Arthur Kleinman

Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology; Professor of Medical Anthropology in Social Medicine; Professor of Psychiatry

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kleinman@fas.harvard.edu

Department Website

Bio

Arthur Kleinman (凱博文) is a physician and anthropologist and currently in his 40th year at Harvard. A graduate of Stanford University and Stanford Medical School, with a master’s degree in social anthropology from Harvard and trained in psychiatry at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Kleinman is a leading figure in several fields, including medical anthropology, cultural psychiatry, global health, social medicine, and medical humanities. Since 1978, he has conducted research in China, and in Taiwan from 1969 until 1978.

Kleinman is professor of medical anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is the Esther and Sidney Rabb professor of anthropology in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and was appointed the Victor and William Fung director of Harvard University’s Asia Center from 2008 to 2016.

Arthur Kleinman has published six single authored books including Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture; Social Origins of Distress and Disease: Depression, Neurasthenia and Pain in Modern China; Rethinking Psychiatry; The Illness Narratives; Writing at the Margin; and What Really Matters. He has also co-edited books on culture and depression; SARS in China; world mental health; suicide; placebos; AIDS in China; and the relationship of anthropology to philosophy (The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy).

Kleinman is currently writing a book on caregiving based on his articles in the Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine and other venues.

His current projects include a comparative study of eldercare for dementia in six Asian settings; an ethnographic study of trust in the doctor-patient relationship in China; planning for a major meeting on global mental health services delivery; and development of Southeast Asia studies at Harvard.

Selected Publications

Books

  • Kleinman, A. 2019. The Soul of Care. N.Y.: Viking/Penguin Press (paperback edition, September 2020). Chinese translation including new introduction published by PsyGarden Publishing Company, Taipei, Taiwan, 2019; Chinese translation including new introduction published by Citic Press, Beijing, P. R. China (forthcoming); Korean translation including new introduction published by Sigongsa Company, Seoul, South Korea, 2019; Japanese translation including new translation, published by Fukumura, Tokyo, Japan, 2019. 
  • Kleinman A. 2006. What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger. Oxford University Press. Chinese translations published by Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, Shanghai, P.R. China 2007, and by PsyGarden Publishing Company, Taiwan, 2007; Japanese translation published by Seishin Shobo, Tokyo, 2011. 
  • Kleinman, A. 1995. Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
  • Kleinman, A. 1988. Rethinking Psychiatry: From Cultural Category to Personal Experience. N.Y.: Free Press. 
  • Kleinman, A. 1988. The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. N.Y.: Basic Books. Japanese translation published by Seishin Shobo, Tokyo; Chinese translations published by Laureate Book Company, Taipei, and by Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, Shanghai, P.R. China 2010 (new paperback edition including a new preface, September 2020). 
  • Kleinman, A. 1986. Social Origins of Distress and Disease: Depression and Neurasthenia in Modern China. New Haven: Yale University Press. Chinese translation published by Shanghai Joint Publishing Company, Shanghai, P.R. China, 2008. 
  • Kleinman, A. 1980. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture: An Exploration of the Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine, and Psychiatry. Berkeley: University of California Press. Awarded the Welcome Medal for Medical Anthropology, 1980, Royal Anthropological Institute. Japanese translation published by Kobundo, Tokyo.
  • Wilkinson, Iain and Arthur Kleinman. 2016. A Passion for Society: How We Think about Human Suffering. University of California Press. 
  • Kleinman, Arthur, Shigeyuki Eguchi, and Akira Kaito. 2015. The Meaning of Providing Care: The Psychology and Medical Anthropology Accompanying the Care of the Ill. Tokyo: Seishinshobo. (In Japanese.) 
  • Kleinman, A., Y. Yan, J. Jing, T. Pan, S. Lee, E. Zhang, F. Wu, and J. Guo. 2011. Deep China: The Moral Life of the Person. What Anthropology and Psychiatry Tell us about China Today. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
  • Desjarlais, R., L. Eisenberg, B. Good, and A. Kleinman. 1995. World Mental Health: Problems, Priorities, and Policies in Low-Income Countries. New York: Oxford University Press. Spanish translation published by Pan American Health Organization; Italian translation published by Il Mulino/Alfa Tape, Bologna.

Recent Articles and Chapters

  • Akyeampong, E., A. G. Hill, and A. Kleinman, eds. 2015. Culture, Mental Illness and Psychiatric Practice in Africa. Indiana University Press. 
  • Das, V., M.D. Jackson, A. Kleinman, and B. Singh, eds. 2014. The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
  • Farmer, P., J. Y. Kim, A. Kleinman, and M. Basilico, eds. 2013. Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. University of California Press. Korean-language edition published by UC press with T&H Press.
  • Good, Byron J., Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sharon Abramowitz, Arthur Kleinman, and Catherine Panter-Brick, guest eds. 2014. “Medical humanitarianism: Research insights in a changing field of practice.” Social Science & Medicine 120 (): 311-316. 
  • Kuah-Pearce, K. E., A. Kleinman, and E. Harrison, guest eds. 2014. “Social Suffering and the Culture of Compassion in a Morally Divided China,” Anthropology and Medicine 20(1). 
  • Becker, A. and A. Kleinman, guest eds. 2012. Special Anniversary Issue on Global Mental Health, Harvard Review of Psychiatry 20(1). 
  • Osborn, T., A. Kleinman, and J. R. Weiz, “Complementing standard Western measures of depression with locally co-developed instruments: A cross-cultural study of the experience of depression among the Luo in Kenya.” Transcultural Psychiatry, 1-17.
  • Osborn, T., A. R. Wasil, J. R. Weiz, A. Kleinman, and D. M. Ndetei. “Where is the global in global mental health? A call for inclusive multicultural collaboration.” General Psychiatry 33, no. 6 (5 November 2020).
  • Trout, L. and A. Kleinman. “Covid-19 Requires a Social Medicine Response.” Front. Sociol.5:579991. (2020).
  • Kleinman, A. “Varieties of Experiences of Care.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 63, no. 3 (2020): 458-475.
  • Gardner, C. and A. Kleinman. “Medicine and the Mind — The Consequences of Psychiatry’s Identity Crisis.” The New England Journal of Medicine 381, no. 18 (2019): 1697-699.
  • Kleinman, A. “The Soul in Medicine.” The Lancet 394, no. 10199 (2019): 630-31
  • Hall-Clifford, R., D. Addiss, P. Brown, A. Castro, M. Clisbee, Mary, R. Cook-Deegan, D. Evans, A. Fuller, A. Graham, M. Grek, D. Guthrie, O. Ige, A. Kleinman, Arthur, A. Larson, J. Lavery, D. McFarland, D. Ross, A. Weiss, B. Wodnik, and C. Woods. “#MeToo Meets Global Health: A Call to Action; A Statement by Participants of the Global Health Fieldwork Ethics Workshop, April 2018.” Health and Human Rights Journal 21, no. 1 (2019): 140.
  • Hinton, L., B. Kohrt, and A. Kleinman. “Engaging Families to Advance Global Mental Health Intervention Research.” The Lancet. Psychiatry 6, no. 5 (2019): 365-67.
  • Vigo, D., V. Patel, A. Becker, D. Bloom, W. Yip, G. Raviola, S. Saxena, and A. Kleinman “A Partnership for Transforming Mental Health Globally.” The Lancet Psychiatry, Published Online January 28, 2019. 
  • Patel, V., S. Saxena, C. Lund, G. Thornicroft, F. Baingana, P. A. Bolton, D. H. Chisholm, P. Y. Collins, J. L. Cooper, J. Eaton, H. Herrman, M. M. Herzallah, Y. Huang, M. J. Jordans, A. Kleinman, M. E. Medina Mora, E. Morgan, U. Niaz, O. Omigbodun, M. Prince, A. Rahman, B. Saraceno, B. K. Sarkar, M. De Silva, I. A. Singh, D. J. Stein, C. Sunkel, and J. Unutzer. “The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development.” The Lancet, 387(10024): 1143-1145.
  • Kleinman, A. “How are China and its middle class handling aging and mental health?” In The China questions: Critical insights into a rising power. Rudolph, J. and Szonyi, M., eds. 2018. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
  • Trout, L., Kirk, T., Erickson, E. and Kleinman, A. “Place-based continuing medical education in the rural North,” Northern Public Affairs, 6(2).
  • Yang, L., A. Kleinman, and J. Morita. “Principles: Stigma.” International Encyclopedia of Public Health, 2nd Edition. First published 2008. 
  • Nie, J.-B., L. Lun, G. Gillett, J. D. Tucker, and A. Kleinman. “The crisis of patient-physician trust and bioethics: lessons and inspirations from China.” Developing World Bioethics.
  • Nie, J.-B., Y. Cheng, X. Zou, N. Gong, J. D. Tucker, B. Wong, and A. Kleinman. “The vicious circle of patient-physician mistrust in China: health professionals’ perspectives, institutional conflict of interest, and building trust through medical professionalism.” Developing World Bioethics.
  • Nie, J.-B., J. D. Tucker, W. Zhu, Y. Cheng, B. Wong, and A. Kleinman. “Rebuilding patientphysician trust in China, developing a trust-oriented bioethics.” Developing World Bioethics.
  • Kleinman, A. “Presence.” The Lancet, 389(10088): 2466-2467.
  • Kleinman, A. “The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition.” Academic Medicine 92(10): 1406.
  • Kleinman, A., and J. Tu. “A Search for Wisdom: Why William James Still Matters.” Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities: Social Science Edition, 39(01): 2-10.
  • Kleinman, A. “Afterword.” In African Medical Pluralism. Olsen, W. C. and Sargent, C., eds. 2017. Bloomington, IN; Indiana University Press.
  • Kleinman, A., G. Estrin, S. Usmani, D. Chisholm, P. V. Marquez, T. G. Evans, and S. Saxena. “Time for mental health to come out of the shadows.” The Lancet, 387(10035): 2274-2275.
  • Aggarwal, N. K., Kryst Cedeño, P. Guarnaccia, A. Kleinman, and R. Lewis-Fernández. “The meanings of cultural competence in mental health: an exploratory focus group study with patients, clinicians, and administrators.” SpringerPlus 5(1): 1.
  • Tucker, J. D., B. Wong, J. Nie, & A. Kleinman. “Rebuilding patient–physician trust in China.” The Lancet, 388(10046), 755.
  • Kleinman, A. “Caring for memories.” The Lancet, 387(10038), 2596
  • Chan, C., Y. Cheng, Y., Cong, Z. Du, S. Hu, A. Kerrigan, A. Kleinman, M. Li, B. Liebman, Y. Ma, J. Nie, D. Tsai, D. Tsai, J. Tucker, L. Wang, B. Wong, W. Wong, Z. Xiao, J. Xu, Y. Yan, Y. Yang, D. Zhang, M. Zhao, J. Zhu, and W. Zhu. “Patient–physician trust in China: A workshop summary”. The Lancet, 388, S72.
  • Mnookin, Seth, A. Kleinman, et al, “Out of the Shadows: Making Mental Health a Global Development Priority,” World Bank Group and WHO. Conference Proceedings Article.
  • Becker, A. E., and A. Kleinman. “Mental Health and the Global Agenda.” In Hunter, David J., and Harvey V. Fineberg, eds. Readings in Global Health: Essential Reviews from the New England Journal of Medicine. Oxford University Press. 
  • Freeman, M.C., K. Kolappa, J.M. Caldas de Almeida, A. Kleinman, N. Makhashvili, S. Phakathi, B. Saraceno, G. Thornicroft. “Reversing hard won victories in the name of human rights: a critique of the General Comment on Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.” Lancet Psychiatry. Published online July 6, 2015. 
  • Kleinman, A. “An Intellectual Journey and Personal Odyssey.” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Spring 2015 LXVIII, No. 3, 58-59. 
  • Kleinman, A. “Care: in search of a health agenda.” The Lancet 386: 240-241.
  • Tucker, Joseph D, Cheng, Yu, Wong, Bonnie, Gong, Ni, Nie, Jing-Bao, Zhu, Wei, . . . Kleinman, Arthur. “Patient–physician mistrust and violence against physicians in Guangdong Province, China: A qualitative study.” BMJ Open, Open 5 (10): e008221.
  • Kleinman, A. “The Search for Wisdom: Why William James Still Matters.” In The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy. Das, V., M.D. Jackson, A. Kleinman, and B. Singh, eds. 2014. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 
  • Das, V., M.D. Jackson, A. Kleinman, B. Singh. “Introduction. Experiments between Anthropology and Philosophy: Affinities and Antagonisms.” In The Ground Between: Anthropologists Engage Philosophy. Das, V., M.D. Jackson, A. Kleinman, and B. Singh, eds. 2014. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Good, Byron J., Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Sharon Abramowitz, Arthur Kleinman, and Catherine Panter-Brick. “Medical humanitarianism: Research insights in a changing field of practice.” Social Science & Medicine 120: 311-316.
  • Becker, A. and A. Kleinman. “Cultural psychiatry.” In Psychiatry: Past, Present, and Prospect. Sidney Bloch, Stephen A. Green, and Jeremy Holmes, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 21
  • Westerhaus, M., A. Finnegan, M. Haidar, A. Kleinman, J. Mukherjee, and P. Farmer. “The Necessity of Social Medicine in Medical Education.” Academic Medicine [published online ahead of print November 18, 2014] 
  • Chen, H., S. Levkoff, and A. Kleinman. “Contextual Knowledge: From Globalization to Global Aging.” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 39(1):141-158. 
  • Kleinman, A. “How We Endure.” The Lancet 383(9912):119-120.
  • Kuah-Pearce, K. E., Kleinman, A., and Harrison, E. “Social suffering and the culture of compassion in a morally divided China.” Anthropology and Medicine 20(1):1-7.
  • Yang, L.H., F. Chen, K. J. Sia, J. Lam, K. Lam, H. Ngo, S. Lee, A. Kleinman, and B. Good. “‘What matters most:’ A cultural mechanism moderating structural vulnerability and moral experience of mental illness stigma.” Social Science and Medicine 103(February 2014):84-93.
  • Tucker, J.D., J.-B. Nie, Y. Cheng, W. Zhu, and A. Kleinman. “Reviving medicine as the art of humanity in China.” The Lancet 383(9927):1462-1463. 2013
  • Kleinman, A. “Implementing Global Mental Health.” Depression and Anxiety 30(6):503-505.
  • Kleinman, A. “From Illness as Culture to Caregiving as Moral Experience.” The New England Journal of Medicine 368(15):1376-1377.
  • Kleinman, A. “Medical sensibility: whose feelings count?” The Lancet 381(9881):1893-1894.
  • Kleinman, A. “Danger, Subjectivity, and the Chinese Family: Interpersonal processes and the changing political and moral economies of the self.” In The Family Model in Chinese Art and Culture. Jerome Silbergeld and Dora C. Y. Ching, eds. Pp. 37-44. Princeton, New Jersey: P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art.
  • Becker, A. and A. Kleinman. “Mental Health and the Global Agenda.” The New England Journal of Medicine 369(1):66-77.
  • Becker, A. and A. Kleinman. “Mental Health and the Global Agenda Reply.” The New England Journal of Medicine 369(14):1380-1381. 2012
  • Kleinman, A. “Culture, Bereavement, and Psychiatry.” The Lancet 379(9816):608-609.
  • Becker, A. and A. Kleinman. “An Agenda for Closing Resource Gaps in Global Mental Health: Innovation, Capacity Building and Partnerships.” Introduction to Special Anniversary Issue on Global Mental Health, Harvard Review of Psychiatry 20(1):3-5.
  • Kleinman, A. “Medical Anthropology and Mental Health: Five Questions for the Next Fifty Years.” In Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Histories, Activisms, and Futures. Marcia C. Inhorn and Emily A. Wentzell, eds. Pp. 116-128. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • Kleinman, A. “Caregiving as moral experience.” The Lancet 380(9853):1550-1551.
  • Patel, V., A. Kleinman, and B. Saraceno. “Protecting the Human Rights of People with Mental Illnesses: A Call to Action for Global Mental Health. In Mental Health and Human Rights: Vision, Praxis and Courage. Michael Dudley, Derrick Silove and Fran Gale, eds. Pp. 362-375. New York: Oxford University Press.

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