Between Anthropology and Psychiatry

Roland Littlewood is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry at University College, London. Former President of the Royal Anthropological Institute and a founding chair of the RAI’s Medical Committee and of the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre. His clinical work included fifteen years with a homeless mentally ill project in North London.

“Littlewood and Dein (are) two scholars of medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry who have influenced and inspired generations of anthropologists and mental health students, researchers and practitioners.” • Erminia Colucci, Middlesex University London“Few people capable (or brave enough) to address anthropology, psychiatry and cultures of monotheism in the critical and sometimes controversial way in which the authors have. The volume represents, fieldwork included, three decades of exploration into a topic that otherwise sits latently under the very structures of Western society and its medical institutions. These papers should be read by any student in social sciences and medicine (separately and combined), even if to question them.”  • Aaron Parkhurst, University College London

• Introduction: Monotheism and Mental OrderChapter 1. The Effectiveness of Words: Letters to the RebbeChapter 2. Cultural Performance – Lubavitch MessianismChapter 3. Did Christianity Lead to Schizophrenia?Chapter 4. Religious Stigmata, Magnetic Fluids and Conversion Hysteria: One Survival of ‘Vital Force’ Theories in Scientific Medicine?Chapter 5. Jinn, Psychiatry and Contested Notions of MisfortuneChapter 6. The Use of Traditional Healing in South Asian Psychiatric Patients in the UK: Interactions between Professional and Folk PsychiatriesChapter 7. Trauma and the Kanun: Two Responses to Loss in Albania and KosovaChapter 8. Druze Reincarnation as a Therapeutic ResourceChapter 9. Apocalyptic SuicideChapter 10. The Advent of the AdversaryChapter 11. Religion and PsychosisChapter 12. Neglect as Project: How Two Societies ForgetChapter 13. Against Belief: The Usefulness of Explanatory Model Research in Medical AnthropologyConclusion: Paracletes, PathologistsIndex