Introduction: The Fright Illness Taxon

Abstract

Much of the confusion about culture-bound psychiatric syndromes is attributable to the fact that, as traditionally used, the category is too heterogenous to say anything meaningful about. Thus, for example, though most of the entities here grouped into the Fright Illness Taxon have at one time or another been listed with the culture-bound psychiatric syndromes, they appear to be phenomena of a radically different order.