Gross: World in Mind

Spring 2011

Ginsburg Ingerman Overseas Students Program

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

The World in Mind: Culture, Psychiatry and Mental health

Spring Semester 2011

Wednesdays 10:00-14:00
Room no. 90-21

Dr Sky Gross
Email: crosss@mscc.huji.ac.il
Phone / Mobile: 050-9045189
Office hours: Wednesdays, 14:30-15:00

Course Description:

This course explores modes of knowing, affecting and treating the mind, self and psyche. How
have perceptions and representations of insanity changed over time and how do they compare
across cultures? How should a 'global' society define, diagnose, categorize and deal with
mentally ill people, while remaining culturally-aware? In what ways do ideas about madness
and epidemiologies of madness reflect broader cultural currents and social transformations?
How are knowledge and practices of the mind part of systems of power, beliefs, and social
organization? How have diagnoses and treatments of mental illness interacted with the realities
of gender, race, place and class?

Course Objectives:

A. Becoming familiar with key anthropological approaches to transcultural

psychiatry
B. Introducing critical perspectives in the study of institutionalized and medicalized
mental health
C. Learning about non-Western approaches to "mental illness", its causes and its
treatments.
D. Understanding psychological effects of large-scale social change, including
globalization and modernization
E. Identifying the rise and fall of models of care and cure in a changing world

Course Structure:

Lectures: 11 Tour: 3 Total # of Credits: 4

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Teaching Method:
The course will include formal lectures, class discussions and students presentations.
The lectures will be based on weekly reading assignments, and occasionally, on films to
be discussed in class. We will have one of the sessions in the old city of Jerusalem,
where we will discuss particular aspects of interest to our course.

Course Requirements

Compulsory attendance: YES.

Class sessions will include short student presentations, as well as frontal teaching and
discussions. Attendance is mandatory, and it is essential that students come to every
class session prepared, i.e, having read the reading material in advance.
Final grade will be affected by non-attendance to three or more classes unexcused.

Presentation in Class: Students will be asked to prepare a short presentation of the

subject chosen for final paper

Writing assignment: students will be required to write a short paper (up to 4000 words),
which will comprises 50% of the final grade. A skeleton of the paper will be submitted
following the Passover vacation. One of the classes will be devoted to guide the
students in the writing of the final and semi-final paper: from the conceptualization and
formulation of the subject to the nuts and bolts of academic writing.

Structure of Final Course Grad

1. Participation 20%
2. Presentation 10%
3. Mid-Term paper (basis for final paper) 20%
4. Final Paper 50%
100%

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Course Schedule Layout:

Class 1
February 23rd

Introduction
Principles of Psychiatry I

________________________________________________________________

Class 2
March 2nd

Principles of Psychiatry II
Burns, Tom (2006): "Psychiatry: a very short introduction". Oxford: Oxford University
Press. pages 1-35
Will be made available on high-learn and/or sent by mail.
_____________________________________________________

Class 3
March 9th

The Eras of the Mental- Historical Perspectives

From the barn to the priest to the asylum to the community and back again
The rise of the neurochemical model of the mind
________________________________________________________________

Class 4
March 16th

Field Trip with Nadav Davidowitch and Hagai Boaz to Clinics in the periphery

________________________________________________________________

Class 5
March 23rd

Critical Perspectives: Psychiatric Institutions

Movie: "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest"
Institutions for "the insane"
Professions and para-professions of care and cure
Forms of resistance
________________________________________________________________

Class 6
March 30th/April 1st

Field trip with Nadav Davidowitch and Hagai Boaz to Tel Aviv Clinics
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Spring 2011
________________________________________________________________
Class 7
April 6th

'Culture Bound Syndromes': Globalizing the Local

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry's category of "Culture Bound
Syndromes"
Specific "CBS"s in context
Controversy: The when, how, and who of the debate on CBSs

________________________________________________________________
Class 8
April 13th

On Thinking and Writing in the Anthropology of Psychiatry

________________________________________________________________

------ Passover Vacation-----

Initial Work on Assignment (will be discussed in class)

________________________________________________________________

Class 9
April 27th

Presentation and Discussion of mid-term Papers

________________________________________________________________

Class 10
May 4th

Excursion to the Old-City in Jerusalem

Faith, the brain and mental disorders
Prophets – theological and psychiatric perspectives
"The Jerusalem Syndrome"- a CBS case?

_______________________________________________________________
Class 11
May 11th

Critical Perspectives: Psychiatry and Power

Movie: "Shutter Island"
The hospital as a 'total institution'
Power, knowledge and the medical gaze
Deviance, labeling and stigma
________________________________________________________________

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Class 12
May 18th

Globalization, Modernity and Local Distresses

Movie: Fight Club
The effects of urbanization, migration, and dislocation
Depression, Post-traumatic Stress Disorders

________________________________________________________________

Class 13
May 25th

The Where, When, and Who of Mental Illness: Class, Gender, Age and Place
Poverty and Mental Illness
Hysteria and Womanhood
Childhood disorders
Aging and the psyche
________________________________________________________________

Class 14:
June 1st

'The Healer': on Shamanic Medicine, traditional healing and the Psyche

Charismatic Healing
Trance-Like Conditions
Traditional Healing

________________________________________________________________

*Some changes may be made to the syllabus in the course of the semester
**deadline for submission of final paper: to be announced