Psychology and psychiatry in the global world: Historical perspectives.

Abstract

During the past several decades, historians of science, technology, and medicine have started to investigate developments in the global world, primarily focusing on the world outside Europe and North America. Historians of early modern science have analyzed the intimate connections between, on the one hand, exploration, colonialism, and imperialism and, on the other, the scientific revolution in Europe. Scientific expeditions in Asia, Africa, and the Americas not only required significant local assistance but incorporated local techniques and insights as well (Roberts, 2009;Schaffer, Roberts, Raj, & Delbourgo, 2010). Botanical and medical research always relied on local intermediaries; as a consequence, local wisdom ended up in scientific treatises unacknowledged (Cook, 2007;Grove, 1995;Schiebinger, 2004;Schiebinger & Swan, 2004). Historians of science have started to investigate science from a global perspective, analyzing how science has been shaped through various alliances, trade connections, global political arrangements, and confrontations on a global scale (Secord, 2010;Sivasundaram, 2010). Today, historians of modern science argue that scientific research in Singapore, Japan, and China rivals that conducted in the Western world and can no longer be viewed as derivative or secondary (see, e.g., Clancey, Graham, Bishop, & Fischer, 2013;Waldby, 2009; Wittner & Brown, 2016). Advocates of new approaches to the history of early modern science and those focusing on modern science have argued that research should focus on the circulation of knowledge, technologies, pharmaceutical preparations, instruments, techniques, and theories in the global world and relinquish distinctions between metropolis and periphery, East and West, and modern and traditional (Anderson, 2002;Seth, 2017).Over the past three decades, historians of psychiatry have paid ample attention to the history of asylum care, mental hospitals, and psychiatric theories outside the Western world (see, e.

Child development, film evidence, and epidemiological sciences: Elwyn James Anthony and the 1957 Zurich International Congress of Psychiatry

“…This report integrated representatives from countries beyond Europe and the USA, namely Dr MV Govindaswarmy from the Mysore Governmental Mental Hospital in Bangalore in India, Dr I Matté Blanco from the University of Chile, and Dr Phon Sansingkco from the Hospital for Mental Diseases in Thailand (WHO Expert Committee, 1953). Although prior committees had included representatives working in non-Western contexts, such as Margaret Mead and JC Carothers, these contributors had still largely adopted their own colonialist perspectives (Heaton, 2018;Lakoff, 2008;McCulloch, 1995;Pols and Wu, 2019). The 1950 meeting created a major shift in discussions on children's mental health (WHO Expert Committee, 1953: 4).…”

“…This led to a mix of post-war scientific and political optimism, coupled with Western obstinacy that required correction from a growing international community. The establishment of the World Health Organization in 1948, and the central role played by Brock Chisholm in placing mental health at the core of WHO values via its Mental Health Unit, set the scene for child psychiatrists to reconsider their role and legitimacy within an expanding global psychiatric network ( Delille, 2018 ; Pols and Wu, 2019 ). The publication of the UNESCO statements on race ( 1950 ), and Frantz Fanon’s (1952) and others’ criticism of psychoanalysis, put increasing pressure on the WHO to address lack of scientific validity in describing psychological development.…”

Introduction: Madness and psychiatry in East Asian countries in the modern period

“…In the past decades, there has been an increasing scholarly interest in understanding the development of psychiatry and mental health in non-Western worlds. Although many modern medical practices, bodies of knowledge, and institutional structures originated from Europe and North America, they had different trajectories in other cultures, and a great number of non-Western medical specialists actively participated in the global production of psychiatric sciences (Pols and Wu, 2019). Several collective efforts have been made in recent years to foreground the East Asian part Introduction of this rich history.…”

La réglementation des asiles dans les colonies françaises et britanniques des années 1850 aux années 1920

“…C'est également une période privilégiée pour la recherche sur l'institution asilaire. En effet, l'histoire de la psychiatrie se développe en dehors du monde occidental, ce qui est salué par plusieurs auteurs 51 . La discipline prend une dimension nouvelle 52 et les approches se diversifient 53 .…”