Narrative strategies in medical discourse: constructing the psychiatric 'case' in a non-western setting.

Full Abstract

The organizing goal of the present study was to analyze and understand the 'discursive presentation' of the Egyptian psychiatric patient through the texts, or narratives, contained within the patient medical charts. It is argued that the medical record, as a written document blending overt medical imperatives with more unexamined cultural assumptions about self-hood and abnormality, is an unusually rich source of discursive data concerning the 'cultural negotiations' implicit in the construction of the patient according to the two (often competing) world views represented by western biomedicine and traditional Egyptian culture. Psychiatry in Egypt is much more than a 'foreign transplant'; to assume this is to deny the culturally constructed nature of western biomedicine and psychiatry, which have their roots in historical and cultural notions of self, society, the individual, and normality versus abnormality (Transcultural Psychiat. 35(3) (1998) 352). Egyptian psychiatry is the product of an ongoing active blending of two very different conceptualizations of these issues.

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Author information

Author/s: Coker, Elizabeth M (EM);

Affiliation: Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology, The American University in Cairo, 113 Sharia Kas el Aini, PO Box 2511, 11511 Cairo, Egypt. emcoker(-atsign-)aucegypt.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Social science & medicine (1982) (Soc Sci Med), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Sep; vol 57 (issue 5) : pp 905-16

Dates: Created 2003/07/09; Completed 2003/08/26; Revised 2004/11/17;

PMID: 12850115, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Attitude of Health Personnel - ethnology
Attitude to Health - ethnology
Communication
Culture
Documentation
Egypt
Female
Humans

Male
Medical Records
Mental Disorders - ethnology; pathology
Narration
Personhood
Physician-Patient Relations
Psychiatry - methods
Sick Role
Sociology, Medical

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