A Medical Anthropology of the “Global Psyche”

Abstract

A medical anthropology of the “global psyche” may sound like an odd project. Is there one psyche that pervades the whole globe? In their introduction to this special issue, Dominique Béhague and Kenneth MacLeish dissuade any suggestion of either the global or the psyche as entities that could be examined like substances. Neither the psyche nor the globe are stable points of reference. They are not names of entities. Instead, the global psyche is “a concept, era, program, and episteme that rewards careful analysis” (this issue). There are “multitudinous labors” and “novel forces—political, technological, neurobiological, ecological” that are redefining what either the global or the psyche could be.