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C O M M E N T A R Y

The Anthropology of Psychopharmacology: Commentary on Contributions to the Analysis of Pharmaceutical Self and Imaginary

Janis H. Jenkins

Published online: 7 February 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

People are taking psychiatric drugs today more than ever throughout North America

and Europe as well as parts of Asia and countries of the global South, reflecting the

way treatment has been affected by the global dominance of biomedicine, sometimes

in seemingly incongruous ways. An anthropological account of this highly

consequential development requires a variety of strategies to explore the nexus of

the subjective experience of psychoactive pharmaceuticals and global processes that

shape psycho-pharmaceutical consumption. A fusion of perspectives is needed since

studies of global processes that address the problem of psychopharmacology often do

not consider the experience of medications for those who take them, while the limited

set of studies of the phenomenology of medication experience has thus far not given

due consideration to the economic and political dimensions of the problem.

In framing the theoretical and clinical contributions of my recent edited volume

addressing this issue. I proposed that our key terms must include the pharmaceutical self, understood in terms of the subjective experience of psychopharmaceuticals, and the contemporary pharmaceutical imaginary, understood in terms of the global shaping of consumption (Jenkins 2011a, b). In the context of the contemporary

global culture of consumption and the arena of global capitalism in which giant

pharmaceutical companies operate, analytic deployment of these terms supports the

recognition that to some extent we are all already pharmaceutical selves. For those

treated for major psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, these terms help toward

unraveling experiential paradoxes including the frustration of recovery without cure,

the persistence of stigma despite recovery, the blameless guilt of living with a

‘‘biochemical imbalance,’’ the choice of being ‘‘crazy or fat’’ due to medication

effects, and the strained coexistence of pharmaceutical management and psycho-

therapeutic treatment.

J. H. Jenkins (&) UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0532, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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Cult Med Psychiatry (2012) 36:78–79

DOI 10.1007/s11013-012-9248-0

The contributions to this issue of CMP take up the challenge articulated in

Pharmaceutical Self to flesh out the cultural, political, and economic forces that shape the lived experience and institutional processes of production and circulation

of psychopharmacology worldwide. Schlosser and Hoffer make a vital contribution

to anthropological understanding of the self/imaginary in the use of psychotropic

drugs to include antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, and heroin. The social

life of this common yet poorly understood ‘‘cocktail’’ brings into play a complex

moral economy of psychiatric medications (‘‘good drugs’’) and illicit street drugs

(‘‘bad drugs’’). This innovative ethnographic study documents that, as a matter of

lived experience, the circulation of psychotropic knowledge and ingestion creates

personal expertise and conflict in soothing the torment of an unhappy life. The

ethnopsychological and cultural logic of normal/abnormal in this situation sheds

light on what is valued as a matter of routine or ‘steady state.’ The study also

provides first-person accounts of the trouble with drugs, subjectively discerned, as

dulling, transformative, or boring. Calculations of the worth of dampening

unwanted intrusions of voices must be weighed against unwanted weight gain

and loss of one’s customary and valued sense of self. The existential and

phenomenological stakes could not be higher. Kristi Ninnemann’s innovative paper

draws our attention to the critical yet frequently unrecognized verity of biogenetic

variation in metabolic processes and psychopharmaceuticals. Drawing on pioneer-

ing work from ethnopsychopharmacology, she takes a step forward in advancing our

understanding of the ways in which medications are shaped by complicated

interactions among culture, behavioral environment, and biogenetics. This contri-

bution is opportune as a counterbalance to appreciation of the recognition that

culture shapes nearly every aspect of mental illness. Culture is neither the only nor

even the primary source of human variation. The significant matter of individual

variation advanced some 80 years ago by Sapir applies with equal force. Finally, the

paper by Zhiying Ma offers an intriguing if uneven treatment of the pharmaceutical

self and imaginary in China. As also identified by our research group, Ma finds

ambivalence to be central to matters of intimacy, subjectivity, and the treatment of

mental illness. The cadence of ambivalence and paradox in the emergence of the

pharmaceutical self come together in this set of papers to make a significant

contribution to a newly emerging anthropological spotlight on the reciprocal

shaping of lived experience and institutional forces of globalization.

References

Jenkins, Janis H.

2011a Introduction. Pharmaceutical Self: The Global Shaping of Experience in an Age of

Psychopharmacology. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press.

2011b Pharmaceutical Self and Imaginary in the Social Field of Psychiatric Treatment. In Pharmaceutical Self: The Global Shaping of Experience in an Age of Psychopharmacology.

Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research Press.

Cult Med Psychiatry (2012) 36:78–79 79

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