Littlewood R
Soc Sci Med. 1984;19(7):705-15. doi: 10.1016/0277-9536(84)90243-0.
Psychiatry and ethnography have been reluctant to consider the possibility that psychosis may provide a model for social organisation and belief. The situations in which this may occur are considered and two examples discussed: the historical leader of a Jewish messianic movement and the contemporary founder of a Trinidadian sect. Individual delusions may be converted into a shared public culture by the manipulation of previously accepted symbolism and a simple inversion of the traditional values in some area may enable the whole community to attain a more sophisticated conceptualisation. In particular, antinomian acts rooted in psychopathology may generate more universal dispensations out of systems of dual classification.
精神病学和人种志一直不愿考虑精神病可能为社会组织和信仰提供一种模式的可能性。本文探讨了可能出现这种情况的情形，并讨论了两个例子：一位犹太弥赛亚运动的历史领袖和一个特立尼达教派的当代创始人。通过操纵先前被接受的象征意义，个人妄想可能会转化为一种共享的公共文化，并且在某些领域对传统价值观进行简单的倒置，可能会使整个社区获得更复杂的概念化。特别是，源于精神病理学的反律法行为可能会从二元分类系统中产生更普遍的豁免。
