Culture and Psychopathology Revisited
Culture December 2, 2021 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.7202/1084158ar via OpenAlex
Summary
Cultural factors can cause mental illness. Rapid social change triggers anomic depression in North American Indians and transient psychotic reactions (bouffée délirante) in Africans. Witchcraft and sorcery beliefs shape psychotic symptoms in marginal Africans and tradition-bound South European immigrants. Culture-bound syndromes emerge, transform, and spread epidemically under shifting socioeconomic and political conditions. To avoid Eurocentric and positivistic diagnostic errors, ritual possession, trance, and religious practices must be distinguished from psychopathology.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Rapid socio-cultural change produces specific psychopathological conditions in different cultural groups, and culture-bound syndromes evolve with changing conditions, while ritualized trance and possession should not be conflated with mental illness. |
Abstract
The author presents examples of pathogenic influence of culture. He identifies specific pathogenic factors associated with rapid socio-cultural change affecting North American Indians and African populations and sketches the resulting typical psychopathological conditions: anomic depression in Amerindians, transient psychotic reactions (bouffée délirante) in Africans. Witchcraft and sorcery beliefs often characterize the clinical picture of psychotic reactions in “marginal” Africans and in transplanted South Europeans of tradition-directed background. Examples are provided which illustrate the emergence, metamorphosis and epidemic spreading of so-called “culture-bound syndromes” under changing socio-economic, cultural and political conditions. Ritualized possession and trance states, as well as religious rituals in general, are to be separated from psychopathological phenomena in order to avoid eurocentric and positivistic fallacies in psychiatric diagnosis.