Corso di laurea magistrale in Psicologia del lavoro e dell'organizzazione

At the end of the course, students will be familiar with the processes of social construction and production of the disease, the relationship between culture and experience of suffering, the different imaginaries of healing. They will be encouraged to develop a critical and historically oriented approach towards diagnostic categories and their social use. In addition, thanks to the study of the texts indicated and the examples given during the course, they will learn to deconstruct the naturalizing perspectives present in medical and psychological discourse, and to grasp connections often hidden or ignored between suffering, diagnosis, and violence. Students will be invited to apply a context-related approach in order to recognize connections often overlooked or occulted between diagnosis, social violence, and moral dimensions of suffering. Starting from the premise of a "critical ethnocentrism" (Ernesto de Martino), students will be able to adopt a methodological perspective based on developments in “critical applied medical anthropology” and “psychological anthropology.” At the same time, they will be invited to reflect on the interaction between healing and suffering from phenomena such as witchcraft, possession and ritual treatments.

The student must be able to demonstrate to show that they are in possession of the concepts and models discussed during the course and proposed by the texts.

1 . Anthropology of body. From “The techniques of body” (Marcel Mauss, Robert Hertz) to habitus (Pierre Bourdieu) and embodiment paradigm (Thomas Csordas). The political body (Scheper-Hughes, Lock). Ethnopsychiatry. Frantz Fanon and the critics of colonial psychiatry. The origins and the debate of Medical Anthropology research. DSM and its uncertain categories 2. The social construction and production of illness. The Medical Anthropological Perspectives: Illness, Disease, Sickness. Illness narratives (Good). Clinical Plots and Patients’ Counter-Narratives. Naming the Evil: the experience of suffering and the cultural landscapes. Structural, Symbolic, and Institutional Violence. Social violence and cultural interpretation of disease. 3. Witchcraft, “ritual killings,” prophets, and possession cults: A traumatic History, an age of uncertainties. The effectiveness of symbols and the healing powers (Lévi-Strauss, Turner, de Martino, Risso e Böker, Favret-Saada, Nathan etc.). The “valorization of traditional medicine” as an example of epistemological misunderstanding (Bibeau, Dozon, Pool). The Sacred Self (Csordas). The economy of the miracle, charisma, and the new imaginary of recovery in the “healing churches” (de Rosny). “Post-colonial suffering”. 4. Violence and the issue of trauma. The PTSD Empire (Young, Fassin, Rechtman, etc.). Living, remembering, and wittnessing the horror (different cultural strategies to cope with traumatic events). Torture and its aftermath. Across bodies: torture spoken by victims (Alleg, Améry). Technologies of remembering and forgetting in refugees and victims of violence. Politics of truth and moral economies of lies. The psychic life of History: cinema, literature and violence.

Three of the following books (other books will be indicated at the beginning of the course) 1. R. Beneduce, Archeologie del trauma. Un’archeologia del sottosuolo, Laterza. 2. I. Quaranta, Antropologia Medica, Cortina. 3. R. Beneduce, Etnopsichiatria. Sofferenza mentale e alterità fra Storia, dominio e cultura, Carocci. 4. A. Young, The Harmony of Illusions. Inventing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Princeton University Press 5. A. Ong, Buddha is Hiding. Refugees, Citizenships, the New America, University of California Press. 6. R. Beneduce, Corpi, mimesi, storia. Trance e possessione in Africa, Bollati Boringhieri. 7. J. & J. Comaroff, Modernity and its Malcontents, The University of Chicago Press. 8. P. Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa, University Press of. Virginia. 9. C. Caruth (ed.), Trauma. Exploration in Memory, The John Hopkins University Press. 10. P. Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge University Press. 11. R. Beneduce, E. Roudinesco (a cura di), Antropologia della cura, Bollati Boringhieri STUDENTS MUST ALSO READ FOUR ARTICLES AMONG THE ARTICLES INDICATED (MADE AVAILABLE ON THE TEACHER’S SITE)