This article considers the ethical guidelines concerning autonomy, negotiated consent and transparency in relation to an ethnography of psychiatry. It suggests that the complexities and unequal power distribution of the psychiatric consultation make these guidelines difficult to apply. Rather an attempt is made to develop an ethics of patient acknowledgement even where this presents ethical misgivings vis-à-vis psychiatrists. I argue for the importance of ethnography rather than the instantiation of abstract principles to the development of an ethical perspective.
American Anthropological Association (AAA). (1991). Code of ethics. Arlington: AAA .
2.
Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA). (1999). Ethical guidelines for good research practice. www.asa.Anthropology.ac.uk/ethics2.html
3.
Behar, R. (1996). The vulnerable observer anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston, MA: Beacon Press .
4.
Berkman, L.F. (1995). The role of social relations in health promotion . Psychosomatic Medicine, 57, 245-254 .
5.
Bloch, S. and Chodoff, P. , Eds. (1984). Psychiatric ethics. Oxford, New York & Melbourne: Oxford University Press .
6.
Bloch, S. and Reddaway, P. (1977). Russia’s political hospitals: The abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. London: Gollancz .
7.
Bourdieu, P. (2002). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge: Polity .
8.
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
9.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .
10.
Devereux, G. (1978). Ethnopsychoanalysis: Psychoanalysis and anthropology as complementary frames of reference. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press .
11.
Devereux, G. (1980). Basic problems of ethnopsychiatry. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
12.
Frank, A. (2001). Can we research suffering?Qualitative Health Research, 11, 353-362 .
13.
Frankfort, H.G. (1988). The importance of what we care about: Philosophical essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
14.
Gergen, K.J. and Gergen, M.M. (1986). Narrative form and the construction of psychological science. In T.R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative psychology, pp. 22-44. New York: Praeger .
15.
Glucksmann, M. (1994). The work of knowledge and the knowledge of women’s work. In M. Maynard and J. Purvis (Eds.), Researching women’s lives from a feminist perspective, pp. 149-165. London: Taylor & Francis .
16.
Hoffmaster, B. (1992). Can ethnography save medical ethics?Social Science and Medicine, 35, 1421-1431 .
17.
House, J.S. , Landis, K.R. and Umberson, D. (1988). Social relationships and health . Science, 241, 540-545 .
18.
Kemp, M. (2004). Agency and discourse on distress. Unpublished PhD, University of Bristol .
19.
Kleinman, A. (1977). Depression, somatization and the ‘new cross-cultural psychiatry’ . Social Science and Medicine, 11, 3-10 .
20.
Lader, M. (1977). Psychiatry on trial. Harmondsworth: Penguin .
21.
Lieven, A. (1993). The Baltic revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the path to independence. New Haven, CT & London: Yale University Press .
22.
Medvedev, Z. and Medvedev, R. (1971). A question of madness. Trans. E. de Kadt. London: Macmillan .
23.
Miller, B.L. (1981). Autonomy and the refusal of life saving treatment . Hastings Centre Report, 11, 22 .
24.
Musil, R. (1997). The man without qualities. Trans. S. Wilkinson and B. Pike. London: Picador .
25.
Nuckolls, C.W. (1992). Toward a cultural history of the personality disorders . Social Science and Medicine, 35, 37-47 .
26.
Nussbaum, M.C. (2001). Upheavals of thought: The intelligence of emotions. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press .
27.
Pabriks, A. and Purs, A. (2002). Latvia: The challenges of change. London & New York: Routledge .
28.
Podrabinek, A. (1980). Punitive medicine. Trans. A. Lehrman. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma .
29.
Putnam, R.D. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. New York: Touchstone .
30.
Reich, W. (1991). Psychiatric diagnosis as an ethical problem. In S. Bloch and P. Chodoff (Eds.), Psychiatric ethics, 3rd edn, pp. 193-224. Oxford, New York & Melbourne: Oxford University Press .
31.
Rose, N. (1997). Assembling the modern self. In R. Porter (Ed.), Rewriting the self, pp. 224-248. London & New York: Routledge .
32.
Seeman, T.E. (1996). Social ties and health: The benefits of social integration . Annual of Epidemiology, 6, 442-451 .
33.
Skultans, V. (1996). Looking for a subject: Latvian memory and narrative . History of the Human Sciences, 9, 65-80 .
34.
Skultans, V. (1997a). A historical disorder: Neurasthenia and the testimony of lives . Anthropology and Medicine, 1, 7-24 .
35.
Skultans, V. (1997b). The expropriated harvest: Narratives of deportation and collectivization in north west Latvia . History Workshop Journal, 44, 170-188 .
36.
Skultans, V. (1997c). Theorizing Latvian lives: The quest for identity . Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 3, 1-20 .
37.
Skultans, V. (1998). The testimony of lives: Narrative and memory in post-Soviet Latvia. London & New York: Routledge .
38.
Skultans, V. (1999). Narratives of the body and history: Illness in judgement on the Soviet past . Sociology of Health and Illness, 21, 310-328 .
39.
Skultans, V. (2003). From damaged nerves to masked depression: Inevitability and hope in Latvian psychiatric narratives . Social Science and Medicine, 56, 2421-2431 .
40.
Smith, D.E. (1993). Texts, facts and femininity: Exploring the relations of ruling. London & New York: Routledge .
41.
Stacey, J. (1988). Can there be a feminist ethnography?Women’s Studies International Forum, 11, 21-27 .
42.
Taylor, C. (1985). Human agency and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
43.
Toulmin, S. (1988). The recovery of practical philosophy . American Scholar, 57, 337-352 .
44.
Weber, M. (1991). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Ed. Gerth and C.W. Mills . London & New York: Routledge .
45.
Wilkinson, R.G. (1996). Unhealthy societies: From inequality to well-being. New York & London: Routledge .
