Roland Littlewood - Böcker

In this classic text the authors examine the links between racism, psychological ill health and inadequate treatment of ethnic minorities. Through a series of case studies they discuss:* the psychological legacy of colonialism and slavery* the racist bias in psychiatric and psychological theory* diagnostic bias* the role of religion in mental health or illness* the value of anthropological and pschoanalytic insights.The concluding chapter in this edition reviews the development of 'transcultural psychiatry' and summarises changes in administration of the Mental Health Act.

The first new religion in the Caribbean since Rastafari, the Earth People draw on West African sources, assert a renascent African identity, and celebrate female creativity. They argue that Black people are the guardians of a natural environment, which is constantly under threat from European science. In this 1993 book, Dr Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticizes received ideas about pathology and creativity. The founder's ideas emerged in her experience of cerebral disease, and Dr Littlewood shows how the Earth People reinterpret radical personal experiences to build a community. While naturalistic and personalistic interpretations of human life are both valid and necessary, neither can be reduced to the other.

The first new religion in the Caribbean since Rastafari, the Earth People draw on West African sources, assert a renascent African identity, and celebrate female creativity. They argue that Black people are the guardians of a natural environment, which is constantly under threat from European science. In this 1993 book, Dr Littlewood, who is both a psychiatrist and a social anthropologist, criticizes received ideas about pathology and creativity. The founder's ideas emerged in her experience of cerebral disease, and Dr Littlewood shows how the Earth People reinterpret radical personal experiences to build a community. While naturalistic and personalistic interpretations of human life are both valid and necessary, neither can be reduced to the other.

There are many problems in working psychotherapeutically across cultures, with numerous examples of failure to understand cultural issues. For example, the ignorance of traditional family structures can lead to major diagnostic and therapeutic errors. These errors include potentially disastrous transference relationship interpretations, the confounding of traditional beliefs with psychiatric symptoms, and a lack of awareness of differences in presenting symptomology. This book explains the theories and techniques of intercultural therapy. The second edition retains many of the ideas and practices developed in the first edition, but has been updated throughout to include the latest literature, and includes a new introductory chapter. A range of different views on intercultural therapy are given by a group of specialists who have pioneered this developing area.The late Jafar Kareem BSc was a member of the British Association of Psychotherapists, a member of the London Centre for Psychotherapy, and Founder and Clinical Director of Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre.Roland Littlewood BSc, MB, DPhil, FRCPsych, is Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology, University College London, Joint Director of the UCL Centre for Medical Anthropology, Consultant Psychiatrist, Middlesex Hospital, and Medical Advisor, Nafsiyat.

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 it is necessary to take into account both social process and personal cultural meaning when explaining psychiatric illness and "deviant" behavior. Littlewood brings anthropological and psychiatric literature to bear on case studies of self-poisoning, agoraphobia, hysteria, chronic fatigue syndrome, post-traumatic stress, male sexual violence, and eating disorders. 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. Littlewood argues that anthropology must not simply provide a cultural alternative to sociological critiques of medicine—psychiatry itself should take into account the ways in which cultural values are acted out by individuals.

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 it is necessary to take into account both social process and personal cultural meaning when explaining psychiatric illness and "deviant" behavior. Littlewood brings anthropological and psychiatric literature to bear on case studies of self-poisoning, agoraphobia, hysteria, chronic fatigue syndrome, post-traumatic stress, male sexual violence, and eating disorders. 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. Littlewood argues that anthropology must not simply provide a cultural alternative to sociological critiques of medicine—psychiatry itself should take into account the ways in which cultural values are acted out by individuals.

Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Developments examines the impact of the work of the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre in North London, which focused on providing free, psychodynamic therapy.Set up by Jafar Kareem, the centre was the first psychotherapy service with the specific task of offering psychodynamic psychotherapy to Britain’s Black and ethnic minority population. The editors of this book have invited a number of Nafsiyat therapists and colleagues to give their view on what has changed, or not changed, in regard to the integration of intercultural issues into mainstream therapy.Intercultural Therapy will be of interest to all psychotherapists working in multicultural practices, as well as practitioners and social workers.

Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Developments examines the impact of the work of the Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre in North London, which focused on providing free, psychodynamic therapy.Set up by Jafar Kareem, the centre was the first psychotherapy service with the specific task of offering psychodynamic psychotherapy to Britain’s Black and ethnic minority population. The editors of this book have invited a number of Nafsiyat therapists and colleagues to give their view on what has changed, or not changed, in regard to the integration of intercultural issues into mainstream therapy.Intercultural Therapy will be of interest to all psychotherapists working in multicultural practices, as well as practitioners and social workers.

Social scientific studies of medicine typically assume that systems of medical knowledge are uniform and consistent. But while anthropologists have long rejected the notion that cultures are discrete, bounded, and rule-drive entities, medical anthropology has been slower to develop alternative approaches to understanding cultures of health. This provocative volume considers the theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic implications of the fact that medical knowledge is frequently dynamic, incoherent, and contradictory, and that and our understanding of it is necessarily incomplete and partial. In diverse settings from indigenous cultures to Western medical industries, contributors consider such issues as how to define the boundaries of “medical” knowledge versus other kinds of knowledge; how to understand overlapping and shifting medical discourses; the medical profession’s need for anthropologists to produce “explanatory models”; the limits of the Western scientific method and the potential for methodological pluralism; constraints on fieldwork including violence and structural factors limiting access; and the subjectivity and interests of the researcher. On Knowing and Not Knowing in the Anthropology of Medicine will stimulate innovative thinking and productive debate for practitioners, researchers, and students in the social science of health and medicine.

Social scientific studies of medicine typically assume that systems of medical knowledge are uniform and consistent. But while anthropologists have long rejected the notion that cultures are discrete, bounded, and rule-drive entities, medical anthropology has been slower to develop alternative approaches to understanding cultures of health. This provocative volume considers the theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic implications of the fact that medical knowledge is frequently dynamic, incoherent, and contradictory, and that and our understanding of it is necessarily incomplete and partial. In diverse settings from indigenous cultures to Western medical industries, contributors consider such issues as how to define the boundaries of “medical” knowledge versus other kinds of knowledge; how to understand overlapping and shifting medical discourses; the medical profession’s need for anthropologists to produce “explanatory models”; the limits of the Western scientific method and the potential for methodological pluralism; constraints on fieldwork including violence and structural factors limiting access; and the subjectivity and interests of the researcher. On Knowing and Not Knowing in the Anthropology of Medicine will stimulate innovative thinking and productive debate for practitioners, researchers, and students in the social science of health and medicine.

The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies: how societies make sense of such issues as prediction and control of misfortune and fate; the malevolence of others; the benevolence (or otherwise) of the mystical world; local understanding and explanations of the natural and ultra-human worlds. This volume presents differing categorizations and conflicts that occur as people seek to make sense of suffering and their experiences. Cosmologies, whether incorporating the divine or as purely secular, lead us to interpret human action and the human constitution, its ills and its healing and, in particular, ways which determine and limit our very possibilities.

The social anthropology of sickness and health has always been concerned with religious cosmologies: how societies make sense of such issues as prediction and control of misfortune and fate; the malevolence of others; the benevolence (or otherwise) of the mystical world; local understanding and explanations of the natural and ultra-human worlds. This volume presents differing categorizations and conflicts that occur as people seek to make sense of suffering and their experiences. Cosmologies, whether incorporating the divine or as purely secular, lead us to interpret human action and the human constitution, its ills and its healing and, in particular, ways which determine and limit our very possibilities.

Anthropologists often use ‘pollution’ to refer to social and individual challenges to a cultural idea of purity, which may be seen in terms of religious practice, foodstuffs and social differentiation. It has been used as a trope to explore ideas of dirt and place, moral inversion and reinforcement, disgust and taboo.The book is an invitation to consider the continued relevance of Mary Douglas’ conceptualization of pollution and dirt as ‘matter out of place’ in relation to contemporary circumstances. Its ethnographic and theoretical contributions cover diverse contexts, ranging from Europe to Africa, the Caribbean, India and Outer Space.

While Psychology and Anthropology share certain overlapping interests, there is no agreed schema or paradigm for this area. Rejecting both psychoanalysis and the biopsychosocial model as insufficient, this collection brings together studies on Hasidic concepts of illness, the religious origins of schizophrenia, Christian stigmata, the “third sex” in Albania, jinn possession among European immigrants, and reincarnation among the Druze. The volume argues for plural models integrating biological, psychodynamic, and sociocultural perspectives. It highlights the enduring tension between Psychiatry’s naturalistic explanations and Anthropology’s personalistic approach, suggesting that both offer partial yet essential insights into human experience.

Presents a collection of papers by an author established as a contributor to the field of cultural psychiatry. Dealing with essential issues in the area, the papers range across culture, history, language, religion, and gender and present material from around the world. The text examines the realization that Anglo-Saxon approach to psychiatry doesn't necessarily work when used with non-white groups.