Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine, and PsychiatryFrom the Preface, by Arthur Kleinman:Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture presents a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. That framework is principally illustrated by materials gathered in field research in Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, from materials gathered in similar research in Boston. The reader will find this book contains a dialectical tension between two reciprocally related orientations: it is both a cross-cultural (largely anthropological) perspective on the essential components of clinical care and a clinical perspective on anthropological studies of medicine and psychiatry. That dialectic is embodied in my own academic training and professional life, so that this book is a personal statement. I am a psychiatrist trained in anthropology. I have worked in library, field, and clinic on problems concerning medicine and psychiatry in Chinese culture. I teach cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology, but I also practice and teach consultation psychiatry and take a clinical approach to my major cross-cultural teaching and research involvements. The theoretical framework elaborated in this book has been applied to all of those areas; in turn, they are used to illustrate the theory. Both the theory and its application embody the same dialectic. The purpose of this book is to advance both poles of that dialectic: to demonstrate the critical role of social science (especially anthropology and cross-cultural studies) in clinical medicine and psychiatry and to encourage study of clinical problems by anthropologists and other investigators involved in cross-cultural research. |
Other editions - View all
Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the ... Arthur Kleinman Limited preview - 1980 |
Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the ... Arthur Kleinman Limited preview - 1980 |
Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the ... Arthur Kleinman Limited preview - 2023 |
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acute anxiety bad fate behavior beliefs biomedical cause Ch'ien interpreter Chapter Chen Chen's China Chinese culture Chinese medicine Chinese-style doctors chronic client clinical reality cognitive communication complaints concepts context coping cross-cultural cult members cure depression disease disorders dysphoric affects effective efficacy ethnomedical evaluations example experience explanatory models family members feelings follow-up framework frequently function geomancers Hakka healers healing health care systems health problems herbs hospital ical idiom indigenous individuals interactions interpersonal interviewed Kleinman label medical anthropology modern medical mother National Taiwan University neurasthenia orientation perspective physical popular sector prac practitioner-patient practitioners prob profes professional psychiatric psychological psychosocial psychotherapy questions relationships response ritual sacred shamans sick role sickness episodes social reality societies somatic somatic delusion specific studies symbolic symptoms Taipei Taiwan Taiwanese tâng-ki therapeutic therapy tients tion told traditional trance transactions treated treatment tural Western medicine Western-style doctors