On the history of cultural psychiatry: Georges Devereux, Henri Ellenberger, and the psychological treatment of Native Americans in the 1950s

Abstract

Henri Ellenberger (1905-1993) wrote the first French-language synthesis of transcultural psychiatry ("Ethno-psychiatrie") for the French Encyclopédie Médico-Chirurgicale in 1965. His work casts new light on the early development of transcultural psychiatry in relation to scientific communities and networks, particularly on the role of Georges Devereux (1908-1985). The Ellenberger archives offer the possibility of comparing published texts with archival ones to create a more nuanced account of the history of transcultural psychiatry, and notably of the psychological treatment of Native Americans. This paper examines some key moments in the intellectual trajectories of Devereux and Ellenberger, including Devereux's dispute with Ackerknecht, the careers of Devereux and Ellenberger as therapists at the Menninger Foundation (Topeka, Kansas) in the 1950s, and their respective positions in the research network developed by McGill University (Montreal, Quebec) with the newsletter Transcultural Research in Mental Health Problems Finally, I consider their ties to other important figures in this field as it transitioned from colonial medicine to academic medicine, including Roger Bastide (France), Henri Collomb and the Ortigues (France and Africa), as well as Eric Wittkower and Brian Murphy (Canada) and Alexander Leighton (United States and Canada).

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

“…In fact, Chance and Wintrob, like Fried, continued their careers in the USA, but at the University of Connecticut. By the end of the 1950s, central figures in American anthropology had joined the newsletter's editorial board, including Margaret Mead and Marvin K. Opler, while the first controversies were arising around other representatives, such as Devereux (Delille, 2016b). Wittkower's local network spread across all of North America, especially as McGill's young psychiatric residents were recruited chiefly from the USA and from the anglophone parts of Canada, rather than from Québec's francophone majority.…”

“…They mention their ongoing research, their collaborative projects and their teaching. This example is interesting insofar as the volume edited by Opler (1959) is dominated by psychoanalysis and culturalist anthropology, and in particular by the description of the psychotherapeutic practices of Native Americans which made Devereux famous (Delille, 2016b). Murphy, Wittkower and Fried distinguish themselves by their use of epidemiological concepts.…”

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.…”

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

“…10 Networks developed that forged new research projects and led to the expansion of the field. 11 Studying the careers of specialists such as George Devereux, who taught in English, American and French universities, and Alexander Leighton, Jane Murphy, HBM Murphy and Henri Ellenberger (see Delille, 2016), who all moved between the English and francophone scientific communities in North America, is also important for understanding how this literature was the result of academic collaborations.…”