Cheng S T
Contemporary China Research Centre, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon.
Cult Med Psychiatry. 1996 Mar;20(1):67-82. doi: 10.1007/BF00118751.
Koro is generally considered a culture-bound psychiatric syndrome, the dominant feature of which is anxiety or dissociation. A close examination of koro epidemics in China, where koro cases appear to be more frequent than other parts of the world, shows that koro has a sociocultural component which has not been sufficiently taken into account in previous formulations. This article analyzes koro in the natural environment in which it appears and dispels the notion of koro being individual psychopathology. Koro, at least the way it is manifested in China, is a social malady maintained by cultural beliefs which affect the whole community and not just those diagnosed with it. Further directions for research into the subject are discussed.
缩阳症通常被认为是一种文化相关的精神综合征，其主要特征是焦虑或分离状态。对中国缩阳症流行情况的仔细研究表明，中国的缩阳症病例似乎比世界其他地区更为频繁，这显示出缩阳症具有社会文化成分，而这在以往的表述中并未得到充分考虑。本文分析了缩阳症出现的自然环境，并消除了缩阳症是个体精神病理学的观念。缩阳症，至少在中国所表现出的形式，是一种由文化信仰所维持的社会弊病，它影响着整个社区，而不仅仅是那些被诊断患有此病的人。文中还讨论了该主题进一步的研究方向。
