of releasing tension in a strongly conformist society.

Latah is also known by its scientific name echolalia, or the often pathological repetition of what is said by other people as if echoing them. It was first described around the turn of the century by Dutch psychiatrist Van Wulften Palthe, who observed the phenomenon in schizophrenic patients in Indonesia.

More recent research has found that latah is not exclusive to the mentally ill in Malaysian and Indonesian society, but also common in normal people, particularly middle-aged women, as an escape from socially prescribed actions and reactions.

American psychiatrist Ron Simons conducted research in Malaysia in the early 1970s and noted that latah during a kenduri, a type of thanksgiving party, was accepted in rural areas even though obscenities were expressed. A young girl would usually run the risk of having her mouth rubbed with chili if she swore. However, girls would sometimes pretend to be latah, making slips of the tongue, to get attention.

Simons wrote that the uttering of obscenities during the ceremony was an acceptable outlet for tension and emotion among the peer group after a hard day's work. Living in a society in which acceptance by others is of paramount importance and with few permitted opportunities to vent emotion, the women experienced almost childish delight in toying with the forbidden.

Unlike in Malaysia, latah is found among middle-aged urban Indonesian women. The woman who swears and muddles her words may be said to be the "laughing stock" of her group, yet her friends are laughing "with" her, not "at" her in the communal release of tension.

Other cultures have their own events where the taboo becomes acceptable under special circumstances. During the carnival season in Brazil, people parade in next-to-nothing and behave with abandon. The same is true of Mardi Gras in European cities and New Orleans, where the wearing of masks allows people to shed conventional norms.

A parallel can also be drawn with the young people who took part in the recent campaign rallies here. They donned T- shirts in the color of their party, cut their hair into zany styles and behaved wildly. They screamed and shouted, with the mass hysteria of being together in a group sometimes descending into violence.

For them, it was fun, a chance to escape the mundane, regulated pattern of their lives. Yet, as Riswandha Imawan of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta said, the youths used the cloak of legitimacy of the campaign to release pressure.

"When those same people ride on a motorbike without any party symbols, they become law abiding again," he said. "They don't attack other people or force other motorists to the roadside to make them give them the right of way."