Abstract
The Ethnopsychiatry founded by Geroges Devereux emerged as a possibility to reflectabout the intercultural encounter and its unfolding regarding the understanding of psychological disorders and the coherence between therapeutics and etiologies of this psychopathological states. The theoretical thesis that led to the creation of the discipline arises from inflections based mainly on the studies from Freud’s, Malinowski’s and Rheheim’s theory, along with later contributions by Lévi-Strauss and Bastide. Tobie Nathan is later credited for creating an intervention clinical model and a practice. This article aims to present the history of the precursory principles that led Devereux to the theoretical thesis and the resulting creation of Ethnopsychiatry and also to make considerations about the experience acquired in the application of the model of practice proposed by Nathan and multiplied by other clinicians. From the postulate of the universality of the psychological structure which is particularily constituted by culture, the discipline comprises an intrinsic relation existing between culture and the psychic functioning, in which culture uses the same elements, processes and defense mechanisms as the psyche. Adopting the double discourse method - Psychoanalysis and Ethnology -the discipline defines itself as complementary. Ethnopsychiatry emerges as a possibility to look at the gap that Western psychiatry left to explain psychological disorders, as well as to show how its model of intervention advocates to position the discipline as an apprentice in the intercultural encounter.
Keywords:
Ethnopsychiatry; culture; psyche