Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry

by George Devereux, Basia Miller Gulati (Translator), George Devereaux

In these sixteen essays, written between 1939 and 1965, George Devereux argues that the understanding of all human behavior requires the application of both psychological and sociocultural methods of explanation. This unique approach, which differentiates sanity and insanity from social adjustment and maladjustment, provides a rigorous foundation for a general theory of psychoanalytic ethnopsychiatry.

George Devereux, a psychoanalyst and anthropologist, discusses crime, sexual delinquency, dreams in non-Western cultures, and cannibalistic drives of parents. He frequently cites case material from his extensive field work with the Mahave Indians of Arizona and the Sedang Moi of Vietnam and from his clinical work with non-Western patients.

380 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1980

About the author

George Devereux (born György Dobó) was an American - French ethnologist and psychoanalyst, born in a Jewish family from Banat. He was one of the pioneers of ethnopsychoanalysis and ethnopsychiatry.