Eric Wittkower and the foundation of Montréal’s Transcultural Psychiatry Research Unit after World War II

Abstract

Eric Wittkower founded McGill University's Transcultural Psychiatry Unit in 1955. One year later, he started the first international newsletter in this academic field: Transcultural Psychiatry. However, at the beginning of his career Wittkower gave no signs that he would be interested in social sciences and psychiatry. This paper describes the historical context of the post-war period, when Wittkower founded the research unit in Montréal. I focus on the history of scientific networks and the circulation of knowledge, and particularly on the exchanges between the French- and English-speaking academic cultures in North America and Europe. Because the history of transcultural psychiatry is a transnational history par excellence, this leads necessarily to the question of the reception of this academic field abroad.

The culture in the growth and psychopathological experience of immigrant adolescents

“…Tendo como ponto de partida a necessidade de incorporar as particularidades socioculturais na prática clínica, Eric Wittkower fundou, em 1955, juntamente com o antropólogo Jacob Fried, a Unidade de Psiquiatria Transcultural da Universidade McGill, em Montreal, Québec (Delille, 2018;Sousa, 2020), atual Divisão de Psiquiatria Social e Transcultural. Esta que se tornou a primeira unidade universitária de psiquiatria transcultural, é atualmente uma referência na área, promovendo diversos programas educativos, formativos e de investigação (Delille, 2018).…”

“…Having as a starting point the need for incorporating the sociocultural particularities in clinical practice, Eric Wittkower founded, in 1955, together with the anthropologist Jacob Fried, the Unit of Transcultural Psychiatry of the McGill University, in Montreal, Québec (Delille, 2018;Sousa, 2020), currently the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry. It became the first academic unit of transcultural psychiatry, and is currently a reference in the field, promoting many educational, formative and research programs (Delille, 2018).…”

Managing Chineseness: neurasthenia and psychiatry in Taiwan in the second half of the twentieth century

“…Apart from enriching the history of neurasthenia in East Asia, the present study also aims to contribute to the rising scholarly work on the development of transcultural psychiatry. While there is a proliferation of studies on the contacts between modern psychiatry and non-Western subjects in post-colonial contexts (Bains, 2005;Delille and Crozier, 2018), the research so far, with a few exceptions (Chiang, 2015;Crozier, 2018;Heaton, 2013Heaton, , 2018Wu, 2016), have largely been focused on the 'western part' of these histories (Delille, 2016(Delille, , 2018Engstrom and Crozier, 2018). A study of the role played by East Asian medical scientists in the development of cultural psychiatry may lead to a better understanding of the ways in which complex geopolitical factors were involved in the production of psychiatric knowledge.…”

Henri Collomb and the emergence of a psychiatry open to otherness through interdisciplinary dialogue in post-independence Dakar

“… 5. For an overview of the scientific work carried out by this team, see Collignon (1978). When the journal Psychopathologie africaine was founded in Dakar, there was a close collaboration between the Montréal Team at McGill University, led by Professor Eric Wittkower, the founder of Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review [ TPRR ] (see Delille, 2018). After the publication of its 34th volume in 1997, this became Transcultural Psychiatry.…”