Imagining Africa in Eastern Europe: Transcultural Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis in Cold War Yugoslavia

This article seeks to write Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe into the history of post-Second World War global psychiatry and to explore the significance of Marxist psychiatry in an international context. It traces Yugoslav psychiatrists’ transnational and interdisciplinary engagements as they peaked in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Contemporary European history 2019-05, Vol.28 (2), p.234-251
Main Author: Antić, Ana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Cold War
Colonialism
Culture
Debates
Decolonization
Developing countries
Humanism
Ideology
LDCs
Marxism
Medical research
Mental disorders
Mental health
Mental health care
Modernity
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Native peoples
Neuroses
Political factors
Post World War II period
Psychiatrists
Psychiatry
Psychoanalysis
Psychotherapy
Race relations
Social psychiatry
Sociology
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Summary:This article seeks to write Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe into the history of post-Second World War global psychiatry and to explore the significance of Marxist psychiatry in an international context. It traces Yugoslav psychiatrists’ transnational and interdisciplinary engagements as they peaked in the 1960s. Focusing on the distinguished Belgrade psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Vladimir Jakovljevic (1925–68), it looks at Yugoslav psychiatry’s clinical and anthropological research in the global South to shed light on its contributions to Western-dominated transcultural psychiatry. Through this lens the article also explores how Eastern Europe’s intellectuals engaged with decolonisation and the notions of race, ‘primitivism’ and modernity. Jakovljevic’s involvement in transcultural psychiatry demonstrated the inherent contradiction of Eastern European Marxist psychiatry: its dubiously colonial ‘civilising mission’ towards the subalterns in its own populations and its progressive, emancipatory agenda. Jakovljevic’s writings about Africa ultimately turned into an unprecedented opportunity to shed light on some glaring internal inconsistencies from Yugoslavia’s own socio-political context.
ISSN:0960-7773
1469-2171
DOI:10.1017/S0960777318000541