Disturbing Spirits: Mental Illness, Trauma, and Treatment in Modern Syria and Lebanon

This book investigates the psychological toll of conflict in the Middle East during the twentieth century, including discussion of how spiritual and religious frameworks influence practice and theory. The concept of mental health treatment in war-torn Middle Eastern nations is painfully understudied. In Disturbing Spirits, Beverly A. Tsacoyianis blends social, cultural, and medical history research methods with approaches in disability and trauma studies to demonstrate that the history of mental illness in Syria and Lebanon since the 1890s is embedded in disparate—but not necessarily mutually exclusive—ideas about legitimate healing. Tsacoyianis examines the encounters between "Western" psychiatry and local practices and argues that the attempt to implement "modern" cosmopolitan biomedicine for the last 120 years has largely failed—in part because of political instability and political traumas and in part because of narrow definitions of modern medicine that excluded spirituality and locally meaningful cultural practices. Analyzing hospital records, ethnographic data, oral history research, historical fiction, and journalistic nonfiction, Tsacoyianis claims that psychiatrists presented mental health treatment to Syrians and Lebanese not only as a way to control or cure mental illness but also as a modernizing worldview to combat popular ideas about jinn-based origins of mental illness and to encourage acceptance of psychiatry. Treatment devoid of spiritual therapies ultimately delegitimized psychiatry among lower classes. Tsacoyianis maintains that tensions between psychiatrists and vernacular healers developed as political transformations devastated collective and individual psyches and disrupted social order. Scholars working on healing in the modern Middle East have largely studied either psychiatric or non-biomedical healing, but rarely their connections to each other or to politics. In this groundbreaking work, Tsacoyianis connects the discussion of global responsibility to scholarly debates about human suffering and the moral call to caregiving. Disturbing Spirits will interest students and scholars of the history of medicine and public health, Middle Eastern studies, and postcolonial literature.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Vernacular Healing in Greater Syria 2. The Origins of Greater Syrian Medical Institutions 3. Medical Missionaries and the Lebanon Mental Hospital, 1899–1983 4. Secular Healing and Ibn Sina Mental Hospital, 1922–2018 5. Literature, Civil War, and (Ef)facing Syrian and Lebanese History Conclusion

About the Author :
Beverly A. Tsacoyianis is an associate professor of history at the University of Memphis.

Review :
"Tsacoyianis's book is a highly empathetic look at the history of mental illness treatment in Syria and Lebanon from the late nineteenth century to today. The importance of vernacular healing practices should not be neglected by historians simply because they are difficult to document or quantify." —H-Sci-Med-Tech "Disturbing Spirits is an interdisciplinary and rich study of the history of illness in Syria and Lebanon that provides various contributions to scholarship in the Middle East and trauma studies, medical humanities, and the overall history of health and healing." —Journal of the History of Behavioral Science "In this original exploration of how war in Syria and Lebanon over the last century contributed to enduring psychological instabilities in these countries, Beverly Tsacoyianis offers a valuable contribution to the study of the modern Middle East. . . . this book successfully opens new avenues of research that ethically engage social justice and disability rights' themes." —Choice "Disturbing Spirits is a groundbreaking study written with remarkable clarity and empathy. Spanning over one hundred years of history and weaving together different disciplines, approaches, and a wealth of untapped primary sources, it tells the compelling story of the failure of the medical elites in Syria and Lebanon to impose modern psychiatry and erase local beliefs about the power of spirits to both cause and treat mental illnesses." —Sara Scalenghe, author of Disability in the Ottoman Arab World, 1500–1800 "Tackling the history of mental illness in terms of the 'institutional dualism' of psychiatry and vernacular healing makes Disturbing Spirits refreshing and dynamic." —Kristina L. Richardson, author of Difference and Disability in the Medieval Islamic World