Cross-cultural, transnational or interdisciplinary? Eric Wittkower's psychosomatic medicine and transcultural psychiatry in historical context.

This article traces the career, scientific achievements, and emigration of the Berlin-born physician, psychoanalyst, and psychosomatic researcher Eric Wittkower. Trained in Berlin and practicing internal medicine, he became persecuted by the Nazi regime and, after fleeing Germany via Switzerland, continued his professional career in the United Kingdom, where he turned to psychosomatic medicine and worked in the service of the British Army during World War II. After two decades of service in the UK, Wittkower joined McGill University in Canada. His increasingly interdisciplinary work contributed to the establishment of the new research field of transcultural psychiatry. Finally the paper provides a detailed history of the beginning of the section of transcultural psychiatry at the Allan Memorial Institute.

Research into witchcraft in psychoanalysis and history.

Witchcraft and witch-hunting have been a topic for numerous historical and psychoanalytical research projects. But until now, most of these projects have remained rather isolated from one from the other, each in their own context. In this article I shall attempt to set up a dialogue between psychoanalysis and history by way of the example of research into witchcraft. However, I make no claim to covering the different psychoanalytical and historical approaches in full. As a historical 'layman', my interest lies in picking out some of the approaches that seem to me particularly well suited to contribute to reciprocal enhancement.

[Outline of Nahua ethnopsychiatry]. / Ebauche d'ethnopsychiatrie nahua.

In this paper we will show some historical and cultural aspects of the Aztec's medicine and cosmology at the XVI century. The Aztecs or Nahuas used to believe in different kinds of anemic entities, the most important ones being the tonalli, the ihiyotl and the teyolia. At the time the word tonalli meant, simultaneously, the particular "genius" of everyone, good fortune and the "star" or destiny. The tonalli's loss was a cause of illness and dead and it could be provoked by some physical violent acts or by sudden feelings of fright. The most frequent expression of this sickness was named tetonalcahualiztli. The hispanic designation of this problem is susto. The Nahuas used many kind of psychological proceedings in order to alleviate anguish and to treat mental troubles. Illness was considered by nahuas practitioners as the balance's loss of the organism, not only of its own components but also of its relationship with the world.