Historicizing transcultural psychiatry: people, epistemic objects, networks, and practices

Abstract

The history of transcultural psychiatry has recently attracted much historical attention, including a workshop in March 2016 in which an international panel of scholars met at the Maison de Sciences de l'Homme Paris-Nord (MSH-PN). Papers from this workshop are presented here. By conceiving of transcultural psychiatry as a dynamic social field that frames its knowledge claims around epistemic objects that are specific to the field, and by focusing on the ways that concepts within this field are used to organize intellectual work, several themes are explored that draw this field into the historiography of psychiatry. Attention is paid to the organization of networks and publications, and to important actors within the field who brought about significant developments in the colonial and post-colonial conceptions of mental illness.

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.…”

An Exploration of the Persisting Legacy of Imperial Rhetoric in Modern Education Through a Case Study on ‘Eugenics, Race, and Psychiatry in the Cape Colony, 1890–1908: DR Thomas Duncan Greenlees’

“…Although there were regionally specific 'clinical' opinions on the nature of the native mind, generally accepted tenets served to instil ideas of the inferiority of non-whites. It is argued that these theories were influential in the development of mental health policies of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and that western approaches to refugees, particularly non-Europeans, were inspired by transcultural psychiatry in the 1990s and potentially beyond (Delille and Crozier, 2018), showcasing how widely accepted such racial myths were at the height of empire and beyond.…”

“…There are certainly many similarities between the ideas of Greenlees and Ritchie and Carothers. Such colonial psychiatric views are believed to have influenced WHO policies, which would have undoubtedly paved the way for more modern schools of psychiatric thought (Delille and Crozier, 2018).…”