Here you see a modern artist’s rendition of a mythical Malaysian evil tiger spirit called “hantu belian,” which the Malay peoples believed would possess a person’s body and make them commit great violence while they were unconsious. This belief in hantu belian’s destructive powers was pervasive enough that they formed the origin story of the phrase “to run amok.”
In 1770, the British Explorer James Cook recorded his encounters with individuals from this part of the world suddenly and recklessly turning violent and “indiscriminately willing and maiming villagers and animals in a frenzied attack”. The Malay people’s word for such outbursts was “mengamok,” meaning “to make a furious and desperate charge. This is where our term “amok” comes from.
Westerners originally labeled running amok as a psychiatric syndrome particular to certain primitive island cultures. The Malay people thought that the man who ran amok (because it was a decidedly gendered behavior) was not at fault for his crimes, since the tiger spirit of hantu belian had caused him to go on a killing spree.
Research by Manuel Saint Martin doesn’t think amok is unique to these island cultures. He sees the situation differently: although the idea of the hantu belian is specific to these island peoples, Martin thinks that the violence is caused by psychological disturbances that can be found across time among humans. In this view, the more than 560 mass shootings in the United States in 2023 (so far) are modern renditions of running amok.
Source: _Prim Care Companion Journal Clinical Psychology_ “Running Amok: A Modern Perspective on a Culture-Bound Syndrome,” Manuel L. Saint Martin, 1999 June 1(3): 66-70. BBC “How many mass shootings have there been in 2023?” 26 Oct 2023. Image from “monsterku.com”, “Malaysian Ghosts”. James Cook quote from Wikipedia under “Running Amok”
