The imitation of madness: The influence of psychopathology upon culture

Roland Littlewood

Social Science & Medicine, 1984, vol. 19, issue 7, 705-715

Abstract: Psychiatry and ethnography have been reluctant to consider the possibility that psychosis may provide a model for social organisation and belief. The situations in which this may occur are considered and two examples discussed: the historical leader of a Jewish messianic movement and the contemporary founder of a Trinidadian sect. Individual delusions may be converted into a shared public culture by the manipulation of previously accepted symbolism and a simple inversion of the traditional values in some area may enable the whole community to attain a more sophisticated conceptualisation. In particular, autinomian acts rooted in psychopathology may generate more universal dispensations out of systems of dual classification.

Date: 1984
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