[The occidental model of madness. A critical approach to the concept of ethnopsychiatry].

In this article the author draws out the main characteristics of the model of madness in the Western world. This process hinges on an approach of the psychopathological phenomenon within the viewpoint of cultural anthropology. The different cultural expressions and hermeneutic approaches to mental troubles have been brought out by transcultural studies, more particularly concerning depressions. The western model of madness lies within the history of medicine, this is not always the case in other cultural contexts. The question of organic causes has long been debated. The etiologic viewpoint of personal responsibility--accompanied by the notions of endogeny on the one hand and of intrapsychic conflict on the other--is based on the individualism which characterizes the Western personality and probably forms part of the make-up of guilt. The notion of ethnopsychiatry should therefore not be applied solely to non-Western practices: psychiatry as a whole should--and must--be considered as an ethnopsychiatry, ie a clinical and hermeneutic approach of mental trouble taking the culture of reference of the patient into account.