On female melancholia in migration: Interpretations from Turkish-Muslim culture with a case vignette

Abstract

Today, melancholia is no longer used as a separate clinical picture in psychotherapeutic diagnostics. Instead, the symptoms are subsumed under major depression or dysthymia and understood as a disease concept. In both Freud's interpretation and in the artistic, Islamic, poetic, and medical-historical approaches in Turkish culture, melancholia is understood in a richer way than just in terms of a “disease-like disorder.” This article aims to emphasize the broader understanding of melancholia within the Turkish-Islamic context and illuminate intersections with psychoanalysis. Since the Islamic faith occupies an important place in the treatment and popular understanding of mental disorders both historically and to the present day, religious and mystical aspects related to melancholia are also considered in this article. A case vignette of a melancholic migrant woman with Turkish roots is used to trace the psychodynamic movements in her treatment. In order to follow this patient’s psychoanalytic process, the theoretical explanations in the first part of the article provide the sensibilization for a deeper understanding of the cultural and religious aspects important to the inner dynamics of this woman.