A Symposium on Racism and Psychiatry Introduction
Abstract
OverviewA Symposium on Racism and Psychiatry Introduction SAGE Publications, Inc.1993DOI: 10.1177/136346159303000301 Laurence J.Kirmayer The essays in this issue of TPRR were first presented as talks at a symposium on "Racism and Psychiatry" sponsored by the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry of McGill University and the Department of Psychiatry, Sir Mortimer B. Davis-Jewish General Hospital. The speakers were asked to explore the problem of racism from the perspectives of their disciplines: anthropology, psychology and psychiatry. Dr. Irving Allen, who did not attend the meeting, kindly agreed to provide a commentary on the papers. The conjunction in the title of this symposium reflects the contributors' dual concerns: how does racism affect the theory and practice of psychiatry and, working in the other direction, what light can the relevant basic sciences of psychiatry-psychology and social sciences-shed on the nature of racial prejudice and its impact on our patients and our selves. The ongoing "biologization" of psychiatry makes topics like racism seem marginal to psychiatric theory and practice. Psychiatry is concerned with mental disorder not social ills: we have retreated from the hubris of the 1960s when the community psychiatry movement felt its social and psychodynamic insights could offer a diagnosis