Personal website of Dan Schurmans
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY
Introduction
Besides biological, psychoanalytical and sociological points of view, anthropological psychiatry aims to become an autonomous approach of psychopathology.
Anthropological psychiatry
- is grounded in social and cultural anthropology, which describes the building of collective representations through interaction between human beings, and shows how they can become different from each other following social life events, all starting from universal roots.
- defines culture as a system, that of collective representations, connected to each other as interdependent units. This system is subject to historical change, and to external influences: it varies, but without losing its coherence.
- considers this system as a signifying context for every speech act as for every action: it is what gives its meaning to every human behaviour.
- believes that pathological syndromes are built by social interaction in a specific cultural context, and thereafter internalized by individuals as illusory, but constraining necessities.
You will find in this website my own approach to anthropological psychiatry. There are many others. You will find its basic concepts, explained and commented upon, some introductory references of initiatory value for me, some links which seem to me indispensable, and a succinct introduction to some personal writings, and to writings of some of my mentors and friends.
SITE PLAN
You can contact me: schurmans.daniel@tiscali.be
anthropological_psychiatry@yahoo.com
Photographs by Sylvie BRASSART
Translated from French by Annie BRASSART