Vieda Skultans – författare

Originally published in 1974 Intimacy and Ritual is a sympathetic study of spiritualist activities and their relation to the practitioners’ secular lives. The book, in particular, looks at the therapeutic function of spiritualism. Based on the author’s fieldwork as a ‘participant observer’ among spiritualists in a South Wales town, the research covers spiritualists services and meetings as well as interviews with spiritualists in their own homes. The book gives an accurate account of spiritualist doctrines and beliefs about the spirit world. The book postulates that spirit possession always relates to illness and shows how this is often the physical counterpart of social malaise. Throughout the study, spiritualism is seen in terms of the coping techniques and the rewards which it offers its members. The book shows that spiritualism is more highly regarded as a problem-solving source than the formal care-giving organizations, such as psychiatrist hospitals and the social work agencies. Healing activities are interpreted as a symbolic enactment of male and female roles ideally conceived, and spiritualist messages offer symbols and explanations of illness and misfortune.

Originally published in 1974 Intimacy and Ritual is a sympathetic study of spiritualist activities and their relation to the practitioners’ secular lives. The book, in particular, looks at the therapeutic function of spiritualism. Based on the author’s fieldwork as a ‘participant observer’ among spiritualists in a South Wales town, the research covers spiritualists services and meetings as well as interviews with spiritualists in their own homes. The book gives an accurate account of spiritualist doctrines and beliefs about the spirit world. The book postulates that spirit possession always relates to illness and shows how this is often the physical counterpart of social malaise. Throughout the study, spiritualism is seen in terms of the coping techniques and the rewards which it offers its members. The book shows that spiritualism is more highly regarded as a problem-solving source than the formal care-giving organizations, such as psychiatrist hospitals and the social work agencies. Healing activities are interpreted as a symbolic enactment of male and female roles ideally conceived, and spiritualist messages offer symbols and explanations of illness and misfortune.

Vieda Skultans left Latvia as a refugee at the age of six months. In 1990, she returned for the first time. This text is both a personal account of a homecoming and an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in the wake of Latvian independence, it gives voice to stories of dispossession and exile and of ambiguous returns. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national history and culture.

Vieda Skultans left Latvia as a refugee at the age of six months. In 1990, she returned for the first time. This text is both a personal account of a homecoming and an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in the wake of Latvian independence, it gives voice to stories of dispossession and exile and of ambiguous returns. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national history and culture.

This comprehensive book celebrates the coming of age of narrative in health care. It uses narrative to go beyond the patient's story and address social, cultural, ethical, psychological, organizational and linguistic issues. This book has been written to help health professionals and social scientists to use narrative more effectively in their everyday work and writing.The book is split into three, comprehensive sections; Narratives, Counter-narratives and Meta-narratives.

For more than three decades the author has been concerned with issues to do with emotion, suffering and healing. This volume presents ethnographic studies of South Wales, Maharashtra and post-Soviet Latvia connected by a theoretical interest in healing, emotion and subjectivity. Exploring the uses of narrative in the shaping of memory, autobiography and illness and its connections with the master narratives of history and culture, it focuses on the post-Soviet clinic as an arena in which the contradictions of a liberal economy are translated into a medical language.

First published in 1975, Madness and Morals presents the major preoccupations of nineteenth century society concerning insanity, its problems, and implications. In the introduction to the collection, Vieda Skultans traces developments and changes in the ideas about the insane and their treatment during the nineteenth century. She shows that two contrasting themes dominated writing on the subject: the relative weight to be attributed to physical and moral causes of insanity; and the emphasis on hereditary endowment or the ‘tyranny of organization’. The eighty years covered by this book produced a wide and varied literature on insanity, and the psychiatric texts reproduced, by English writers in the field are grouped under three sections: Outlines of Insanity; Psychiatric Romanticism; and Psychiatric Darwinism. These are written by physicians, administrators of the asylums and hospitals, editors of specialist publications, and others with wide experience in the field. These writings have a special relevance to the social history of the nineteenth century, for they demonstrate how psychiatric thinking reflects the contemporary moral outlook, forming a part of the total social fabric of society. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of mental health, psychology, and psychiatry.

First published in 1975, Madness and Morals presents the major preoccupations of nineteenth century society concerning insanity, its problems, and implications. In the introduction to the collection, Vieda Skultans traces developments and changes in the ideas about the insane and their treatment during the nineteenth century. She shows that two contrasting themes dominated writing on the subject: the relative weight to be attributed to physical and moral causes of insanity; and the emphasis on hereditary endowment or the ‘tyranny of organization’. The eighty years covered by this book produced a wide and varied literature on insanity, and the psychiatric texts reproduced, by English writers in the field are grouped under three sections: Outlines of Insanity; Psychiatric Romanticism; and Psychiatric Darwinism. These are written by physicians, administrators of the asylums and hospitals, editors of specialist publications, and others with wide experience in the field. These writings have a special relevance to the social history of the nineteenth century, for they demonstrate how psychiatric thinking reflects the contemporary moral outlook, forming a part of the total social fabric of society. This book will be useful for scholars and researchers of mental health, psychology, and psychiatry.

In this book, originally published in 1979 and a sequel to Madness and Morals https://www.routledge.com/Madness-and-Morals-Ideas-on-Insanity-in-the-Nineteenth-Century/Skultans/p/book/9781032254975, Vieda Skultans presents an analysis of psychiatric ideas and practices, based on an examination of original texts on insanity. Two contrasting themes are emphasized: first, the Aristotelian idea which links madness to genius and, second, the view, derived from abnormal pathology, which sees madness as a defect of balance or imperfect harmony.The book investigates the relationship between social categories and diagnostic categories in psychiatry. It explores the view that the theory and practice of psychiatry are inevitably permeated with social values, pointing out that changes in psychiatric ideas and practices are related, at least partly, to changing values within society as a whole. Particular concepts of insanity are chosen for closer inspection, such as the Elizabethan idea of melancholy, eighteenth-century notions of the spleen and vapours, and the nineteenth-century diagnosis of masturbational insanity. The greater vulnerability of women to psychiatric disorder is explored, and the book concludes with an account of the growth of the asylum movement.

In this book, originally published in 1979 and a sequel to Madness and Morals https://www.routledge.com/Madness-and-Morals-Ideas-on-Insanity-in-the-Nineteenth-Century/Skultans/p/book/9781032254975, Vieda Skultans presents an analysis of psychiatric ideas and practices, based on an examination of original texts on insanity. Two contrasting themes are emphasized: first, the Aristotelian idea which links madness to genius and, second, the view, derived from abnormal pathology, which sees madness as a defect of balance or imperfect harmony.The book investigates the relationship between social categories and diagnostic categories in psychiatry. It explores the view that the theory and practice of psychiatry are inevitably permeated with social values, pointing out that changes in psychiatric ideas and practices are related, at least partly, to changing values within society as a whole. Particular concepts of insanity are chosen for closer inspection, such as the Elizabethan idea of melancholy, eighteenth-century notions of the spleen and vapours, and the nineteenth-century diagnosis of masturbational insanity. The greater vulnerability of women to psychiatric disorder is explored, and the book concludes with an account of the growth of the asylum movement.

In this book, originally published in 1979 and a sequel to Madness and Morals https://www.routledge.com/Madness-and-Morals-Ideas-on-Insanity-in-the-Nineteenth-Century/Skultans/p/book/9781032254975, Vieda Skultans presents an analysis of psychiatric ideas and practices, based on an examination of original texts on insanity. Two contrasting themes are emphasized: first, the Aristotelian idea which links madness to genius and, second, the view, derived from abnormal pathology, which sees madness as a defect of balance or imperfect harmony.The book investigates the relationship between social categories and diagnostic categories in psychiatry. It explores the view that the theory and practice of psychiatry are inevitably permeated with social values, pointing out that changes in psychiatric ideas and practices are related, at least partly, to changing values within society as a whole. Particular concepts of insanity are chosen for closer inspection, such as the Elizabethan idea of melancholy, eighteenth-century notions of the spleen and vapours, and the nineteenth-century diagnosis of masturbational insanity. The greater vulnerability of women to psychiatric disorder is explored, and the book concludes with an account of the growth of the asylum movement.

Vieda Skultans left Latvia as a refugee at the age of six months. In 1990, she returned for the first time. This text is both a personal account of a homecoming and an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in the wake of Latvian independence, it gives voice to stories of dispossession and exile and of ambiguous returns. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national history and culture.

Vieda Skultans left Latvia as a refugee at the age of six months. In 1990, she returned for the first time. This text is both a personal account of a homecoming and an anthropology of a people trying to come to terms with its past and to face an uncertain future. Based on more than 100 interviews carried out in the wake of Latvian independence, it gives voice to stories of dispossession and exile and of ambiguous returns. At the same time it unpicks the process of memory itself, showing how personal memory is shaped by the traditional narratives of national history and culture.

This comprehensive book celebrates the coming of age of narrative in health care. It uses narrative to go beyond the patient''s story and address social, cultural, ethical, psychological, organizational and linguistic issues.

This book has been written to help health professionals and social scientists to use narrative more effectively in their everyday work and writing.

The book is split into three, comprehensive sections; Narratives, Counter-narratives and Meta-narratives.

For more than three decades the author has been concerned with issues to do with emotion, suffering and healing. This volume presents ethnographic studies of South Wales, Maharashtra and post-Soviet Latvia connected by a theoretical interest in healing, emotion and subjectivity. Exploring the uses of narrative in the shaping of memory, autobiography and illness and its connections with the master narratives of history and culture, it focuses on the post-Soviet clinic as an arena in which the contradictions of a liberal economy are translated into a medical language.

`There are many insights and nuggets of value in this collection. Maurice Lipsedge reminds us how badly psychiatry needs anthropology's insights.This book should contribute to the ongoing dialogue between the two fields.' - The Journal of the Royal Antropological Institute`The editors states in the introduction that they wish to encourage the reader `to meet halfway the other discipline'. This expresses the view which all the contributors clearly feel and which is correct, that psychology and psychiatry and anthropology have much to offer each other and indeed are similar in several respects'.- The International Journal of Social Psychiatry`As an introductory text the book is perhaps too difficult, but for students of medical anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry it offers a useful up to date assessment of the field.'- The International Journal of Social Psychiatry'This text brings together some noted clinicians and researchers in psychiatry and mental health. The aim is to explore what we can learn from anthropology to achieve a contextual understanding of mental illness and health in contemporary society. The book contains a wide selection of ideas, and works well to bridge the gap between anthropolgy and psychiatry.This book is definitely not for the novice or anyone new to the field. It is, however, worth reading to explore ways in which mental health practitioners can make the shift from ideologies, theories and practices that are only interested in establishing the presence or absence of pathology or illness, towards theory and practice that take account of the meaning of those experiences for people in their everyday lives. One of the authors sums this up well by suggesting that "anthropologically informed methods of enquiry have potential to help establish clearer links between personal suffering and local politico-economic ideologies".`- Openmind. No110, July/Aug 2001The relevance of transcultural issues for medical practice, including psychiatry, is becoming more widely recognized and medical anthropology is now a major sub-discipline. Written for those working in the mental health services as well as for anthropologists, Anthropological Approaches to Psychological Medicine brings together psychiatry and anthropology and focuses on the implications of their interaction in theory and clinical practice. The book reaffirms the importance of anthropology for fully understanding psychiatric practice and psychological disorders in both socio-historical and individual contexts. The development and use of diagnostic categories, the nature of expressed emotion within cross-cultural contexts and the religious context of perceptions of pathological behaviour are all refracted through an anthropological perspective. The clinical applications of medical anthropology addressed include, in particular, the establishing of cultural competence and an examination of the new perspectives anthropological study can bring to psychosis and depression. The stigmatization of mental illness is also reviewed from an anthropological perspective.Encouraging practitioners to reflect on the position of medicine in a wider cultural context, this is an exciting and comprehensive text which explores the profound importance of an anthropological interpretation for key issues in psychological medicine.