Abstract: A critical medico-anthropological critics of Trauma concept and PTSD categoriy. That aims to denounce the medicalization of suffering due to political violence and the risk of occulting moral dimensions of suffering and violence. The book takes in consideration some contexts of conflict (Democratic republic of Congo, Palestine etc.) as well as the condition of refugees and victims of torture. Specific attention is given to the conundrum of forgetting and remembering and to the opportunities offered by the "implicit theories" of art and litterature in treating the psychological consequences of violence.
The book is in Italian
Abstract: The world of traditional healers in the South Cameroon forest, the secrets and changes of a knowledge where we can recognize the heritage of colonial history, the moral order of Christian conversion and the new uncertainties of modernity (the book is in Italian)
Abstract: Abstract. Taking an anthropological approach, the author reflects on refugees and
clandestine immigrants, and in particular on the fractured structure of their narratives.
This attempt to grasp the sense of vagueness or silence we so often find in immigrants’ stories
is designed to draw attention to the psychological consequences of both traumatic past events
and of the unpredictability and uncertainty often experienced in host countries. The author
further argues that the attitudes of social workers involved in clandestine migration and
refugee issues reveal unconscious attitudes characteristic of meeting with the Other which also
convey the contradictions, racism, and hypocrisy of our policies and governments. The author
finally discusses the scenarios of death, violence and apartheid that characterize the day-today
life of many undocumented immigrants, and invites academic researchers not to take for
granted such descriptive terms as ‘clandestine’, ‘refugees’, and so on.
Abstract: Abstract – Possession cults often proliferate during times of dramatic social and cultural changes (colonisation, evangelisation, war, etc.). The transitional and collective meaning of this phenomenon received many interpretations. On the other hand, not much attention was paid to the individual experience of change, to doubt, and to contradictory attitudes often accompanying choices such as religious conversion or immigration. This article addresses above all the following issues: 1) the relationship between possession and modernity; 2) the logic of possession and its unique ability to metaphorically catch complex and contradictory experiences; 3) the specific gender issues displayed by the nexus immigration/prostitution market through the female, possessed bodies; 4) the dialectics generated by possession among different idioms of daily life and embodied experience.
Abstract: Abstract. Ethnopsychiatry is today a contested field, in which concepts
and terms such as ethnicity, identity, culture, citizenship, traditional
therapies or symbolic efficacy are used in a very controversial way. Recent
accusations of ‘racism’ against some ethnopsychiatrists have contributed to
making more obscure the deep roots of these issues and controversies.
Little attention has been paid to analysing the complex legacy of colonial
psychiatry, as well as the relationships among current definitions of
‘culture’ and ‘belonging’, post-colonial subjectivities and migration. In
this article, the authors briefly analyse the contributions of Italian ethnopsychiatry
and investigate the hidden expressions of racism and prejudice
still characterizing mental health workers’ attitudes toward immigrants. It
is argued that a ‘generative’ and community-based ethnopsychiatry can
challenge the hegemony of western psychiatry and improve the quality of
therapeutic strategies.
