ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author looks at the implicit model of comparative psychiatry, the Russian Dolls of his title, through a mildly anthropological lens. Different anthropological approaches may be compared to Chinese boxes: entry to and exit from the models depend upon how the data are handled. An anthropological approach to psychiatric phenomena allows for the conceptualisation of the psychiatrist and his or her values by the patient. Although anthropologists are not, of course, independent of implicit folk models or political assumptions, this discipline, unlike psychiatry or psychology, does contain within itself the tools for a self-reflexive examination of them. Arthur Kleinman has been critical of much comparative psychiatry, particularly of the notion of the 'somatisation' of distress in reactions regarded as 'really psychological', and also of comparative studies like the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia for their attempt to contrast psychopathology across cultures.
