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Discursive practice and the negotiation of psychiatric pathology in Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Elizabeth M. Coker
Elizabeth M. Coker*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology, The American University in Cairo, 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, PO Box 2511, 11511 Cairo, Egypt, email emcoker@aucegypt.edu
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Modern biomedical psychiatry is the product not only of scientific enterprise but also of the progressive secularisation and medicalisation of moral life in the West (Jimenez, 1987). Psychiatry is an evolving cultural product. Its diagnostic categories represent pathologies rooted in Western notions of self, identity, normality and abnormality (Gaines, 1991). Psychiatric practice in Egypt, on the other hand, is the product of two different and often incompatible world views, namely Western psychiatry and Egyptian concepts of self, identity, normality and abnormality. The task of the psychiatrist in Egypt is to negotiate symptoms and diagnoses in a way that is sensitive to the demands of these two competing cultural streams. Analysis of this process provides a unique view of the ways in which culture can have an impact on professional psychiatry in any society or ethnic context.

Type
Thematic Paper – Cultural Variations in the Perception of Psychopathology
Information
International Psychiatry , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , April 2004 , pp. 3 - 4
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2004

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