The Case of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry: Squaring the Circle?

Abstract

This paper examines the obstacles to a resolution of conflict between anthropology and psychiatry: historical, professional methodological and theoretical. Conflict at the level of theory derives from the fact that psychiatrists work on universalist assumptions and anthropologists on relativist assumptions. Commitment to either position is maintained at a cost of ignoring attendant logical problems. In its dogmatic form, the relativist position fails to address the real problems of translation involved in any cross-cultural exercise.