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Arthur Michael Kleinman (born March 11, 1941) is an American
psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their ...
, psychiatric anthropologist and a professor of
medical anthropology Medical anthropology studies "human health and disease, health care systems, and biocultural adaptation". It views humans from multidimensional and ecological perspectives. It is one of the most highly developed areas of anthropology and applied ...
and
cross-cultural psychiatry Cross-cultural psychiatry (also known as Ethnopsychiatry or transcultural psychiatry or cultural psychiatry) is a branch of psychiatry concerned with the cultural context of mental disorders and the challenges of addressing ethnic diversity in psyc ...
at
Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...
. He is well known for his work on
mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
in
Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying grea ...
. Kleinman has contributed to anthropological and medical understanding of culture-bound syndromes, particularly in
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...
and
East Asia East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Kore ...
n
culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups.Ty ...
(such as Koro). He has argued that mental distress is much more likely to be expressed as somatized distress (i.e. as a bodily ailment) than as psychological distress by Chinese or East Asian patients. Since 1968, Kleinman has conducted research in Chinese society, first in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a Country, country in East Asia, at the junction of the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the China, People's Republic of China (PRC) to the n ...
, and since 1978 in
China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...
, on depression,
somatization Somatization is a tendency to experience and communicate psychological distress in the form of bodily and organic symptoms and to seek medical help for them. More commonly expressed, it is the generation of physical symptoms of a psychiatric con ...
,
epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrical ...
,
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social with ...
and
suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Mental disorders (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorders, anxiety disorders), physical disorders (such as chronic fatigue syndrome), and ...
, and other forms of violence. He has written on the intersection of
public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
and international issues as well as social
suffering Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, may be an experience of unpleasantness or aversion, possibly associated with the perception of harm or threat of harm in an individual. Suffering is the basic element that makes up the negative valence of a ...
, on cross-cultural psychiatry, and on the individual
experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience invol ...
of
pain Pain is a distressing feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, ...
and
disability Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, ...
. At Harvard, Kleinman has supervised more than 65 Ph.D. students (including 12 M.D.-Ph.D. students), and worked with more than 200 post-doctoral fellows, and he has taught hundreds of medical students and undergraduate students. He was the chair of the Harvard Department of Anthropology from 2004 to 2007 and currently serves as Director of the
Harvard University Asia Center The Harvard University Asia Center is an interdisciplinary research and education unit of Harvard University, established on July 1, 1997, with the goal of "driving varied programs focusing on international relations in Asia and comparative studi ...
.


Education

Arthur Kleinman received his A.B. and M.D. from
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
and M.A. in
Social Anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In ...
from Harvard. He did an internship in internal medicine at the
Yale School of Medicine The Yale School of Medicine is the graduate medical school at Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was founded in 1810 as the Medical Institution of Yale College and formally opened in 1813. The primary t ...
and his psychiatric residency at the
Massachusetts General Hospital Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Sta ...
.


Career

Kleinman is the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Harvard University, a position he has held since 2002, professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He chaired the Department of Anthropology from 2004 through 2007 and the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School for a decade, where from 1993 to 2000 he was the Presley Professor. From 2008 through 2016 Kleinman headed Harvard's Asia Center as the Victor and William Fung Director. In 2011, Kleinman was awarded the distinction of being named a Harvard College Professor of and was given the Distinguished Faculty Award. In 1976, he founded the journal '' Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry'', and was its Editor-in-Chief until 1986. The journal was continued by Byron and Mary-Jo Good, and Peter J. Guarnaccia. He directed the World Mental Health Report, co-chaired the
American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
's Taskforce on Culture and
DSM-IV The ''Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders'' (DSM; latest edition: DSM-5-TR, published in March 2022) is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common langua ...
, co-chaired the 2002
Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, En ...
report on Preventing Suicide, and also co-chaired in 2001 and 2002 both the
NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1 ...
conference on the Science and Ethics of the Placebo and the NIH conference on Stigma. In September 2003, he gave the Distinguished Lecture sponsored by the
Fogarty International Center The John E. Fogarty International Center was founded in 1968 by US President Lyndon Johnson at the National Institutes of Health to support international medical and behavioral research and to train international researchers. History On July 1, ...
at NIH on the Global Epidemic of Depression and Suicide. He is a consultant to the
WHO Who or WHO may refer to: * Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun * Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism * World Health Organization Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book ''Horton Hea ...
where he chaired the technical advisory committee of the Nations for Mental Health Action Program and in December 2002 gave the keynote address to the WHO's first international conference on global mental health research. In September 2003, he co-directed a conference at Harvard on
SARS Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), the first identified strain of the SARS coronavirus species, '' ...
in China; and in the 2003–2004 academic year he co-directed a Conference at Harvard on
AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ...
in China. In December 2006, he co-directed an NSF funded international meeting on Asian Flus/
Avian Flu Avian influenza, known informally as avian flu or bird flu, is a variety of influenza caused by viruses adapted to birds.Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, is a member of the advisory board of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and is on the Steering Committee of Harvard's newly created China fund. He was also appointed to the Dean's Advisory Council in Social Sciences. A member of the Steering Committee of the Harvard Institute of Global Health, Kleinman is co-chair of its Committee on Mental Health and of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Standing Committee on Global Health. Kleinman has received more than 50 research grants, and is currently involved in various research projects in China studying depression; stigma; suicide; and the health consequences of rural-urban migration. Throughout his career, he has trained a number of prominent researchers and physicians.


Writing

Kleinman has authored seven books and over 350 articles, book chapters, reviews and introductions. Perhaps Kleinman's most influential work is ''Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture'' (1980), followed by ''The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition'' (1988) and ''Social origins of distress and disease: depression, neurasthenia, and pain in modern China'' (1986). His book, ''What Really Matters'' (Oxford University Press, 2006), addresses existential dangers and uncertainties that make moral experience, religion, and ethics so crucial to individuals and society today. This book has been translated and published in Chinese editions both in
Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...
and
Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...
. His most recent book ''The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor'' was published in 2019. Kleinman has co-authored many works with other psychiatrists and researchers in the field of mental health and cross-cultural psychiatry, including
Paul Farmer Paul Edward Farmer (October 26, 1959 – February 21, 2022) was an American medical anthropologist and physician. Farmer held an MD and PhD from Harvard University, where he was a University Professor and the chair of the Department of Glob ...
,
Veena Das Veena Das, FBA (born 1945) is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her areas of theoretical specialisation include the anthropology of violence, social suffering, and the state. Das has received multi ...
, Margaret Lock, Michael Phillips,
Byron Good Byron Joseph Good (born 1944) is an American medical anthropologist primarily studying mental illness. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University, where he is Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School and Professor of ...
, Mary Del-Vecchio Good,
Tsung-yi Lin Lin Tsung-yi (Taiwanese: Lîm Chong-gī, ; 19 September 1920 – 20 July 2010) was an academic and educator in psychiatry. Lin was born in 1920 in Tainan Prefecture, Japanese Taiwan (modern-day Tainan, Taiwan) to Lin Mosei and Chai-Hwang Wang. ...
, and Leon Eisenberg. Kleinman is co-editor of 29 volumes, including: Social Suffering; Culture and Depression; SARS in China; Global Pharmaceuticals; Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations; Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction; The Culture of Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa; and The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy. He has also co-edited 11 special issues of journals. Kleinman is currently writing a book on caregiving based on his articles in the Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine, the Harvard Magazine, and other venues.


Awards and recognition

Kleinman is a member of the
National Academy of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...
(formerly the Institute of Medicine) of the National Academies and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has delivered numerous lectures on a variety of topics at universities around the world. He has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social and ...
(
Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
). He is Distinguished Lifetime Fellow of the
American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involve ...
. Kleinman has twice given the Distinguished Lecture at NIH, and was a member of its Council of Councils (the advisory board to the director) from 2007 to 2011. He was also appointed by the Secretary of the
Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
of the U.S. Government to the Advisory Council of the
Fogarty International Center The John E. Fogarty International Center was founded in 1968 by US President Lyndon Johnson at the National Institutes of Health to support international medical and behavioral research and to train international researchers. History On July 1, ...
, National Institutes of Health. In 2003 Kleinman chaired the Selection Committee for the NIH's new Pioneer Awards. In 2006, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Medical Anthropology, and in 2008 received from the SMA the George Foster Award. In 2004, he was awarded the Doubleday Medal in Medical Humanities by
University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Unive ...
, England. In 2007 he received an award in the medical humanities at
Imperial College Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
,
London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
He is a winner of the Wellcome Prize of the
Royal Anthropological Institute The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organisation, and Learned Society, with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biolo ...
; a recipient of an honorary
Doctorate of Science Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...
from
York University York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and sta ...
(Canada); and the 2001 winner of the
Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
Award of the
American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
, its highest award. He was awarded an honorary professorship at
Fudan University Fudan University () is a national public research university in Shanghai, China. Fudan is a member of the C9 League, Project 985, Project 211, and the Double First Class University identified by the Ministry of Education of China. It is also ...
. Shortly thereafter, he was
Cleveringa Rudolph Pabus Cleveringa (2 April 1894, Appingedam, Netherlands – 15 December 1980, Oegstgeest, Netherlands) was a professor of law at Leiden University. He is known for his speech of 26 November 1940, in which he protested against the dismissa ...
Professor at the
University of Leiden Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of L ...
in the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Neth ...
.


Personal life

Kleinman was born and raised in New York. He was married to the late Joan Kleinman (who died in 2011), a sinologist and his research collaborator, for 45 years. They have two children (Peter and Anne) and four grandchildren (Gabriel, Kendall, Allegra and Clayton).


Selected list of published works

* Medicine in Chinese cultures : comparative studies of health care in Chinese and other societies: papers and discussions from a conference held in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., February 1974 / edited by Arthur Kleinman ...
t al. T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
-- U.S. Dept. of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, 1975. * Culture and healing in Asian societies : anthropological, psychiatric, and public health studies / edited by Arthur Kleinman ...
t al. T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
- - G.K. Hall, 1978 * Normal and abnormal behavior in Chinese culture / edited by Arthur Kleinman and Tsung-yi Lin. -- D. Reidel, 1981. -- (Culture, illness, and healing / editor-in-chief, Arthur Kleinman; v. 2) * Patients and healers in the context of culture : an exploration of the borderland between anthropology, medicine, and psychiatry / Arthur Kleinman. -- University of California Press, 1980. * Culture and depression : studies in the anthropology and cross-cultura l psychiatry of affect and disorder / edited by Arthur Kleinman and Byron Good. -- University of California Press, 1985. -- * Social origins of distress and disease : depression, neurasthenia, and pain in modern China / Kleinman—Yale Univ ersity Press, 1986 * The illness narratives: suffering, healing, and the human condition / Kleinman—Basic Books, 1988 * Rethinking psychiatry : from cultural category to personal experience / Kleinman; Free Press, 1991 * Social suffering / edited by Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock—University of California Press, 1997 & Oxford University Press, 1997 * Writing at the margin : discourse between anthropology and medicine / Kleinman. -- University of California Press, 1995 * What really matters: living a moral life amidst uncertainty and danger / Kleinman—Oxford University Press, 2006. Translated into Chinese: Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, Shanghai, P.R. China, 2007; translated in Chinese: PsyGarden Publishing Company, Taiwan, 2007 * The soul of care: the moral education of a husband and a doctor / Kleinman— Penguin
description
an
arrow-searchable preview
2019
"Rituals and focus can make isolation a time for growth,"
/ Kleinman— ''Wall Street Journal'', p. C5, April 11–12, 2020


Further reading

* (See also chapter 8 in ''Thinking through cultures'', which is substantially the same text with minor amendments). * *


Notes


References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kleinman, Arthur 1941 births Living people American psychiatrists American anthropologists Medical anthropologists Harvard Medical School faculty Harvard University faculty Harvard University alumni Leiden University faculty Scientists from New York City Stanford University School of Medicine alumni Members of the National Academy of Medicine