Institute of Anthropology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Department of Anthropology, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, USA.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 2024 Jun;48(2):310-328. doi: 10.1007/s11013-023-09829-1. Epub 2023 Sep 15.
Medical anthropologists have not paid enough attention to the variation at the level of the individual practitioners of biomedicine, and anthropological critiques of biomedical psychiatry as it is practiced in settings outside the Global North have tended to depict psychiatrists in monolithic terms. In this article, we attempt to demonstrate that, at least in the case of India, some psychiatrists perceive limitations in the biomedical model and the cultural assumptions behind biomedical practices and ideologies. This paper focuses on three practitioners who supplement their own practices with local and alternative healing modalities derived from South Asian psychologies, philosophies, systems of medicine and religious and ritual practices. The diverging psychiatric practices in this paper represent a rough continuum. They range from a bold and confident psychiatrist who uses various techniques including ritual healing to another who yearns to incorporate more Indian philosophy and psychology in psychiatric practice and encourages students of ayurvedic medicine to more fully embrace the science they are learning to a less proactive psychiatrist who does not describe a desire to change his practice but who is respectful and accepting of ayurvedic treatments that some patients also undergo. Rather than simply applying a hegemonic biomedical psychiatry, these psychiatrists offer the possibility of a more locally-attuned, context sensitive psychiatric practice.
医学人类学家尚未充分关注生物医学从业者个体层面的差异，而对全球北方以外地区实施的生物精神病学的人类学批判往往以单一模式描绘精神科医生。在本文中，我们试图表明，至少在印度的情况下，一些精神科医生意识到生物医学模式及其背后的文化假设的局限性，以及生物医学实践和意识形态。本文重点介绍了三位从业者，他们将自己的实践与源自南亚心理学、哲学、医学体系和宗教仪式实践的本地和替代治疗方式相结合。本文中不同的精神科实践代表了一个大致的连续体。他们的范围从一个大胆自信的精神科医生，使用包括仪式治疗在内的各种技术，到另一个渴望在精神科实践中纳入更多印度哲学和心理学，并鼓励阿育吠陀医学的学生更充分地接受他们正在学习的科学，再到一个不那么积极主动的精神科医生，他没有描述改变自己实践的愿望，但尊重并接受一些患者也接受的阿育吠陀治疗。这些精神科医生并没有简单地应用霸权生物精神病学，而是提供了一种更能适应本地、更能敏感处理背景的精神科实践的可能性。
