While some of mental disorders due to emotional distress occur cross-culturally, others seem to be much more bound to particular cultures. In this paper, I propose that many of these “cultural syndromes” are culturally sanctioned responses to overwhelming negative emotions. I show how tools from cultural evolution theory can be employed for understanding how the syndromes are relatively confined to and retained within particular cultures. Finally, I argue that such an account allows for some cultural (...) syndromes to be or become mental disorders and also steers clear of some of the anti-realist trappings associated with a social constructivism of cultural syndromes. (shrink)

This paper asks what it means to say that a disorder is a “real” disorder and then considers whether culture-bound syndromes are real disorders. Following J.L. Austin I note that when we ask whether some supposed culture-bound syndrome is a real disorder we should start by specifying what possible alternatives we have in mind. We might be asking whether the reported behaviours genuinely occur, that is, whether the culture-bound syndrome is a genuine phenomenon as opposed to a myth. We (...) might be wondering whether the condition should rightly be considered a disorder, as opposed to some sort of non-disorder condition. We might want to know whether the culture-bound syndrome is really a distinct disorder, in the sense that scientific classification systems should include it as a separate category, or whether it is just a variant of a universally occurring disorder. I argue that some specific difficulties can arise with determining whether a culture-bound syndrome is a real disorder in each of these three senses. However, the frequent assumption that real disorders will necessarily occur universally, and that those that occur only in certain environments are suspicious is not generally justified. (shrink)

Harris presents neuroscience findings and reveals fantasy as the brain's default mode as it alters identity during unbearable trauma or loss. The book also presents case histories of cultural conflicts, and examines populist bias vs. elite global influence in a neuropsychoanalytic context.

Reflections on Seyla Benhabib’s a. Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.

This study articulates the leitmotif of civilizational analysis (the interaction of power and culture) with regard to the relation between religion and the state within the Islamic civilization or ‘Islamdom’. In a first step, it clarifies, by reference to Marshall Hodgson, the extent to which his view of Islamdom as a transcivilizational ecumene can fit into a comparative type of civilizational analysis. The comparative approach to civilizational analysis can be enriched by reevaluating the specific Islamic pattern of mild legitimization of (...) power through culture, and by integrating into the analysis the resulting field of tension vis-à-vis Western power and its supporting normative paradigms. In a second step, in order to better grasp the forms of power governing this field of tension, the article critically reconsiders Rémi Brague’s characterization of Western European civilization as the outcome of an expansive ‘Roman road’ that matched culture with power by investing into the charisma of corporate entities: first, the church, then the state. Against this double background, the study shows that the culture—power syndrome that is proper to Islamdom as a transcivilizational ecumene does not consecrate a separation of ‘religion’ from the body politic, but promotes the building of expansive patterns of connectedness. (shrink)

Towards the end of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, Nyasha is taken to a psychiatrist who dismisses her family’s concerns based on his belief that Africans cannot suffer metal illness. Frantz Fanon explores a similar theme in his 1952 essay, ‘The “North African Syndrome”’. In both cases, the veil of sterility behind which the clinical encounter is often presumed to take place is rent, and the clinician and patient are exposed as coloniser and colonised or ‘white’ and ‘raced’ first. Similarly, the (...) pages that follow provide an account of the situation of the racialised at the outset of a psychiatric consultation with a white clinician in a Western clinical setting. Drawing on Fanon’s ‘The “North African Syndrome”’ I attempt to shed light on the gulf that must be traversed in order for the patient to be intelligible to the clinician. I question the process of bridging that divide, particularly the question of which party bears the bulk of the responsibility for traversing the distance between the two. The challenge presented to clinician, and the extent of the turmoil of the patient in this kind of encounter are thus brought to the fore. I conclude by offering a suggestion of what Fanonian ethics demand of the clinician. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the four guiding principles of medical ethics—autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—reflect the values of western culture, but do not necessarily apply outside of it. Western medical practitioners faced with the care of nonwestern patients need to examine their own prejudices in order to accept, not merely tolerate, other values. Acceptance of the other requires that the doctor welcome the patient as one welcomes a guest, openly and equally, with a willingness to listen and to (...) be changed by the encounter. It is through the nurture of trusting relationships that ethical dilemmas in clinical medicine may be resolved, without recourse to the colonial moral hegemony of the principlist approach. (shrink)

This article explores how the acceptance of the battered woman syndrome as the explanation for why abusive relationships continue can be understood as a cultural compromise. The syndrome's portrayal of battered women as passive victims resulted in an exclusive definition of who “counts” as a victim. It further emphasized many abused women's weaknesses rather than their resourcefulness and overlooked the plights of a great variety of women in need of help. More important, it placed emphasis on individualized solutions for (...) domestic violence rather than addressing structural inequalities in American society. These issues ultimately led to a critique by other advocates of the battered woman syndrome as an inadequate and flawed explanation for domestic violence. Yet despite its weaknesses, the syndrome allowed advocates the chance to appeal to the larger public and, ultimately, begin the process of alleviating structural inequalities. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the classification by the American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of a distinct listing of disorders known as Culture-Bound Syndromes is misguided. I argue that the list of CBS comprises either genuine disorders that should be included within the main body of the DSM; or ersatz-disorders that serve a practical role for psychiatrists dealing with patients from certain cultures but will one day be eliminated or assimilated by (...) bona fide DSM classifications. In support of these views I draw on claims from two key themes in the philosophy of science: the claim that all folk explanations for phenomena are thoroughly theoretical and therefore fallible; and the occurrence of theoretical elimination in the history of science. I contend that any ersatz-disorders located in the DSM that are judged to be radically false do not differ in kind from eliminated theories in the history of pre-science. (shrink)

Language evolution resulted from changes in our biology, behavior, and culture. One source of these changes might be human self-domestication. Williams syndrome (WS) is a clinical condition with a clearly defined genetic basis and resulting in a distinctive behavioral and cognitive profile, including enhanced sociability. In this paper we show evidence that the WS phenotype can be satisfactorily construed as a hyper-domesticated human phenotype, plausibly resulting from the effect of the WS hemydeletion on selected candidates for domestication and neural crest (...) function. Specifically, we show that genes involved in animal domestication and neural crest development and function are significantly dysregulated in the blood of subjects with WS. We also discuss the consequences of this link between domestication and WS for our current understanding of language evolution. (shrink)

People are described as suffering from impostor syndrome when they feel that their external markers of success are unwarranted, and fear being revealed as a fraud. Impostor syndrome is commonly framed as a troubling individual pathology, to be overcome through self-help strategies or therapy. But in many situations an individual’s impostor attitudes can be epistemically justified, even if they are factually mistaken: hostile social environments can create epistemic obstacles to self-knowledge. The concept of impostor syndrome prevalent in popular culture needs (...) greater critical scrutiny, as does its source, the concept of impostor phenomenon which features in psychological research. (shrink)

New Zealand has an unspoken commandment: ‘thou shalt not be a tall poppy’. A tall poppy is someone who stands out from the crowd, usually by excelling at one or more pursuits. Sadly, many New Zealanders are all too familiar with this phrase as they have been ‘cut down’ by those around them, taunted for their success and discouraged from celebrating their achievements. This social phenomenon of cutting down tall poppies is called Tall Poppy Syndrome and is present in many (...) areas of New Zealand culture, such as sport, academic achievement, and entrepreneurship. Consequently, the church is not immune to this phenomenon. Tall Poppy Syndrome, whether within or outside the church, discourages excellence and prevents flourishing. This article engages Moral Foundations Theory to understand why Tall Poppy Syndrome exists in New Zealand, and then proposes Christian humility as a remedy for Tall Poppy Syndrome within the church. When humility and excellence can co-exist, then Tall Poppy Syndrome will no longer exist; thus the church could have an important role in enabling New Zealand to be a place where tall poppies can freely flourish. (shrink)

Werner syndrome (WS) is an inherited disorder that produces somatic stunting, premature ageing and early onset of degenerative and neoplastic diseases. Cultured fibroblasts derived from subjects with WS are found to undergo premature replicative senescence and thus provide a cellular model system to study the disorder. Recently, several overexpressed gene sequences isolated from a WS fibroblast cDNA library have been shown to possess the capacity to inhibit DNA synthesis and disrupt many normal biochemical processes. Because a similar constellation of genes (...) is overexpressed in WS and senescent normal fibroblasts, these data suggest the existence of a common molecular genetic pathway for replicative senescence in both types of cell. We propose that the primary defect in WS is a mutation in a gene for a trans‐acting repressor protein that reduces its binding affinity for shared regulatory regions of several genes, including those that encode inhibitors of DNA synthesis (IDS). The mutant WS repressor triggers a sequence of premature expression of IDS and other genes, with resulting inhibition of DNA synthesis and early cellular senescence, events which occur much later in normal cells. (shrink)

The rise of medically unexplained conditions like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome in the United States looks remarkably similar to the explosion of neurasthenia diagnoses in the late nineteenth century. In this paper, I argue the historical connection between neurasthenia and today’s medically unexplained conditions hinges largely on the uncritical acceptance of naturalism in medicine. I show how this cultural acceptance shapes the way in which we interpret and make sense of nervous distress while, at the same time, neglecting (...) the unique social and historical forces that continue to produce it. I draw on the methods of hermeneutic philosophy to expose the limits of naturalism and forward an account of health and illness that acknowledges the extent to which we are always embedded in contexts of meaning that determine how we experience and understand our suffering. (shrink)

This study proposes a conceptual model to explain persistent, accepted-as-normal corporate wrongdoing (hereafter banality of wrongdoing), particularly for high performance organizations. The model describes five explanatory variables: the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, and the corporate cocoon. Our thesis is that the nature of competition drives both legitimate and illegitimate goal-seeking to adopt an iconoclastic (rule-breaking) orientation. High performance organizations are favorable hosts for wrongdoing because high performance requires aggressive behavior at the ethical margins of what (...) is acceptable. The way leadership reacts to competition sets the stage for ethical or unethical cultures to develop. Ends-biased leadership will project strong vision, using ideology and legitimizing myth as tools to inspire and motivate. The resulting missionary zeal justifies using questionable means because of the perceived value of the end. One critical method for building strong culture is creating a sense of being separate and apart from the ordinary. This cocoon effect may create a self-referential value system that is significantly at odds with mainstream culture and in which wrongdoing is banal. We intend an empirical study of the variables described in this model. (shrink)

The Ganser syndrome, or talking past the point, (originally identifying symptoms of inmates on remand when questioned by prison doctors), is explored as a form of insubordination against the stigmatizing effects of overdetermined diagnostic categories. The strategies of approximation that characterize the syndrome are likened to comedy routines/vaudeville styles and to their employment of punning, clownery, and ambiguity to challenge the more privileged cultural values of clarity, literalness, and precision. The seeming craftiness of Ganserians is related to the aesthetic (...) tactics of the trickster figure and to the physical buffoonery of hysterics. Stylistically, this paper synthesizes the languages of critical theory, Gracie Allen routines, personal narrative, jokes, and poetic reflections on the notion of being approximate. (shrink)

Askold Melnyczuk’s novel Ambassador of the Dead narrates the process through which a second-generation, assimilated American learns to comprehend the Ukrainian historical experience of his family and their generation. This article argues that the novel is centrally concerned with Nick’s learning process: as he begins to better understand his parents’ generation, he transforms his own identity. As a child, Nick is unable to see Ada — his friend’s mother, who is haunted by traumatic experiences — as anything other than an (...) unchanging, incomprehensible enigma: “Old World Syndrome.” Eventually, Nick comes to follow the example of Anton, a displaced Ukrainian who narrates a story-within-the-novel that returns Ada’s experiences to their historical and cultural contexts, while using magical realism to place her Ukrainian experience on a historical scale. Through Anton’s example, Nick learns how to see both Ada and his parents as complex historical actors in world history. Understanding the past then enables him to see himself as Ukrainian and claim an identity that is both Ukrainian and American. (shrink)

This paper argues that too restrictive an understanding has governed both academic and popular analysis of the social, cultural, and political conflicts between the Western European majorities and their Islamic minorities. These conflicts are typically viewed through the prisms of majority racism and/or minority economic disadvantage. While such social facts are undoubtedly important, I argue that the ideology of radical Islamism must be taken seriously in any analysis of the problem. Thus, I do two things in this essay. I (...) outline the elements in twentieth-century radical Islamic writings that relate to the relationship between (broadly understood) Islamic and Western civilization; I also offer an overview of the now long-lived situation of culture war in Western Europe that supports my argument that Islamic cultural pathology, more than European racism, is the chief causal factor. This is intended as a warning that “clash of civilization” and “Islamo-fascism” models, usually disparaged in the academy, must be taken quite seriously. (shrink)

In both the philosophical and visual sense, ‘seeing is believing’ does not apply to nanotechnology, for there is nothing even remotely visible to create proof of existence. On the atomic and molecular scale, data is recorded by sensing and probing in a very abstract manner, which requires complex and approximate interpretations. More than in any other science, visualization and creation of a narrative becomes necessary to describe what is sensed, not seen. Nevertheless, many of the images generated in science and (...) popular culture are not related to data at all, but come from visualizations and animations frequently inspired or created directly from science fiction. Likewise, much of this imagery is based on industrial models and is very mechanistic in nature, even though nanotechnology research is at a scale where cogs, gears, cables, levers and assembly lines as functional components appear to be highly unlikely. However, images of mechanistic nanobots proliferate in venture capital circles, popular culture, and even in the scientific arena, and tend to dominate discourse around the possibilities of nanotechnology. The authors put forward that this new science is ultimately about a shift in our perception of reality from a purely visual culture to one based on sensing and connectivity. (shrink)

The historical-cultural theory of Intellectual Disability overcompensation/compensation is referenced in several studies, but little empirical evidence is presented to corroborate this thesis. In this work, 13 current studies were analysed about the behavioural profile of people with Down syndrome, a case of neurobiological ID, published in the last 15 years, in order to verify the possibility of dialogue with the theorizing about compensation. Despite contributing to an up to date understanding of DS, the results point to similarities between different (...) scientific traditions allowing discussions regarding methodologies, data interpretation, language comprehension, and the impact of the studies for school inclusion and the development of people with ID/DS. It is concluded that the theorization in question is pertinent to developmental studies, dialogues with other perspectives and that its progress depends on investigations directed to the affective motivators/emotions of the person with ID/DS by means of more interpretative methodologies. Keywords: Down syndrome, compensation, behavioural profile, Intellectual Disabilities Development. (shrink)

Liberal-Democratic changes in the Russian Society have brought a number of acute problems threatening national security and leading to converting Russia into a peripheral socio-cultural system («national self-identification crisis»). Scientific research shows that the main indicator of the said crisis is not only the critical economic differentiation of people into the «poor» and «rich» Russia (with the different ways of life, needs, mentality) but also spiritual degradation, spread of aggressive – depressive syndrome (growth of hatred, feeling of injustice, loss (...) of meaning of the life, anger, melancholy, hopelessness, loneliness etc.). Twothirds of the citizens (74.9%) interviewed in 2006 think that their social status does not correspond to their personal achievements in education and professional abilities. One of the main reasons of their distrust towards the government bodies is insufficient professional and cultural level, absence of unity of a word and business. It is worth mentioning that books and articles of scientists and ideologists who resist Western liberalism are freely published, but you can hardly see these people close to the President. Russians are openly and secretly under pressure of ideas propagandizing negative past which undermine national self-identification, national pride for the great history of their country. The original sphere of influence of Russian language and Russian culture is shortening under the press of mass-culture. Meanwhile, 67% of Russians expressed their negative attitude towards massive Western cultural expansion. The Futureof Russia is in safeguarding national intellectual and spiritual values, Science, education and in supporting the person of work and creativity. (shrink)

There are complex considerations when planning to disclose an attenuated psychosis syndrome diagnosis. In this review, we evaluate ethical, legal, and clinical perspectives as well as caveats related to full, non- and partial disclosure strategies, discuss societal implications, and provide clinical suggestions. Each of the disclosure strategies is associated with benefits as well as costs/considerations. Full disclosure promotes autonomy, allows for the clearest psychoeducation about additional risk factors, helps to clarify and/or correct previous diagnoses/treatments, facilitates early intervention and bolsters communication (...) between providers but there are important considerations involving heritability, comorbidity, culture, and stigma. Non-disclosure advances nonmaleficence by limiting stigma and stress, and confusion in a sensitive developmental period but is complicated by varying patient preferences and the possibility that, as new treatments without adverse effects become available, the risk with false positives no longer justifies the accompanying loss of autonomy. Partial disclosure balances ethical considerations by focusing on symptoms instead of labels, but evidence that laypersons may interpret this information as a pseudo-diagnosis and that symptoms alone also contribute to stigma limits the efficacy of this approach. In addition, there are notable societal considerations relating to disclosure involving conservatorship, the reach of insurance companies, and discrimination. We advocate a hybrid approach to disclosure and recommend future research aimed at understanding the effects of stigma on clinical course and a renewed focus on those help-seeking cases that do not transition but remain clinically relevant. (shrink)

In light of a well-documented deficit in theory of mind found in high-functioning individuals with autism and Asperger Syndrome, this article explores HFA and AS children’s social-cognitive understanding of other people as reflected in their linguistic performance when answering mundane, everyday questions posed by their family members during dinnertime interaction. Ethnographic observations and video recordings of spontaneous interaction at home reveal that, contrary to findings in cognitive psychological research, the majority of the time the children were able to detect their (...) interlocutors’ communicative intentions and produce relevant responses that were marked by their conversational partners as acceptable. This article proposes that this success is due in part to parents who, through different strategies, facilitate their HFA and AS children’s access to socio-cultural perspective-taking and their interlocutors’ intentions, and better their children’s communicative skills. (shrink)

An exciting attempt to establish and elaborate in some detail a method which will achieve the proper compromise between "scientific precision" and "humanistic significance" in cultural anthropology and the history of ideas. The author begins by distinguishing theoretical from overt behavior; the former is his concern, and is defined to encompass the higher products of a given culture: poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics are the chief examples utilized. A set of seven linear and bi-polar "axes-of-bias" are then detailed as (...) a schematic tool for arriving at the common denominator which may be said to characterize each of these cultural expressions. Sample axes are the Continuity/discreteness axis-bias, Static/dynamic axis-bias, and Order/disorder axis-bias. In addition, the claim is made that the question of whether or not the works of a given personality coincide with a previously determined syndrome can be significantly decided through a content analysis of his works, which results in a profile drawn from his placement on each of these axes. The title of the book is taken from the fact that Romanticism is the chief phenomenon by which the method is tested. The author is careful to guard himself against claiming "objective truth" for any of his analyses, let alone for any of the syndromes he has detailed; and it is this, namely his heuristic theory of theories, that the philosopher will find most interesting, and, perhaps, most debatable.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Priming and Narrative Habits in the Phenomenological InterviewReflections on a Study of Tourette SyndromeThe author reports no conflicts of interest.In "Dimensions, Not Types: On the Phenomenology of Premonitory Urges in Tourette Syndrome," Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt and Jack Reynolds provide new insights into some of the experiences characteristic of Tourette syndrome (TS). Their study is an excellent example of applied phenomenology (Burch, 2021), combining philosophy and qualitative research methods to illuminate (...) experiences that have often been mischaracterized in the existing literature. In their study, they focus on what is commonly referred to as a "premonitory urge" (PU): the "anticipatory urge that is often thought to precede the onset of the motor and phonic tics that are part of Tourette Syndrome" (Curtis-Wendlandt & Reynolds, 2024, p. 26). They ask not only whether PU is a necessary feature of TS, but also whether the very concept of PU accurately portrays the experiences and behaviors that it's intended to refer to. They point out that existing scales used to assess PU, for example, seem to implicitly narrow the relevant experiences by assuming that they are a) always negative and b) always internal, or inwardly focused (Curtis-Wendlandt & Reynolds, 2024, 26). Curtis-Wendlandt and Reynolds question these in-built assumptions about PU, suggesting that they may provide an overly narrow depiction that misses the genuine diversity of experiences that precede the onset of a motor or phonic tic.To explore these phenomena in more detail, they conducted a study intended to elicit fresh descriptions of these experiences. They interviewed 12 teenagers with a diagnosis of TS about their experiences of ticcing and tic suppression. Using the micro-phenomenological method (Petitmengin, 2006), they asked participants to reflect on a specific tic or tic suppression event and to recall the event in detail. Throughout the interview, [End Page 43] they asked open-ended questions about sensory, cognitive, or affective experiences surrounding the event. Through these interviews, they were able to generate rich descriptions of these experiences and investigate how these descriptions differed from standard accounts in the existing literature.Curtis-Wendlandt and Reynolds provide a detailed account of how they designed their phenomenological study, both philosophically and empirically. However, there is an important aspect of their method that they discuss only in a cursory or implicit way, which is what I want to focus on here. Throughout their study, they were concerned that participants might simply parrot back well-worn medicalized characterizations of PU. Such characterizations risk simplifying or even occluding key aspects of the participants' experiences that might be difficult to reflect upon or describe. However, despite stressing the importance of eliciting fresh descriptions, Curtis-Wendlandt and Reynolds provide only glimpses of how the interviews actually unfolded and what kinds of techniques they used to elicit these descriptions.In my experience, it is quite common to hear phenomenological psychologists and psychiatrists express concern that people may simply repeat common psychiatric or medicalized characterizations of their condition, rather than genuinely reflect upon and describe their first-person experiences. The philosophical assumption is that we all fall back on culturally sedimented language and terminology when describing our experiences. Someone who has spent extended periods of time interacting with psychiatrists and other healthcare professionals, for example, is likely to have picked up common ways of describing their condition—ways that may have helped them receive a diagnosis or obtain treatment. There is nothing inherently wrong with falling into these culturally sedimented characterizations. They facilitate everyday communication through a shared language and terminology. But phenomenologists are often concerned that this kind of culturally sedimented language covers over or obscures the phenomenon or experience they are trying to investigate. For example, if a psychiatrist has often described their patient's depressed mood as "sadness," then that patient may be likely to self-describe their mood as sadness in an interview setting. It might, in fact, be the case that their mood is best described as sadness. But it could also be the case that their mood would be more accurately described as, for instance, a sense of emptiness or feeling deep despair. The challenge is therefore to know whether someone's self-description is... (shrink)

Neither the pathogenesis nor the aetiology of Down's syndrome (DS) are clearly understood. Numerous studies have examined whether clinical features of DS are a consequence of specific chromosome 21 segments being triplicated. There is no evidence, however, that individual loci are responsible, or that the oxidative damage in DS could be solely explained by a gene dosage effect. Using astrocytes and neuronal cultures from DS fetuses, a recent paper shows that altered metabolism of the amyloid precursor protein and oxidative stress (...) result from mitochondrial dysfunction.1 These findings are consistent with considerable data implicating the role of the mitochondrial genome in DS pathogenesis and aetiology. BioEssays 24:681–684, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Cognition in living entities—and their social groupings or institutional artifacts—is necessarily as complicated as their embedding environments, which, for humans, includes a particularly rich cultural milieu. The asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories permit construction of a new class of empirical ‘regression-like’ statistical models for cognitive developmental processes, their dynamics, and modes of dysfunction. Such models may, as have their simpler analogs, prove useful in the study and re-mediation of cognitive failure at and across the scales and (...) levels of organization that constitute and drive the phenomena of life. These new models particularly focus on the roles of sociocultural environment and stress, in a large sense, as both trigger for the failure of the regulation of bio-cognition and as ‘riverbanks’ determining the channels of pathology, with implications across life-course developmental trajectories. We examine the effects of an embedding cultural milieu and its socioeconomic implementations using the ‘lenses’ of metabolic optimization, control system theory, and an extension of symmetry-breaking appropriate to information systems. A central implication is that most, if not all, human developmental disorders are fundamentally culture-bound syndromes. This has deep implications for both individual treatment and public health policy. (shrink)

Classical theories of emotion have long debated the extent to which human emotion is a universal or culturally constructed experience. Recent advances in emotion research in cultural neuroscience highlight several aspects of emotional generation and experience that are both phylogenetically conserved as well as constructed within human cultural contexts. This review highlights theories and methods from cultural neuroscience that examine how cultural and biological processes shape emotional generation, experience, and regulation across multiple time scales. Recent advances (...) in the neurobiological basis of culture-bound syndromes, such as Hwa-Byung (fire illness), provide further novel insights into emotion and mental health across cultures. Implications for emotion research in cultural neuroscience for population health disparities in psychopathology and global mental health will be discussed. (shrink)

Cotard's syndrome is a psychotic condition that includes delusion of a supernatural nature. Based on insights from recovered patients who were convinced of being immortal, we can (1) distinguish biographical experiences from cultural and evolutionary backgrounds; (2) show that cultural significance dominates biographical experiences; and (3) support Bering's view of a cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of immortality.

Using birth stories as our object of inquiry, this article examines the ways in which normative discourses about gender, disability and Down syndrome construct the birth stories of three mothers of children with Down syndrome. Their stories are composed of the mothers’ recollections of the first hours after birth as a time when their infants are separated from them and their postpartum needs are ignored. Together, their stories illustrate socio-cultural tropes that position Down syndrome as a dangerous form of (...) the “other” and mothers who give birth to children with Down syndrome as implicated in transgressing cultural norms. (shrink)

This article examines the development of koro’s epistemic status as a paradigm for understanding culture-specific disorders in modern psychiatry. Koro entered the DSM-IV as a culture-bound syndrome in 1994, and it refers to a person’s overpowering belief that his genitalia is retracting and even disappearing. I focus in particular on mental health professionals’ competing views of koro in the 1960s—as an object of psychoanalysis, a Chinese disease, and a condition predisposed by culture. At that critical juncture, transcultural psychiatrists based outside (...) of continental China—namely, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore—appropriated ideas from traditional Chinese culture to consolidate the clinical diagnosis of koro as culture-bound. This new global meaning of koro was made possible by a cohort of medical experts who encountered the phenomenon and its sufferers in Sinophone communities, but placed their contributions within the broader contours of the global reach of Anglophone psychiatric science. (shrink)

This study draws upon naturalistic ethnographic data to expand current understandings regarding the socio-communicative capabilities and challenges of children with autism spectrum disorders in mid-childhood. Affording a view of the children’s spontaneous interactions within naturally occurring family and community settings, the study explores a range of discursive resources utilized by the children to accomplish socially reciprocal positive politeness practices in tandem with others. Emphasizing contextualized deployment of politeness forms in interaction, the practice-based conception developed here construes positive politeness as a (...) discursive process encompassing both socio-cultural and interpersonal knowledge/skills; and contributes to a perspective in which social and communicative realms are conceptualized as integrated domains of functioning. (shrink)

This article studies a seeming paradox ? the adoption of multi-culturalist strategies and arguments by the neo-fascist European New Right. Why would neo-fascists adopt such a theoretical framework, and why has multiculturalism failed in Europe? In this article, I argue that the European New Right employs a multiculturalism framework, which I define as a recognition/exclusionist one, in order to create a new discourse of ?legitimate exclusionism? of non-authentic European immigrants. In short, multiculturalism, by celebrating differences between ethnic and cultural (...) groups, inherently admits that there exist such differences between individuals. This allows neo-fascists to distinguish between themselves and ?others?, immigrants not sharing their cultural heritage, and to claim the need for protecting such a cultural heritage through exclusion of others. As this article attempts to claim, immigrants will not benefit from multiculturalism, but the right of the radical integralist in its different versions. (shrink)

This narrative symposium examines the relationship of bioethics practice to personal experiences of illness. A call for stories was developed by Tod Chambers, the symposium editor, and editorial staff and was sent to several commonly used bioethics listservs and posted on the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics website. The call asked authors to relate a personal story of being ill or caring for a person who is ill, and to describe how this affected how they think about bioethical questions and the (...) practice of medicine. Eighteen individuals were invited to submit full stories based on review of their proposals. Twelve stories are published in this symposium, and six supplemental stories are published online only through Project MUSE. Authors explore themes of vulnerability, suffering, communication, voluntariness, cultural barriers, and flaws in local healthcare systems through stories about their own illnesses or about caring for children, partners, parents and grandparents. Commentary articles by Arthur Frank, Bradley Lewis, and Carol Taylor follow the collection of personal narratives. (shrink)

Dissanayake is an ethologist. She is interested in human behavioral predispositions that are universal and innate because they have proved to enhance survival, which is defined as reproductive success (1995:36, 2000:21), and, hence, became selected for at the genetic level. Such behaviors must date back at least to the late Pleistocene (20,000 years ago) since it is then that human biological evolution reached its present condition. Subsequent changes involved cultural evolution, a predisposition that is itself based on evolutionary characteristics (...) of the human species (1988:23, 1995:14, 2000:xiv). Dissanayake holds that art behavior, which she characterizes first as patterns or syndromes of creation and response (1988) and later as rhythms and modes of mutuality (2000), displays the hallmarks of a biological adaptation (1988:6, 1995:33–4): it is universal, innate, old (being present from at least 100,000 BCE, depending on what is counted as the first evidence), and is a source of intrinsic pleasure. Indeed, she claims that art is essential to the fullest realization of our human nature. Art is not something added to us but is the way we are, "Homo aestheticus, stained through and through" (1995:xix). (shrink)

Extensive scholarship has described the historical and ethical imperatives shaping the emergence of the brain death criteria in the 1960s and 1970s. This essay explores the longer intellectual history that shaped theories of neurological consciousness from the late-nineteenth century to that period, and argues that a significant transformation occurred in the elaboration of those theories in the 1960s and after, the period when various disturbances of consciousness were discovered or thoroughly elaborated. Numerous historical conditions can be identified and attributed to (...) the production of the new theories that emerged from that period-on, not least in the broader social and cultural transformations that occurred with decolonialization, pro-democracy movements, and civil and disability rights advocacy, all contexts which exerted pressures on the institutions and professions of medicine. In this telling, the discovery of the locked-in patient is thus the exploration of a transformed vision of medical patients – one that moved them from a liminal indefinite space into a firmly grounded epistemological existence – in a backdrop in which medical professionals in particular and society in general was beginning to see the body differently. With this new vision, came a relational theory of consciousness to, a reading of a body and it signs, that shifted consciousness from an internally-derived state into a relationally-constructed object. The ontology of consciousness, whatever it was, thereby became entangled with the social condition of consciousness, one that bridged the worlds of close relationship with the social movements and anxieties about personhood that emanated out of that fraught period. (shrink)

An Asian Indian Hindu family chose no intervention and hospice care for their newborn with hypoplastic right heart syndrome as an ethical option, and the newborn expired after five days. Professional nursing integrates values-based practice and evidence-based care with cultural humility when providing culturally responsive family-centered culture care. Each person’s worldview is unique as influenced by culture, language, and religion, among other factors. The Nursing Team sought to understand this family’s collective Indian Hindu worldview and end-of-life beliefs, values, and (...) practices, in view of the unique aspects of the situation while the team integrated evidence-based strategies to provide family-centered culture care. Parental care choices conflicted with those of the Nursing Team, and some nurses experienced moral distress and cultural dissonance when negotiating their deeply held cultural and religious views to advocate for the family. The inability to reconcile and integrate a stressful or traumatic experience impacts nurses’ well-being and contributes to compassion fatigue. Nurses need to be intentional in accessing interventions that promote coping and healing and moral resilience. Reflection and cultural humility, assessment, and knowledge in context, increase evidence-based culture care and positive outcomes. U.S. society’s views on ethical behavior continue to evolve, and some may argue that the law should place more limits on parents’ right to choose or to refuse treatment for their infants and children. Moral distress can lead to moral resilience and satisfaction of compassion when nurses provide family-centered culture care with cultural responsiveness and integrate values-based practice with evidence-based care, and aim to first do no harm. (shrink)

Life among most African families and communities revolves around women. In both African religion and culture, women’s lives oscillate between two opposite extremes of being at the centre and periphery at the same time. Women are both the healers and the often wounded by the system that respects them when there are problems and displaces them whenever there are opportunities. Their central role is expressed by a Shona proverb musha mukadzi (the home is a woman). This proverb expresses how women (...) endure the pain of both religion and culture to create a decent society. Women also endure the pain of pandemics such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and COVID-19 and at times succumb to the same while taking care of some family members who would have fallen victim to the epidemic. Countless married women have been made susceptible to HIV and AIDS as they try to live according to the African cultural dictates of mothering and/or motherhood. Other women and girls also contract the disease because of how religion and culture exert them to some unbearable circumstances. For example, women and girls nurse their ill relatives without protective equipment and clothing. At times they are abused by men because of some cultural beliefs that unprotected sex is a remedy for HIV and AIDS. In addition, most women and girls were also victims of COVID-19 while serving their family members. In doing all the good work to serve families, women are driven by the proverb musha mukadzi. Using desk research methodology, this paper argues that musha mukadzi is both a toolkit for women’s resilience to endure pandemics and at the same time a subtly oppressive statement often used to manipulate and abuse women to stand in places that are too difficult for their capabilities. Contribution: African women bear the brunt of pandemic burdens such as HIV, AIDS and COVID-19. Sometimes they become susceptible to the same while taking care of their family members affected by pandemics in the name of fulfilling the Shona proverb, musha mukadzi. The topic has contributed to the scope of the journal as it advocates to inculcate a peaceful society. The article also challenges African societies not to use musha mukadzi to ill-treat women as objects of African religio-cultural patriarchal ideology. (shrink)

Rosenberg argues that a culture of medicine articulates a unique medical vision reflecting scientific ideologies and perceptions, professional values and rewards, career patterns, and the work context of each generation of physicians (Rosenberg, 1987, p. 7) It might be more accurate, however, to recognize multiple cultures of medicine. This papers traces American hospitals' contributions to three specific aspects of certain elite cultures of medicine. Its first section introduces and explores these aspects transhistorically. They are: a stratified paradigm of the physician-patient (...) relationship, the equation of competence with specialization, and a pattern within a stratified model of medicine called the “Lone Ranger syndrome.” A brief historical profile subsequently highlights changes in the structure and function of American hospitals in the 19th century. The three remaining sections chart the ebb and flow of the prominence and power of these specific aspects of elite cultures of medicine across three historical periods: the late 19th century, 1910–1930, and the post World War II era. (shrink)

Summary. The article deals with the close link between the diminishing influence of the Moscow Patriarchate on social and political processes in Ukraine and the restoration of the Ukrainian cultural and civilizational space. Namely, the gradual deprivation of Orthodox believers of the post-imperial syndrome, including attitudes, perceptions, behavioral models, etc., associated with the stay of Ukrainians in the foreign-language and other people's mentality and culture of the empire. It is noted that the receipt of the Tomos on recognition of (...) autocephaly and the constitution of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine by Orthodox believers of Ukraine has a positive impact not only on the development of the OCU itself, but also the level of patriotism, restoration and development of the Ukrainian-speaking environment, archetypal traditions, rituals, behavior models, etc. The conclusion is about the religious aspect of promoting Ukrainian development from the Asian to the European cultural and civilizational model. (shrink)

Burnout was recently declared by WHO as an “occupational phenomenon” in the International Classification of Diseases 11th revision, recognizing burnout as a serious health issue. Earlier studies have shown that feelings of guilt appear to be involved in the burnout process. However, the exact nature of the relationships among burnout, guilt and psychosomatic disorders remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediator role of feelings of guilt in the relationship between burnout and psychosomatic disorders, and perform (...) a cross-cultural validation of the multi-dimensional model by Gil-Monte in two samples of teachers. The study sample was composed of 1,266 teachers, 1,062 from Spain, and 204 from Portugal. Burnout was measured by the Spanish Burnout Inventory. Hypotheses were tested together in a path model. The results obtained provide empirical evidence for the mediator role of guilt in the relationship between the Burnout syndrome and psychosomatic disorders in the sample of teachers from Spain and Portugal, and they contribute to the empirical validation of the model by Gil-Monte. The results indicate that guilt should be incorporated as a symptom of burnout in order to identify individuals affected by burnout and profiles or types of burnout to differentiate it from other pathologies like depression. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.1 (2003) 63-66 [Access article in PDF] The Pragmatics of Psychiatry and the Psychiatry of Cross-Cultural Suffering Jennifer Radden I AM IN SUBSTANTIAL AGREEMENT with many of the conclusions David Brendel draws in his thoughtful discussion. Misleading language aside, I particularly applaud his use of my plea for ontological descriptivism to support clinical practice, which respects, as he puts it, the subjectively "melancholic" person (...) living behind the objectively "depressed" clinical presentation.Brendel offers two main critiques of my discussion about the relationship between today's depression and melancholia of past eras. First, he asserts that I neglect the relevance of causal reasoning in my preference for a descriptivist over a causal ontology. Second, arguing that pragmatic considerations ought to be, as he says, front and center when philosophers and psychiatrists "grapple with the complexities of psychiatric explanation," (Brendel 2003, 54) he questions what he sees as my too ready dismissal of pragmatism in this discussion. Allegiance to pragmatism seems to me to sit strangely with support for a causal ontology, as I shall try to demonstrate. But first let me comment on these two sides of Brendel's commentary.The case of Van Gogh's alleged melancholia is particularly well chosen because there has been continuing debate about Van Gogh's condition, including scholarly work attributing it to an inherited metabolic disorder (Arnold 1992). Brendel's suggestion that a causal ontology might allow us to use historical evidence to throw light on the relation between depression and melancholia is an interesting and fruitful one that I had overlooked. Brendel also holds hope for drug cartography as a means of determining the causes of mental disorders. I admit to the initial plausibility of the approach to classification employed by drug cartography, of course. Diagnostic maps must be evaluated according to their effectiveness for the purposes they serve, and cannot—or should not—be seen as mere descriptions of natural phenomena. And maps based on psychopharmacological effects will serve one of the most important purposes we can have in relation to mental disorders: their successful treatment. Nonetheless, as I indicated in my essay, there are conceptual limitations to drug cartography. That several different syndromes respond to the same drug is suggestive, but it does not tell us anything definitive about structural similarities or differences between those different disorders. Nor, from the fact that a condition is alleviated by drugs, does it follow that a particular brain state was the initiating cause of that condition.My dismissal of a pragmatic approach in the foregoing discussion may have been overly hasty. [End Page 63] But in trying to make good this omission, I find myself struck by the complexity of the task. There appear to be at least five different places where a pragmatic response might be called for: (1) in deciding what to say about the relationship between depression and melancholia; (2) in determining the structure of any given psychiatric classification; (3) in choosing between what I have called descriptivist and causal ontologies; (4) in electing a course or method of treatment in the clinical context; and (5) in evaluating psychiatric explanations.With regard to (1), I have sketched in a note one pragmatic consideration in favor of equating melancholia and depression: by so doing, we might reinvest depressive states with some of the glamorous associations from the past and so diminish the stigma and provide some compensation and consolation for the suffering attaching to depression. Pragmatic reasoning may be perfectly appropriate here. I beg to point out that pragmatic considerations let me neglect it.With regard to (2), I recognize that psychiatric classifications are not so much identifications of natural kinds as responses to our various purposes; indeed, this point is offered as one drawback of adopting a causal analysis, because there is little reason to expect our purposes, which are a product of culture, to correspond to natural arrangements, which are not.With regard to (3), if there were overriding pragmatic considerations that favored accepting one or the other of these ontologies, then perhaps this would be... (shrink)