Next Forum Questions

In the sixty-nine number of Antropologicheskij forum, published by the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), RAS, and the European University at St Petersburg, the discussion will address the interaction between the social sciences and the psy-disciplines (psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychology). We would like to invite you to respond to the questionnaire below. You may, as you wish, directly address the questions presented here, or send in a text responding to one or some of them (or taking up some other issue that seems to you relevant). Whichever way, we would be grateful if you could keep your answers to a maximum of 10 pages (1.5 spaced, 12-point type). Please use the author-date in-text citation system for any references in the format [Smith 2002: 12], i.e. author / date (no comma) in square brackets, appending a list of ‘References’ at the end with full publication details: Author: e.g. Smith M. A.; Article title: e.g. ‘Visual Anthropology’; Journal title: e.g. Ethnology, 2002, no. 3, p. 14–19; or alternatively, Author: e.g. Smith M. A.; Book title: e.g. Visual Anthropology; Place: Publisher, date, pages: e.g. London: Anvil Press, 2002, 356 p. Please send replies by 20 December 2025 to forum.for.anthropology@gmail.com, with a copy to aklepikova@eu.spb.ru; your email address should be included in any attached file. We hope that the discussion will appear in summer 2026.

Psy-Disciplines and Social Sciences

From September 2024 to June 2025, the European University at St Petersburg hosted a series of meetings of the interdisciplinary discussion club ‘Personality and Mental Health in the Age of Medicalization’,[1] during which psychiatrists and psychotherapists debated with anthropologists and sociologists. These discussions did not pass smoothly, partly because of differences in terminology, the opacity of certain terms used by each side to the other side, and contradictions in the meaning of seemingly identical concepts (a striking example of this is ‘personality’, which is conceptualized and studied differently in both psychiatry and anthropology, as the discussions have made obvious). Nevertheless, throughout these meetings, the discussants tried to find common ground, mutually understandable ideas, and a common language, and most importantly, to assess in what form these disciplines could be beneficial to each other.

Cultural anthropology and psychiatry / psychoanalysis have a long history of convergence in academic writings. However, despite the early influence of psychoanalysis on the social sciences, contemporary anthropology and sociology clearly delineate disciplinary boundaries, rejecting ‘psychologism’ and criticizing medicalization. For anthropologists / sociologists, psychiatry and psychology more often become objects of study rather than sources of theoretical inspiration [Goffman 1961; Martin 2007; Luhrmann 2011], including in the context of studying the so-called psychotherapeutic turn [Rose 1998; Illouz 2008]. Also significant is the tradition in sociology and anthropology of critiquing the will to power that is held to be inherent to psychiatric and medical knowledge and practices: the Foucauldian perspective, which views them as spaces of discipline [Foucault 2003], and the ‘anti-psychiatric’ movement, which seeks to debunk over-medicalization and commercialization in the field of healthcare [Szasz 1960; Illich 1976].

In turn, modern psychiatry, despite a few attempts to expand its toolkit with concepts from the social sciences (see, for example: [Kleinman 1977; 2004; Kirmayer 1984; 2005]), also retains its positioning as a branch of medicine. In Russian academic discourse, one can find discussions of the social aspects of diagnosis and treatment [Mendelevich 2016; 2023] and even ideas for creating an entire discipline of ‘anthropological psychiatry’ [Zislin 2018; 2023]. However, even bearing in mind these important endeavours, it is worth acknowledging that there is still no full-fledged dialogue between contemporary Russian / Russian-speaking social researchers and psychiatrists.

In an attempt to summarize the experience of the interdisciplinary dialogue and make its results more accessible, the team of co-organizers of ‘Personality and Mental Health in the Age of Medicalization’ decided to continue the discussion in the journal Forum for Anthropology and Culture. We invite social scientists, as well as psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and psychologists – i.e. professionals in the sphere of ‘psy-disciplines’[2] — to participate in this interdisciplinary forum and answer the following questions:

  1. Is it possible to create a common language and ‘trading zones’ between psychiatry and the social sciences? What are the differences and misunderstandings in this field and what are the reasons for them? Do you have personal experience of such mutual exchange and (mis)understanding?

  2. To what extent can anthropologists and sociologists move beyond simply studying contemporary psychotherapeutic discourse and patient experience or examining psychiatrists and psychologists as professional communities, and explore psychiatric / psychotherapeutic knowledge itself instead? What might be the benefits of such an approach?

  3. What ideas and findings from social anthropological research might be useful to representatives of the mental health disciplines? Does it make sense to integrate them into psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice, and do you have any experience of such integration? What role does psychiatry as an institution play here? Is ‘anthropologically informed’ psychiatry / psychotherapy a feasible and necessary entity?

  4. How does the psychiatric community in general perceive criticism of its suppositions, methodologies and practices that comes from the social sciences? How does it respond to such criticism?

  5. In an era of popularization of ‘psy’ discourse and psychiatric diagnoses becoming ‘fashionable’, psychiatry and anthropology / sociology can act as both rivals and allies. In what contexts do these rivalries and collaborations arise, and what are their prospects?

References

Foucault M., Le Pouvoir psychiatrique: Cours au Collège de France, 1973–1974. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2003, 416 p.

Goffman E., Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. London: Aldine Transaction, 1961, 336 p.

Goffman E., Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Prentice Hall, 1963, 168 p.

Illich I., Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976, 294 p.

Illouz E., Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2008, 304 p.

Kirmayer L. J., ‘Culture, Affect and Somatization: Part II’, Transcultural Psychiatric Research Review, 1984, vol. 21, no. 4, p. 237–262.

Kirmayer L. J., ‘Culture, Context and Experience in Psychiatric Diagnosis’, Psychopathology, 2005, vol. 38, no. 4, p. 192–196.

Kleinman A. M., ‘Depression, Somatization and the “New Cross-Cultural Psychiatry”’, Social Science & Medicine, 1977, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 3–9.

Kleinman A., ‘Culture and Depression’, New England Journal of Medicine, 2004, vol. 351, no. 10, p. 951–953.

Luhrmann T. M., Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry. New York: Vintage Books, 2011, 352 p.

Martin E., Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007, 396 p.

Mendelevich V. D., ‘Klassifikatsiya psikhicheskikh rasstroystv vs. sistematika povedencheskikh deviatsiy: medikalizatsiya kak trend’ [Classification of Mental Disorders vs. Systematics of Behavioral Deviations: Medicalization as a Trend], Obozrenie psikhiatrii i meditsinskoy psikhologii imeni V. M. Bekhtereva, 2016, no. 1, p. 10–16. (In Russian).

Mendelevich V. D., ‘O “subyektivnykh psikhicheskikh rasstroystvakh”, samodiagnostike i psikhopatologicheskoy nastorozhennosti’ [On “Subjective Mental Disorders,” Self-Diagnosis, and Psychopathological Vigilance], Psikhiatriya i psikhofarmakoterapiya, 2023, no. 4, p. 4–7. (In Russian).

Rose N., Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 236 p.

Szasz T. S., ‘The Myth of Mental Illness’, American Psychologist, 1960, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 113–118.

Zislin I., ‘Tri lika psikhiatrii: etnograficheskiy, transkulturalnyy, antropologicheskiy’ [Three Faces of Psychiatry: Ethnographic, Transcultural, Anthropological], Nezavisimyy psikhiatricheskiy zhurnal, 2018, no. 2, p. 13–17. (In Russian).

Zislin I., Ocherki antropologicheskoy psikhiatrii [Essays on Anthropological Psychiatry]. Moscow: Gorodets, 2023, 416 p. (In Russian).

 

[1]  The meetings were organized by researchers from European University at St Petersburg in collaboration with doctors from the ‘Dynasty’ Clinic.

[2]  We realize that combining these fields under one umbrella term may raise questions, as there are both contradictions and alliances between their representatives. However, here we draw upon the approach of Nicholas Rose, who combined psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychology using the general term ‘psy-disciplines’ as domains where the modern subject seeks support and acquires techniques for working with their own “self.”