Culture‐bound syndrome and a culturally sensitive approach: From a viewpoint of medical anthropology

Abstract

Some aspects of the culture-bound syndrome are presented for discussion. From the psychiatric and medical anthropological viewpoints, kamidaari is described as an initiatory illness for seeing a shaman, and focus on clinical realities developing between different therapeutic subcultures in the same culture and the complementary practices of two epistemological ones, namely, the shamanistic and modern psychiatric system in the shamanistic climate. It is suggested that the culture-bound syndrome that reflects cultural influences on disease patterns and renders them difficult to place in a universal classificatory system should be seen as a vernacular bricolage or as tactics used by people within the web of their own local culture of origin. Therapists who treat patients in a cross-epistemological milieu should be aware of the subculturalepistemological issues that may affect the clinical process. It should be recognized that, depending on the nature of a particular psychiatric crisis, the clinical encounter is straddling the boundaries of multiple clinical realities. At every stage in the clinical field, there is an intersection, consonance, or interruption of rejoinders in the open dialog by all those engaged in the clinical time. Aspects of climatic, culturally sensitive psychotherapy will be described, and the concept of the culture-bound syndrome will be reconsidered. Our approach could be seen as 'situation-and fudo-bound'.

Shamanism: An Inquiry into the History of the Scholarly Use of the Term in English‐Speaking North America

“…This expansion of use into the psychological literature can largely be credited to humanistic and transpersonal psychologists, who were becoming acquainted with the anthropological literature at this time (Leahey 1987;Taylor and Pledilato 2002). Presently, the terms are used in almost every academic field, ranging from nursing and biomedical literature (Rabinowitz 2003;Schneider and DeHaven 2003;Winkelman 2003) to neuroscience (Krippner and Combs 2002b;Polimeni and Reiss 2002;Shimoji and Miyakawa 2000), to religious studies and social science literature (to list a few, see Drury 2003;Taylor and Pledilato 2002;Townsend 2004;Vogel 2003;von Stuckard 2002;York 2001). However, all of these fields still largely rely on anthropological accounts and definitions of the terms, demonstrating the central role anthropology has had in the understanding and uses of these terms.…”