Ethnopsychiatry

The idea of studying migration from an applied standpoint is certainly not new, but it brings to light the added value of considering daily practice as a source of new questions that challenge the common disciplinary views. This contribution proceeds from this premise (and from a pragmatic idea of interdisciplinarity), justifying and summarising my itinerary of research and intervention as a psychologist and anthropologist at the Frantz Fanon Centre, an outpatient clinic for the mental health of immigrants in Northern Italy. In this unit, ‘ethnopsychiatry’ is intended as a way of approaching suffering taking into account, not just symptoms and biographies, but also the multiple forms whereby power relations impact on the individual experience. Drawing from the clinical stories of three women treated at the Centre, I attempt to demonstrate that the experiences of the immigrants – and the dynamics related to their suffering – help to illuminate the existential challenges and emerging forms of subjectivity that characterise the contemporary historical condition. As a result of this discussion, I aim to bring forward a perspective in which ‘intellectual hybridity’ – a concept that seems more suitable for a new emancipatory social research – arises from the need to engage with the profuse variety of problems and elaborate responses presented to us.

The volume retraces the  intellectual adventure of Suzanne Taïeb, a Jewish-Tunisian MD, who joined the School of Antoin Porot, founder of the French colonial psychiatry in Algiers. Her biography is the pretext for a regeneration of her anthropological thesis on "traditional superstitions and deliria"of patients interned in the psychiatric hospital of Blida.

Non sempre gli operatori sociali dispongono di competenze e strumenti utili a costruire con persone di background migratorio una comunicazione effettivamente comprensiva, che dia luogo ad efficaci percorsi di intervento.
Questa ricerca esplorativa basata sull'osservazione partecipante e interviste semistrutturate focalizza il dispositivo della consultazione transculturale come strumento gruppale e dialogico che, grazie alle connessioni tra dimensione psico-emotiva e socio-antropologica, consente una più appropriata valutazione di bisogni e risorse, nonché una costruzione più partecipata degli interventi, nel rispetto dei principi di unicità e autodeterminazione della persona.



Social workers often have difficulties communicating empathically with people with a migration background.
Based on participant observations and semi-structured interviews, this exploratory study focuses on transcultural consultation as a tool that through the connection between the psycho-emotional and socio-anthropological dimension allows a more adequate assessment of clients' needs and resources, as well as a more participatory construction of the interventions respecting the principles of uniqueness and self-determination.

This dissertation attempts to explain how Chinese officials, physicians, and ordinary families construed and handled mad speech, crazy behavior, and insane people from roughly 1000 CE to the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). I treat “madness” not as an entity, but as an ascribed characteristic of people, acts, and words.

Part 1 analyzes how physicians from Song (960-1279) to Qing explained and treated kuang or diankuang (“mania,” “insanity”), a chiefly behavioral illness. Far from splitting mind from body, most doctors assumed that psycho-behavioral pathology supervened upon organic imbalances; they thus treated mad patients with drugs designed to correct these imbalances. As I trace how doctors came to attribute insanity to the action of inner Fire and mucus (instead of invasion by Wind or demons), I explore several key issues in Chinese medical history: what doctrinal innovations Jin-Yuan physicians (1115-1368) proposed, why the most sophisticated Ming (1368-1644) medical writers were syncretists (zhezhong), why the “Danxi corpus”––a body of works attributed to Zhu Zhenheng (1282-1358)––dominated Ming medical thinking, and how profoundly intertextual the Chinese medical tradition was. I also study how doctors interpreted possession symptoms and postpartum insanity.

Part 2 examines Qing judicial and popular practices surrounding “madness.” Legal fengbing (“madness illness”) and medical kuang functioned differently because they emerged from (and were deployed within) fields of practices whose categories and concerns differed. The way legal officials handled mad acts was shaped by specific institutional concerns and procedures. In the 1660s, the new crime “killing because of madness” likened mad homicides to accidental killings. Because this crime was not punished physically, legislators soon ordered that mad people be preventively confined. Although the script by which Qing law understood mad killings hardly changed, mad homicides were sentenced increasingly severely starting in the 1750s, especially when victims were senior relatives. Yet few mad killers were executed. By contrast, ostensibly mad men whose written fantasies harnessed imperial symbols were often sentenced to death for subversion. This fear that “mad words” could threaten the symbolic fabric of the eighteenth-century Qing state sheds new light on the old topic of “literary trials” (wenziyu).

Le présent mémoire de CIU relate une expérience d'accompagnement à la reconstruction de soi d'une victime-témoin (ex-compagne d'un adepte de mouvement sectaire), victime de traumatisation indirecte dite secondaire. Le parcours d'Inès vers la reconquête de sa liberté d'être et d'agir est analysé en détail, de manière ethnographique, à partir d'une triple approche narrative, existentielle et transculturelle. Les applications cliniques des concepts étudiés en Victimologie et Psychotraumatologie font l'objet d'un éclairage anthropologique, systémique et philosophique. Les phénomènes de dissociation, crise, deuil compliqué et lâcher-prise sont discutés par rapport à leurs conséquences sur la vie intrapsychique et interpersonnelle de la patiente. Sont mises au jour la mécanique de l'emprise, dans la secte comme dans le couple, et ses ambivalences en termes de lien et de relation. Les facteurs de protection et de résilience d'Inès sont abordés en parallèle aux facteurs de risque de son ex-partenaire, dont la quête spirituelle était pervertie et a produit des effets délétères. La prise en charge thérapeutique du trauma complexe d'Inès s'appuie sur une démarche intégrative qui vise à soutenir au long cours les processus de remaniement identitaire en favorisant le rétablissement de la sécurité ontologique via divers outils de « créativité symbolique ». L'auteure examine également de façon réflexive sa posture d'intervenante. Pour conclure, elle envisage enjeux et perspectives.

This article follows the theoretical analysis and the ethnographic work carried out in 2017 and 2018, condensed in the master's thesis in anthropology on mental health, transcultural psychiatry and asylum seekers/refugees. The analysis of the models of modern psychiatry and the importance of the role of anthropology (health) in the production of new theoretical formulations concerning "transculturality" in the clinic were sought here. It is important to emphasize that the interdisciplinarity of both areas is increasingly necessary, since the opposite has been revealed as leading to sterile transcultural practices that fragment the reality brought by immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. It serves the present to emphasize the importance of this polymorphous discourse.

This case-study is inspired by Tobbie Nathan’s ethno-psychiatric perspectives on trauma discourses and gives an additional example to this problematic; it is a case of a popular healer, who treats an illness known in the South-Slavic cultural therapy as the strava. The concept of the strava – or fright – is deeply rooted in the popular belief about the supernatural creatures, the fairies. A particular popular therapy used by the healer – the fairy-clairvoyant – can be seen as a response to this disorder. According to Nathan and Grandsard, the individuals who suffered a traumatic event can develop post-traumatic symptoms. The ones who develop these symptoms are the patients to this treatment. Those who don’t develop the symptoms can use trauma as a “tool for a transformation.”  The article aims to provide an additional example, described in an ethnographic manner, to the concept of trauma and of traumatic event as notions present in the field of ethnopsychiatry as proposed by Nathan and Grandsard.

Madness is a major disorder of social ties and a universal problem for all societies. The formation and transformation of local treatments of madness are therefore a major area of study within social and cultural anthropology. In this perspective, “treatment” should be understood on three different levels. First, as treatment of the problem that madness poses to social order; Second, as treatment of an ailment on the basis of a therapeutic system that can call upon specialist knowledge or not (e.g. a classification, an etiology, a pharmacopoeia, etc.) in order to identify the disorder or to determine its nature and to then provide the appropriate intervention; Finally, as moral treatment of people experiencing madness and trying to find a solution to their state of disorder.

"Michel Weber and Will Desmond, (eds.), Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought, Frankfurt / Lancaster, ontos verlag, Process Thought X1 & X2, 2008. (695 p. + 726 p. ; ISBN 978-3-938793-92-3 ; 398 €)
Gathering 115 entries written by 101 internationally renowned experts in their fields, the Handbook of Whiteheadian Process Thought aims at interpreting Whitehead secundum Whitehead, at canvassing the current state of knowledge in Whiteheadian scholarship and at identifying promising directions for future investigations through (internal) cross-elucidation and (external) interdisciplinary and crossdisciplinary development.
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Aesthetics
II. Anthropology
III. Ecology
IV. Economy
V. Education
VI. Ethics
VII. Gender Studies
VIII. History
IX. Language
X. Mathematics and Logic
XI. Metaphysics
XII. Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind
XIII. Public Policy
XIV. Science
XV. Sociology of Science
XVI. Theology and Religion
XVII. Theory of Knowledge
XVIII. Urbanism & Architecture
XIX. Biographical entries
XX. Critical Apparatus

Authors : A Sister of St-John, Adam Scarfe , Albert C. Lewis, Alessandro Sardi, Alix Parmentier, Andrew Dawson, Annamaria Miranda, Arran Gare, Barbara Muraca, Berit Brogaard, Beth Lord, Brian G. Henning, Bruce Duncan MacQueen, Bruce G. Epperly, Carol F. Johnston, Carol P. Christ, Claude de Jonckheere, Claus Michael Ringel, Clifford Cobb, Craig Eisendrath, Daniel A. Dombrowski, David G. Butt, David Ray Griffin, Dominic J. Balestra, Donald Wayne Viney, Donna Bowman, Douglas R. Anderson, Elias L. Khalil, Elie During, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Franck Robert, Gao Shan, Gary A. Cook, George Allan, Giangiacomo Gerla , Gottfried Heinemann, Graham Bird, Granville C. Henry, jr., Gudmund Smith, Guillaume Durand, Howard Woodhouse, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Jaime Nubiola, James Connelly, James Williams, Jean-Pascal Alcantara, Johanna Seibt, John B. Cobb, Jr., John H. Buchanan, John Quiring , John W. Lango, Jonathan Delafield-Butt, Jorge Luis Nobo, Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., Joseph E. Earley, Sr., Joseph Grange, Juan Vicente Mayoral de Lucas, Judith Jones, Julie A. Nelson, Kipton Jensen, Leemon McHenry, Les Muray, Lieven Decock, Liliana Albertazzi, Luca Gaeta, Luca Vanzago, Manuel Bächtold, Marc Maesschalck, Maria Pachalska , Mark Modak-Truran, Mark R. Dibben, Mary Elizabeth Moore, Max Velmans, Michael Epperson, Michael Fortescue, Michel Weber, Murray Code, Mustafa Ruezgar, Norman Sieroka, Patrick J. Coppock, Paul Custodio Bube, Peter Hare, Peter Simons, Pierfrancesco Basile, Les Muray, Randall E. Auxier, Richard Feist, Robert Castiglione, Robert J.Valenza, Ronny Desmet , Ross L. Stein, Rudolf Windeln, Stephen T. Franklin, Sylviane R. Schwer, T. L. S. Sprigge, Thomas A. F. Kelly, Thomas E. Hosinski, C.S.C., Timothy E. Eastman, Vincent Shen, Volker Peckhaus, William Jay Garland, William T. Myers"

In this article the Author explores the methodology on which Ernestode Martino’s monograph The Land of Remorse (1961) was based. De Martino’s originally articulated interdisciplinary research is studied focusing on three aspects: 1) a critical deconstruction of naturalistic reductionism in the long term intellectual production of tarantism; 2) the dialoging task of the young psychiatrist Giovanni Jervis as a medical member of the “équipe”; 3) the importance of the category of «molecularity» in de Martino’s pioneering attempts of creating “consilience” between naturalistic sciences and humanities. Molecularity, furthermore, is a category which leads the Author to suggest a new perspective in the analysis of the relationship between de Martino and Gramsci’s thought.

In present-day Morocco, animal sacrifice still plays a major role in the lives of many people, inasmuch as the social character of everyday life possesses, as an important aspect, the religious one. In the context at hand, animal sacrifices take place on more than one occasion, and contain underneath their layers a miscellaneous battery of beliefs whose origins are historically and culturally dissimilar. However, sacrifice is an oft-marginalized practice that hardly occupies a focal position in scholarly research. This paper examines the sacrificial instances in Morocco, highlighting the reflectionist aspect of the practice. It studies the cultural and religious interactions that have engendered the sacrificial practice in its current form, and attempts to draw conclusions in relation to the Moroccan belief system and the social status quo. Next, it explores the position of the animal as a material as well as a symbolic entity within certain ceremonies that make use of sacrifices, and interprets it in terms of the ceremonies' dynamics and their spiritual and supernatural background. Reading sacrifice as a text, this paper also ventures to shed light on the position of the saint and the manner wherein he is represented in Morocco, in relation to the other sacred and omnipresent figure in the Moroccan context--Allah.

We think we know what healers do: they build on patients’ irrational beliefs and treat them in a ‘symbolic’ way. If they get results, it’s thanks to their capacity to listen, rather than any influence on a clinical level. At the same time, we also think we know what modern medicine is: a highly technical and rational process, but one that scarcely listens to patients at all.

In this book, ethnopsychiatrist Tobie Nathan and philosopher Isabelle Stengers argue that this commonly posed opposition between traditional and modern medicine is misleading. They show instead that healers are interesting precisely because they don’t listen to patients, using techniques of ‘divination’ rather than ‘diagnosis’. Healers construct genuine therapeutic strategies by identifying the origins of symptoms in external forces, outside of the mind of the sufferer. Modern medicine, for its part, is characterized by empiricism rather than rationality. What appears to be the pursuit of rationality is ultimately only a means to dismiss and exclude other forms of treatment.

Blurring the distinctions between traditional and modern practices and drawing on perspectives from across the globe, this ethnopsychiatric manifesto encourages us to think in radically new ways about illness, challenging accepted notions on the relationship between sufferer and symptom.

Bei der rituellen Chirurgie soll sich der Jüngling zur Frau verwandeln. Er soll menstruationsbluten wie eine Frau, sein Genital so beschneiden, dass es zum weiblichen Genital wird. Die Eliminierung seines Geschlechts ist die Voraussetzung dafür, dass seine Initiation in mutterfixierten Kulturen als gelungen angesehen wird. Die Bezeichnung der Initiationsriten als Reifeprüfungen sind die aufwendige Selbstdarstellung, um das Gegenteil zu verschleiern: den Zwang zur Infantilisierung. Matriarchale Kulturen sind daran interessiert, die Infantilisierung der Jünglinge zu manifestieren, weil die Mutterfixierung das einzig erlaubte Beziehungsmuster ist, das die psychologische Herrschaft der Frau nicht infrage stellt. Die Jünglinge müssen nach der Beschneidung oder nach der Kopfjagd gefüttert werden. Orale (z.B. erbeuteten Kopf mit Zähnen entfleischen) und sexuelle Exzesse direkt nach den durchgeführten Beschneidungen deuten an, dass das ungestillte Verlangen nach Sozialkontakt der Geschlechter durch konsumistische Muster (Gier) ersetzt wird. Die Vagina dentata (= beißende Vagina), die in Form von Kaurimuschelketten bei Initiationsriten eine zentrale Rolle spielt und eine eindeutige Kastrationsdrohung enthält, wird im Laufe der Kulturgeschichte weltweit zur zentralen Geldwährung. Die Jagd nach Profit steht also offenbar auch in Zusammenhang mit den Initiationsriten und der dort praktizierten Unterwerfung unter die blutungs- und gebärfähige Frau.

Thomas Lambo è il primo psichiatra nigeriano operante in Africa, in Nigeria,  noto soprattutto per aver dato origine, durante l'indipendentizzazione del proprio Paese, al methodological syncretism, dispositivo di indagine e di lavoro capace di insistere specificatamente sull'importanza della dimensione culturale e nell'insorgenza e nello sviluppo della malattia mentale. Aro Village, luogo pioneristico, è un villaggio terapeutico in cui hanno collaborato medici, infermieri, traditional healers e può essere inteso come uno tra i germogli dell'etnopsichiatria critica. Lo scopo di questo elaborato è quello di chiarire l'importanza della soggettività degli individui affetti da disturbi mentali, volendo in questo senso considerare la sofferenza non come mera materia scientifica, bensì anche come machine à communiquer di disagi più profondi e strutturamente inseriti all'interno di differenti universi culturali.

Ce rite initiatique semble participer d’une forme autorégulatrice, par les effets cathartiques dont les retombées sur les personnes et sur le  groupe d'humains s’accompagneraient de conséquences psychiques émancipatrices. Une mise à jour - ou du moins à l’ajournement - des tensions psychiques au sein de l’individu comme dans le groupe social.

Mots clés : Iswabn, Mascarade, Frayeur infantile, Scène onirique, Rites de passage, Rites initiatique, Rite cathartique, Culture, Traditions, Transmissions, Modernité.

Rassemblant des éléments de définition de l’exorcisme provenant de plusieurs
sciences humaines (anthropologie, psychologie et littérature), cet article lance des
pistes de réflexion sur le mal envisagé sous l’angle anthropologique. Il s’efforce
de comprendre et d’expliquer le nombre croissant de sollicitations des exorcistes
ou autres spécialistes ainsi que l’étonnante confiance que leur accordent les personnes désirant se libérer d’une présence inopportune, supposée en rapport avec
l’au-delà.

Principali argomenti dall'Indice:

o La cultura del suono verso un nuovo umanesimo 
o SoundHology, il silenzio, cultura e poetica dell’infinito
o SoundHology, il silenzio tra natura, società, mistica e ricerca interdisciplinare
o Trance, verso un evoluzionismo traslazionale bio-ispirato
o Etnomusicologia & Etnopsichiatria dialogano. La Pizzica e l’Argia: I riti terapeutici coreutico-musicali (Puglia e Sardegna)
o Claude Debussy, sono per la libertà e per rendere solo ciò che sento
o Josef Zawinul, koinè musicale e poesia sonora senza tempo
o Luigi di Gianni, maestro di espressività cinematografica in promozione della cultura popo-lare
o Paolo Grassi, teatro, lirica, televisione, editoria e spettacolo
o Milano, musica glocale e l’esperienza internazionale degli Amici della Scala
o Scacciapensieri: strumenti musicali senza confini
o Giuseppe Mercurio: ricerca della poesia e della musica per valorizzare le culture locali 
o Leonardo da Vinci, la musica e gli strumenti musicali

È sconfinata la vastità degli argomenti riferibili al Suono, il quale atavicamente conserva un’aurea del mistero originale che ci appartiene, essendo connaturato all’inizio della vita nel nostro universo, le cui leggi stanno lentamente trovando umana spiegazione tramite studi di varia natura, scientifici, tecnologici, umanistici e artistici.
L’Autore considera la SoundHology una disciplina innovativa, che segue percorsi di ricerca olistici e interdisciplinari, proponendo articolate riflessioni sul Suono, che mirano a esplorare oltre il convenzionale approccio estetico e storico sulla musica, integrando collegamenti con diversi campi della conoscenza e prendendo principalmente spunto da studi biologici, neuro-fisiologici, storico-sociali, religiosi, antropologici, musicologici, scientifici, economici, botanici, chimici, alchemici, tecnologici, informatici, astronomici, organologici, mass mediologici, artistici, prestando particolare attenzione a quelli genetici, robotici e neuro computazionali. Opere correlate sono: Musica glocale (musica Expo 2015), Etnomusicologia, Etnorganologia, Folk revival (2017), MusicoHology (2018)

Maria Sabina, Le Sage aux champignons sacrés. Propos recueillis en langue mazatèque par Alvaro Estrada. Traduit de l'espagnol par Michel Bibard, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1974.
Alvaro Estrada, A Vida de Maria Sabina. A Sabia dos cogumelos, Traduçao B. Perrone Moises, Sao Paulo, Martins Fontes, 1984

Publicación a cargo de revista D-Mentes Virtuales (2014: 22-27) de la Clínica Psiquiátrica "Dr. Everardo Neumann Peña" financiada por Servicios de Salud de San Luis Potosí. El artículo fue realizado para la ponencia “Hacia
una aproximación antropológica del delirio”
(2009) en el Primer encuentro de Investigadores y Estudiantes
de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales – Rafael
Montejano y Aguiñaga- “estudios de ayer y de
hoy” en la Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí.

Il s’agira ici de saisir les enjeux de la pratique
« ethnopsy », c’est-à-dire ethno-psychiatrique et
ethno-psychanalytique. Pour ce faire, on définit tout
d’abord ses prémisses ; puis on repose la question
de l’émergence de la technoscience et de son lien
avec les religions et une certaine politique – toutes
deux centrales pour l’ethnopsy – ; enfin, on propose
une triple clef de lecture de l’effraction psychique,
qui est instrumentale en clinique ethnopsychiatrique
: l’oblitération de la « puissance vaginale »
selon Georges Devereux (1908-1985) ; la modulation
de la « sécurité ontologique » de ronald D.
Laing (1927-1989) et le devenir de la « syntonie »
chez eugène minkowski (1885-1972). en conclusion,
on reprend la question de l’empirisme radical
en psychothérapie, de l’écoute dans le monde de la
santé, et de l’hystérie de la philosophie.

A composição animal da mente humana, sobretudo no que diz respeito ao imaginário, é explorada neste artigo, no qual as aves merecem saliência exemplar. Utilizando-se a abordagem etnocientífica, busca-se uma integração entre a etnozoologia e a etnopsiquiatria. Exemplos de possíveis efeitos psicopatogênicos de vocalizações aviárias, sobretudo na Amazônia, são apresentados, bem como relatam se interpretações populares de efeitos terapêuticos e profiláticos que resultariam da conexão de humanos com componentes da ornis.

Si tratta del lavoro conclusivo del progetto “Com-prendere l'Altro. Consulenza antropologica e mediazione esperta”, finanziato dal Comune con fondi della Legge 40, si è proposto di introdurre in modo sperimentale le competenze antropologiche di traduzione e spiegazione delle culture nell'ambito dei servizi. Abbiamo svolto in particolare consulenza per operatori su immigrati, in particolare in campo sanitario ed etnopsicologico. L'obiettivo è stato di far comprendere la cultura dei migranti in un modo complementare a quello dei mediatori culturali, che si configuri come consulenza e mediazione esperta in particolare rispetto a concezioni locali del corpo, del genere, dell'identità, della genitorialità, della salute e della malattia, incluso il modo in cui il disagio psicologico viene percepito e affrontato nell'ambito di diverse culture, e il modo in cui fenomeni etichettati in Occidente come patologie sono inseriti in altri contesti e culture in un orizzonte culturale e rituale. Tale consulenza è consistita in momenti di formazione, incontro, confronto, discussione di casi, o partecipazione.
Vi alleghiamo qui la nostra relazione finale, che in stile etnografico ha consistito nell'approfondimento di un caso, e in una proposta metodologica di collaborazione tra antropologia e servizi.

Eric Wittkower founded McGill University’s transcultural psychiatry unit in 1955. One year later, he started the first international newsletter in this academic field, which became (and remains) the main journal today: Transcultural Psychiatry. However, at the beginning of his career Wittkower gave no signs that he would be interested in social sciences and psychiatry; he originally trained as a specialist in internal medicine in Berlin. This paper describes the historical context of the post-war period, when Wittkower founded a research unit at McGill University with an American anthropologist, Jacob Fried. Using archival material from McGill, I focus on the history of scientific networks and the circulation of knowledge, particularly on the exchanges between the French- and English-speaking academic cultures in North America and Europe. Because the history of transcultural psychiatry is a transnational history par excellence, but also a literature of exile, this leads necessarily to the important question of the reception of this academic field abroad.

Since the 1990‘s Lithuanian society undergoes a devastating epidemiological situation of suicide. Lithuania has been the leader of suicide in the World since 1996. Before the Second World War the majority of our population was living in a traditional rural agricultural economy. This traditional way of life was slowly
eroded during the Soviet era and was drastically altered by the economic changes of the 90's. Many works in the domain of psychology were conducted to examine the connection between various psychological constructs (hopelessness, economic
crisis, and so forth) and suicide, but little care has been yielded to the anthropological context of suicide: socioeconomic changes, archaic concepts of suicide and ethnomedical ways of coping with stressful and traumatic experiences. Unfortunately, no anthropological methodology exists in Lithuania to research the
current ethnographic narrative of stress, trauma and fright illness. The report is an attempt to comment leading Lithuanian sociological theory of cultural suicide factors and to promote further inquiry in the area.

Ethnomedicine examines and translates health-related knowledge and theories that people inherit and learn by living in a culture. Each society has a particular medical culture or “ethnomedicine,” which forms the culture’s medical common sense, or logic. An ethnomedical system has interrelated notions about the body, the causes and prevention of illnesses, diagnosis and treatment, such that ethnophysiology, ethnopsychiatry, practitioner-seeking behavior, and ethnopharmacology are all ethnomedical topics.

This work analyses the world wide growing phenomenon of pentecostal and charismatic religious movement from an anthropological perspective. The contemporary, scientific state-of-the-art related to pentecostalism is initially stated and then put in contrast with a local specific case, which was examined through ethnographic research on the field (the metropolitan area of Genoa 2015/16). Then, a set of theories and considerations are displayed, borrowing materials from the disciplinary traditions of Cultural, Biological, Medical Anthropology and Ethnopsychiatry, in order to constitute a sound anthropological gaze upon the entire matter of charismatic modern cults and their socio-political impact on the contemporary world.

El campo de la salud mental ha sido hasta el tiempo presente una de las áreas de formación y práctica clínica abordadas con menor profundidad en el currículum de pregrado de los profesionales de la salud. Reducida en la enseñanza de la medicina al dominio de la especialidad de la psiquiatría, la salud mental no ha sido interrogada en sus fundamentos epistémicos y políticos. En otros términos, no se ha puesto a prueba qué comprendemos por salud mental y en base a cuáles argumentos sostenemos la delimitación de su campo de acción. De este modo, antes de plantear una definición normativa de salud mental, se busca indagar en algunas aproximaciones que han explorado teórica y empíricamente las enfermedades mentales desde su contexto social, cultural, político e histórico. Sin pretender una revisión exhaustiva de las teorías y líneas de investigación desarrolladas, el objetivo principal es dar cuenta de los  principales conceptos e ilustrar la complejidad de un campo que requiere aún de mayor profundización.

Fe de Erratas:
Lecturas sugeridas
Beneduce, Roberto (2006). Enfermedad, persona y saberes de la curación. Entre la cultura y la historia, Anales de Antropología 40 (I): 77-131.
De Martino, Ernesto (1961). La terra del rimorso, Il Saggiatore, Milán [La tierra del remordimiento, Bellaterra, Barcelona, 1999].
Martínez, Ángel (2000). What’s behind the symptom? On psychiatric observation and anthropological understanding, Harwood Academic Publishers, Amsterdam.
Martínez, Ángel (2006). Cuando las hormigas corretean por el cerebro: retos y realidades de la psiquiatría cultural, Cadernos de Saúde Pública 22 (11): 2269-2280.
Martínez Ángel, Gemma Orobitg y Josep Comelles (2000). “Antropología y Psiquiatría. Una genealogía sobre la cultura, el saber y la alteridad” en Emilio González y Josep Comelles (comps.), Psiquiatría transcultural, Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, Serie Estudios 25, Madrid, pp. 117-241.
Rechtman, Richard (2004). El enfoque multicultural en salud mental: una mirada crítica, Quadern CAPS 32: 24-30.