Construction and interpretation of self-related function and dysfunction in Intercultural Psychiatry.

This study compares traditional Western concepts of the self and its dysfunction with self-concepts developed in Caribbean, African and South-East-Asian societies. This review demonstrates that "the self" is a fluid concept. Social function and dysfunction of such a self-concepts depend on a given cultural context. We argue that the cursive concept of the self is culturally constructed around cursive experiences which are shared by all human beings. Such universal experiences may include the prereflective access to individual thoughts and feelings, an automatic knowledge that (at least in non-pathological states) these emotions and cognitions belong to my self. Conscious self-reflection and its narrative articulation, on the other hand, is necessarily imbued with social and cultural norms, images and events, often of conflicting nature. PMID: 22863248 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: Journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Eur Psychiatry Source Type: research