An Anthropology of Mental Illness in Euro-America: “Psychiatry conventionally regards spirit possession and dramatic healing

rituals in non-European societies as forms of abnormality if not mental

illness. Roland Littlewood, a psychiatrist and social anthropologist, argues

that it is necessary to take into account both social process and personal

cultural meaning when explaining psychiatric illness and “deviant” behavior.

Littlewood brings anthropological and psychiatric literature to bear on case

studies of self-poisoning, agoraphobia, hysteria, chronic fatigue syndrome,

post-traumatic stress, male sexual violence, and eating disorders. He contends

that Western psychiatric illnesses are themselves “possession states”–patterns

by which individual agency is displaced through an idiom of alien intrusion

whether of a spirit or a disease.” amazon.com