Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry

Comparative Studies of Health Systems and Medical Care

by Arthur Kleinman

From the Preface, by Arthur 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 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 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.

Genres: Anthropology, Psychology, Nonfiction, Health Care, Medicine, Research, Mental Health

427 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

Reviews

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a wonderful job of exploring explanatory models of illness (Why am I sick? How long do I think this will last? What do I think caused it?) and the different types of healers. It has shifted my perspective on public health and intervention.

[Laura Casper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first book that tuned me on to medical anthropology, understanding how disease and human interchange with each other. How social constructs can help or hinder those changes....basicly the human factor.

[David Beckwith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book and class...and professor. One of the best.