Resumen de What's behind the symptom?: On psychiatric observation and athropological understanding.
Ángel Martínez Hernáez, Susan M. Di Giacomo (trad.), John Bates (trad.)
Theory and Practice in Medical Anthropology and International Health.
Angel Martínez-Hernáez's great contribution in this intriguing volume is to use the image of the "what" that stands behind the symptom as a means of canvassing much that really matters in contemporary medical anthropology and psychiatry. Symptoms, as the author invokes them, inform the reader as much about anthropology and medicine as about patients and illnesses. What's Behind the Symptom? Is the most thorough elaboration of the semiotics of psychiatry in our era... Like a master magician, Martínez-Hernáez conjures up the very reality he seeks to analyze by turning the analysis, as it were, into a simulacrum of the problem itself. This is a major achievement. - From the Foreword by Arthur M. Kleinman. Harvard University.
The traditional perception of "symptom" has been challenged in recent years. Is it merely a physical sign of illness, or is it also a symbolic and cultural form of expression? The concept of symptom itself is an important new challenge for medical anthropology and medical semiotics because it refers to both of these things: a pathophysiological reality, as well as the evocative power of language and culture. Using ethnographic material from Spain, this book explores the controversial subject, developing a critique of contemporary psychiatric knowledge and a specifically anthropological perspective on illness, complaints, symptoms and afflictions. This work also offers penetrating analyses of Freud, Krapelin, Foucalt, Eco, Barthes and Pierce, among others, as part of its critical framework.
