This paper addresses the efforts of both Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud to posit a theory of homosexuality, and especially considers their efforts to (re-)negotiate each other's theories. Its central premise derives from the sociology of scientific knowledge: that it is not what is written, but the way that what is written is treated by ensuing experts, that makes knowledge. In the case study used in this paper, Ellis and Freud struggle to posit what they consider to be the proper model for understanding homosexual desire. They utilize aspects of each other's word, but are careful not to appear to be following each other too closely. Such a struggle to establish different schools of thought is exemplified by the informal negotiations engaged in when a student, Joseph Wortis, made contact with both Freud and Ellis. Again following sociology of scientific knowledge precepts, these informal negotiations (contained in published and archival letters) are used to show how knowledge claims are constructed, deconstructed any reconstructed by the actors who have stakes in the outcome of what is to be regarded as knowledge in the relevant communities.
Koro is a syndrome in which the penis (or sometimes the nipples or vulva) is retracting, with deleterious effects for the sufferer. In modern psychiatry, it is considered a culture-bound syndrome (CBS). This paper considers the formation and development of psychiatric conceptions of koro and related genital retraction syndromes from the 1890s to the present. It does so by examining the different explanations of koro based on shifting conceptions of mental illness, and considers the increased recognition of the role culture has to play in psychiatric concepts. Conceptions of culture (deriving from colonial psychiatry as well as from anthropology) actively shaped the ways in which psychiatrists conceptualized koro. Cases under consideration, additional to the first Dutch descriptions of koro, include the ways in which koro was identified in white western cases, and the 1967 Singaporean koro epidemic. Following a number of psychiatrists and psychologists who have addressed the same material, attention is also paid to the recent genital-theft panics in sub-Saharan Africa, considering the implications of the differences between koro and other genital-theft panics. Finally, the paper addresses the role played by koro in the development of the concept of CBSs, which was first presented in the DSM IV in 1994. This is explored against the backdrop of emerging ideas about culture and psychiatry from the late colonial period, especially in Africa, which are central to modern ideas about transcultural psychiatry.
PM Yap's most significant intellectual achievement was his development of the concept of the culture-bound syndrome, which synthesized years of research into transcultural psychiatry, and situated this work within this field by drawing on elaborated nosological schema that challenged some of the ethnocentric assumptions made by previous psychiatrists who had tried to understand mental illnesses that presented in non-western cultures. This introduction to Yap's 1951 paper emphasizes that Yap needs to be understood as working within the western tradition of transcultural psychiatry, and argues that his English training and his continual engagement with western psychiatric and philosophical frameworks is the best way to conceive of his contributions to this field. Yap's paper, republished below as the Classic Text, was his first foray into comparative transcultural psychiatry.
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