Towards an Anthropology of Psychology

Ethnographic Studies of Psychological Healthcare

Mikkel Kenni Bruun, Rebecca Hutten (Herausgeber)

Buch | Hardcover

198 Seiten

2025
Berghahn Books (Verlag)
9781836951568 (ISBN)

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Challenging contemporary enthusiasm for interdisciplinarity, the book calls for rethinking ‘psychology’ as an anthropological inquiry. It provides ethnographic studies of talking therapies, subjects, institutions, professionals and psychological persuasions, suggesting how anthropology can improve psychological healthcare.

Anthropology and psychology share a long history of rivalry, collaboration, and mutual disregard. This volume reconsiders psychology as a field of anthropological enquiry. In doing so, it takes an ethnographic approach to psychology, examining psychotherapeutic practices and models of mental health at the heart of ‘psy’. Featuring ethnographic studies of psychological therapies, subjects, and professionals, the book also suggests what an anthropological voice can offer to improve psychological healthcare. At the cutting edge of ethnographic research, this book brings together studies from the Global North and Global South, showing how psychological realities shape our understandings of what it means to be human.

Mikkel Kenni Bruun is an Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Research Associate at King’s College London. He is the co-editor of Rhythm and Vigilance: Ethnographies of Surveillance and Time (Bristol University Press, 2025).

Acknowledgements

Illustrations

Introduction: Thinking Ethnographically about Psychology

Mikkel Kenni Bruun

Chapter 1. Mixing Treatment Modalities: An Ethnography of Mental Healthcare Bricolage in Canada

Dina Bork

Chapter 2. Treating Patients ‘Who Don’t Speak’: The Challenge of Treating Children with Eating Disorders in a Residential Facility in Italy

Giulia Sciolli

Chapter 3. More Likely Psychological? Exploring Mental Troubles and Psychology in Ouagadougou

Annigje van Dijk

Chapter 4. When the Counsellors Give: Material Support and Therapeutic Agency in State-Based Psychological Counselling Services in Sri Lanka

Nadia Augustyniak

Chapter 5. In (the) Practice: Pioneering Psychotherapy in Uganda

Julia Vorhölter

Chapter 6. Throwing Out the Psyche: Scientific Persuasions in British Psychotherapy

Mikkel Kenni Bruun

Chapter 7. Encoding Wellness: On Cultures of Risk when Building Digital Mental Wellb-Being Apps

Jennifer Cearns

Afterword: An Anthropology of Psychology in the Twenty-First Century

Keir Martin

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	12.09.2025
Zusatzinfo	Bibliography; Index
Verlagsort	Oxford
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie
	Studium ► 1. Studienabschnitt (Vorklinik) ► Med. Psychologie / Soziologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-13	9781836951568 / 9781836951568
Zustand	Neuware