Deconstructing culture-bound syndromes

Abstract

Ethnopsychiatry comprises a large field of literature written from diverse perspectives, disciplines and orientations. Its status as an interdisciplinary activity presents formidable obstacles to researchers interested in comparative problems and the development of generalizations. These difficulties can be demonstrated by even a cursory examination of the material written on what has come to be called ‘culture-bound syndromes’. In spite of the considerable body of specific studies written about these ‘ethnic psychoses’, as Devereux termed them, debates continue to swirl over how to define them, whether they are manifestations of psychopathology, and, by implication, the degreee to which the categories of Western psychiatric nosology are readily transferable to other cultural and historical settings. This paper does not attempt to play the role of broker between universalists and particularists. If anything I favor the particularist position with respect to the impossibility of directly applying diagnostic categories across cultural boundaries. On the other hand I would not deny that there are universal processes which take their form through complex interaction with particular cultural, historical and social settings. The goal of showing how general forms can only be realized in particular settings is a vital one for anthropology, and the literature on culture-bound syndromes illustrates the problems involved. The problems can be severe, but no more so than those facing any observer of an exotic cultural setting. Because I perceive parallels between problems of translation in social and anthropology in general and the issues that have emerged in discussion of culture-bound syndromes. I seek to return to basic issues in this essay to examine some aspects of culture-bound syndromes that should be examined before assertions about pathology are made.