Psychiatry conventionally regards spirit possession and dramatic healing rituals in non-European societies as forms of abnormality if not mental illness. Roland Littlewood, a psychiatrist and social anthropologist, argues that this has occurred as Western psychiatry obscured the political origin of its own disturbing cultural patterns -- hysteria, parasuicide, agoraphobia, eating disorders, shoplifting, male sexual violence, the response to traumatic stress, and multiple personality disorder. He proposes that the medical ...
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Psychiatry conventionally regards spirit possession and dramatic healing rituals in non-European societies as forms of abnormality if not mental illness. Roland Littlewood, a psychiatrist and social anthropologist, argues that this has occurred as Western psychiatry obscured the political origin of its own disturbing cultural patterns -- hysteria, parasuicide, agoraphobia, eating disorders, shoplifting, male sexual violence, the response to traumatic stress, and multiple personality disorder. He proposes that the medical emphasis on individual and biological differences in such "psychopathologies" is less a sort of bad science than it is fundamental to their very success as patterns of individual adjustment of personal dislocations. He contends that Western psychiatric illnesses are themselves "possession states" -- patterns by which individual agency is displaced through an idiom of alien intrusion whether of a spirit or a disease.Pathologies of the West is simultaneously an original approach to psychiatric illness in its international perspective and an introduction to recent developments in the social anthropology of medicine. It examines critically the relevance of phenomenological, structural and ethological approaches to understanding extreme personal experience. Professor Littlewood argues that anthropology must not simply provida a "cultural" alternative to sociological critiques of medicine, whilst psychiatry itself has to take into account the personal embodiment of cultural values.
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Add this copy of Pathologies of the West: an Anthropology of Mental to cart. $33.20, good condition, Sold by BookResQ. rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from West Valley, UT, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Cornell University Press.
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Good. Ex-library book with typical stickers and stampings. RF tag removed from the back of the book which took some paper with it. Priority Mail is available on this item. No international shipping.
Add this copy of Pathologies of the West: the Anthropology of Mental to cart. $39.06, fair condition, Sold by Anybook rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Lincoln, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2002 by Continuum.
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This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has soft covers. In fair condition, suitable as a study copy. Library sticker on front cover. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 550grams, ISBN: 9780826458162.
