Tobie Nathan: Ethnopsychiatry

I first encountered the notion of "ethnopsychology" in the works of Egyptian-born French psychoanalyst Tobie Nathan. His centres provided mental health services to African and North African families in France, using a unique combination of psychoanalytical diagnosis, family systems perspectives, multicultural clinical teams, and ritualised interventions designed within the mythical systems of the client's culture.

For Nathan's bio and bibliography in English, click here.

The ethnopsychiatry website is unfortunately one of the worst websites I have ever seen. For articles in English, click the link "Textes en anglais" in the left-hand menu bar. (Scroll for an article on PTSD and fright disorders: rethinking trauma from an ethnopsychiatric perspective.)

This site also contains articles in several languages on working with holocaust survivors and their children, written by Nathalie Zajde.

Nathan has edited several journals:

• the French-language ethnopsychiatry journal – Ethnopsychiatrica –published between 1978 and 1981.
  
• the Nouvelle revue d’ethnopsychiatrie, published by the Editions de la Pensée sauvage (Grenoble), which put out 36 issues between 1983 and 1998.
• and a new journal, Ethnopsy : les mondes contemporains de la guérison (Ethnopsyc. Contemporary Worlds of Healing), published by Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, in Paris.

Here's a video of Nathan, talking about some differences between an African and a Western worldview: Le Chaos et la Fracture.