| Summary/Abstract |
Following in the wake of the People’s War (1996–2006) and the 2015 earthquakes, donor-funded projects supporting community mental health programmes and psychosocial counselling have proliferated in Nepal. This article explores one outcome of the expansion of ‘psy’: the transformation of ghosts and spirits, bhut-pret, into a psychosomatic affliction of repressed emotion and unconscious desire. By engaging theories of translation, I approach interventions for cases of ‘mass conversion disorder’ and the therapeutic encounters, contestations and uncertainties that coalesced around them as a lens into the politics of psychic life currently under way in Nepal.
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