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Psychiatry, mental illness and culture
Müller, Matyáš ; Komárek, Stanislav (advisor) ; Fulka, Josef (referee)
The aim of the dissertation is to treat psychiatry and mental illness from the anthropological point of view. The topic is treated at three levels. First, I describe psychiatry as a specific culture's product, and I explore how it constitutes itself as an unbiased science. I conclude that in spite of developing its scientific aspect, its human-science aspect is neglected, stuck in the 19th century's paradigm of evolutionism. Although there is a number of sources of a new less scientistic and ethnocentric and more reflexive paradigm nowadays, it still seems to be more a vision than reality due to the institutional toughness of the present paradigm. Second, I study "mental illness" as an abstract concept. I ask if the Western psychiatry's classification is universal and I explore various culturally specific forms of mental illness and its conceptualizations. Third, partially grounded in my fieldwork, I ask how abstract psychiatric terminology is embodied in a concrete human being and how the sufferer's point of view differs from the one of the professional in the mental health care. The dissertation intends to show that despite all the three levels being interlocked, their unity is not self-evident but is always constructed and contested.
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