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Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a polygenic, multi-factorial disorder and a definitive understanding of its pathophysiology has been lacking since it was first described more than a century ago. The predominant pharmacological approach used to treat SCZ is the use of dopamine receptor antagonists. The fact that many patients remain symptomatic, despite complying with medication regimens, emphasises the need for a more encompassing explanation for both the causes and treatment of SCZ. Recent neuroanatomical, neurobiological, environmental and genetic studies have revived the idea that inflammatory pathways are involved in the pathogenesis of SCZ. These new insights have emerged from multiple lines of evidence, including the levels of inflammatory proteins in the central nervous system of patients with SCZ and animal models. This review focuses on aberrant inflammatory mechanisms present both before and during the onset of the psychotic symptoms that characterise SCZ and discusses recent research into adjunctive immune system modulating therapies for its more effective treatment.

Anthropology's relationship to psychoanalysis is vastly different today from what it was more than 80 years ago when Sigmund Freud published his ideas on the ambivalence of emotions in Totem and Taboo. Now there is an abundance of detailed ethnographies owing little or nothing to psychoanalytic theory and a great deal to the conviction that each culture is a unique entity that must be understood within its own terms of reference. Anthropologists are now as never before in a position to use the ethnographic record to reassess psychoanalytic insights from a cross-cultural perspective. I hope the discussion that follows will contribute to stimulating such an endeavor. In this article, I suggest that the psychoanalytically based theories of Melanie Klein shed new light on an old anthropological topic: sorcery and witchcraft. The article emerges from my effort to produce a comparative account of two very different cultural belief systems: Mekeo sorcery and Balinese witchcraft. My original intent in undertaking such a comparison was not to confirm any particular theory. The relevance of Klein's work was something that was suggested to me by the nature of the ethnographic data itself. Indeed in the field at the time, I had only a passing acquaintance with Klein's work; anthropologists do not often draw on her work although her ideas have been very influential in psychoanalytic clinical practice (McGlashan and Hoffman 1995). As I proceeded with my cultural comparison, however, I was reminded of similarities with some third element, namely Klein's theory concerning persecutory fears evoked in the initial stages of grief and mourning. At this point, I decided I should go back and read Klein carefully in light of my ethnographic examples. This article is the result of that rereading.As I examined Klein's theories alongside my ethnographic data, I was intrigued to find how closely the two fit, not just in terms of the general processes involved, but in terms of precise details of cultural symbolism. It seemed that my ethnographic examples, distinctly different as they were from each other, nevertheless could be seen as variations upon fantasy themes described independently by Klein's patients. As a psychoanalyst, Klein assumed that the unconscious processes she observed in her patients' mourning were universal. Cultural anthropologists are not likely to jump to that conclusion quickly, yet even anthropologists must admit that the image of the witch seems to have a persuasive constancy cross-culturally (Needham 1978). Furthermore, in view of recent anthropological debates concerning the nature of the In this article, I argue that Melanie Klein's psychoanalytic theory of mourning can shed new light on an old anthropological topic: witchcraft and sorcery. Beginning with sociocentric analyses of sorcery and witchcraft, and linking these beliefs to the experiential context of grief and bereavement, I focus on two ethnographic case studies-Balinese witchcraft and Mekeo sorcery. I use Klein's theory of mourning to extend Freud's co...

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