'Atamai, fakakaukau and vale: 'mind', 'thinking' and 'mental illness' in Tonga

This paper explores the concepts of "mind", "thinking" and "mental illness" from a Tongan perspective. Their old Tongan equivalents are 'atamai, fakakaukau and vale. Of specific interest is mental illness. A specific state of mind, mental illness is investigated, firstly, in the conflicting relationships of mind and thinking and, secondly, in the context of the dialectical relationships between traditional forms of disease and illness and medicinal and healing concepts and practices. Their inherently clear spatio-temporal basis gives them a sense of realism. This realistic sense is much more revealing when they are positioned in the context of ta and va, Tongan for "time" and "space". Ontologically, time and space are the common medium of existence of all things, in a single level of reality. On the epistemological level, time and space are social constructs, deriving from their relative arrangement across cultures. Conflicts inevitably arising from the time-space, form-content transformation of types of human activity, create symmetries and asymmetries in the natural, mental and social realms. By integrating time and space, a general tă-vă theory could be developed, so that we can better understand the complexity surrounding nature, mind and society.