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Panic Disorder, Somatization, and the New Cross-cultural Psychiatry: The Seven Bodies of a Medical Anthropology of Panic

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Abstract

This article aims to adduce aframework that will allow for thecross-cultural study of panic disorder. Theauthors take sensation as the key unit ofanalysis, aiming to contribute to a medicalanthropology of sensation. The seven analyticperspectives that are suggested in the articleare the following: the full spectrum of panicattack sensations (the sensation body), thebiological generation of panic sensations (thebiological body), sensation as invoking anethnophysiology (the ethnophysiological body),sensation as metaphor (the metaphoric body),sensation as invoking the landscape (thelandscape body), sensation as invokingcatastrophic cognitions (the catastrophiccognitions body), and sensation as invokingmemory (the memory-associational body).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, Boston, MA

    Devon Hinton & Susan Hinton

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  1. Devon Hinton
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  2. Susan Hinton
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Hinton, D., Hinton, S. Panic Disorder, Somatization, and the New Cross-cultural Psychiatry: The Seven Bodies of a Medical Anthropology of Panic. Cult Med Psychiatry 26, 155–178 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016374801153

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