The Anthropology of Mental Health

3 units

The psyche-what goes on in your head and others'- is an ineffable part of the human experience. It produces the most profound feelings of pain and pleasure and includes everything from memory and trauma to desire and fantasy. But it also responds to things in the real world: racism, poverty, social inequality, and ecological catastrophe. It informs our behavior, and it is informed by the material conditions around us. When things go wrong in the psyche, we now call them mental illnesses. But it's not always clear whether their causes are internal and 'organic' or 'socially constructed' by external factors and labels. Often, both forces are at play. In this exploratory course we will work to develop a new language for understanding the psyche as it operates in the 21st century. We will read widely and generously from sources on the history and culture of mental health and mental illness, as well as ethnographies of its related institutions. Our goal is to bring together both anthropological theory and applied ethical insights from the legitimate scientific discoveries of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis.