Armando Favazza

Armando Favazza (born 1941 in Brooklyn, New York City) is an American author and psychiatrist best known for his studies of cultural psychiatry, deliberate self-harm, and religion. Favazza's "Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry" (1987) was the first psychiatric book on this topic. His 2004 work, "PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion, and the Holy Book" presents objective data regarding commonly held misconceptions about the Bible as a whole as well as its major passages.

Biography

Armando Favazza is an alumnus of Columbia University (B.A.), the University of Virginia (M.D.), and the University of Michigan (M.P.H.) He is a Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri–Columbia. In 1991, the Senate of the State of Missouri passed a resolution “Commending and applauding Armando Favazza for his unparalleled record of service, support, and leadership at the University of Missouri-Columbia.” He is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He has presented lectures at sixty American and Canadian universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Baylor, Mayo Clinic, McGill, Toronto, UCLA, UC San Diego, Emory, Tulane, and Minnesota. His international lectures include University College (London), the Karolinska Institution (Stockholm), the Universities of Rome and of Florence, and the Jinnah Postgraduate Center in Karachi.

World View

Favazza’s basic theme is that culture is the overarching factor that provides meaning to life’s events. Matter is neutral: molecules and energies are meaningless until they are personally interpreted, explained, and accepted as reality through the cultural process. Biology, social class, and religion are not tangible things but rather are cultural constructs that are useful in organizing our lives and making sense of what we experience.

Fields of Work

Cultural Psychiatry

Favazza’s cover article, The Foundation of Cultural Psychiatry, in the American Journal of Psychiatry (1978) presented a framework for a new discipline that merges cultural anthropology with clinical psychiatry. Cultural psychiatry is not a specific school, such as psychoanalysis or behaviorism or neuropsychiatry, but rather is an approach that synthesizes the biological, psychological, and social forces that impinge upon behavior and then attempts to make sense of their interactions through a cultural lens to therapeutically benefit individuals or groups treated by death, disease, and disorganization. Upon the death of his former teacher, Margaret Mead, he took her place as author of the chapter on Psychiatry and Anthropology in the third edition of The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (1980). He has written updated chapters for editions in 1985 and 2005. He was elected the American representative on the Executive Board of the Transcultural Psychiatry Section of the World Psychiatric Association for nine years and is on the Editorial Board of the World Cultural Psychiatry Research Review.

Deliberate Self-harm (Self-injury, Self-mutilation)

Favazza’s "Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation in Culture and Psychiatry" (1987) was the first psychiatric book on the topic. The second edition (1996), subtitled "Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry", remains the most often cited and thorough text in the field. Favazza was the first person to classify self-mutilative (now more commonly called self-injurious) behaviors. Favazza describes deliberate self-injury as a morbid form of self-help since it temporarily alleviates distressing symptoms such as overwhelming anxiety, depersonalization, depression, and rapidly fluctuating emotions. According to Favazza, many self-injurers are, through their actions, attempting to heal themselves, to attain some measure of spirituality, and to establish a sense of personal order. He helped to teach clinicians that self-injurious behavior totally differs from suicidal behavior, although repetitive skin-cutters may develop a Deliberate Self-Harm syndrome which includes demoralization and a tendency to overdose. The “secret shame” website contains a supervised Bodies Under Siege bulletin board that allows self-injurers to communicate with one another. Collaborators with Favazza on his many publications in this area include Karen Conterio, Daphne Simeon, and Richard Rosenthal.

Religion

Favazza’s book, "PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion, and the Holy Book" (2004) received the Creative Scholarship Award presented by the Society for the Study of Psychiatry and Culture which described it as “a classic in the field.” Professor Ezra Griffith of Yale University praised PsychoBible: “Cowards need not pick up this brilliantly written book. Only those courageous enough to explore the nature of their connection – or lack of it – to God and religion.” The book’s introduction provides an overview of the Bible’s contents as well as the process that leads to the Bible’s creation. Chapters in the book include material on God, the devil, sin, women, alcohol, animals, the human body, spirituality, and healing. Favazza presents objective data on the Bible itself, on how Christians and Jews over the centuries have interpreted these data, and how psychiatry regards them. The book points out Biblical material that has been validated by scholars as well as the vast amount of material that requires faith. His book examines commonly held misconceptions about the Bible as a whole as well as its major passages.

Media Appearances

Among Favazza’s more than fifty television and radio appearances are the following:
* BBC, London, October, 2006
* MKW, Vancouver, B.C., October, 2005
* NPR (nationwide), July 2005
* WNPR, New Haven, CT, August, 2004
* WDKA (CBS-CNN), Pittsburgh, PA, October, 2004
* WOR (Joey Reynolds Show), New York City, December, 2004
* Discovery Health Channel, “Humanimals,” December, 2003
* National Geographic TV, “Sacred Pain,” December, 2002
* 20/20 Downtown, October, 1999
* Health TV Network, July, 1999
* On Health Live, Brook Gladstone, July, 1999
* 20/20, April, 1998
* Australian Broadcasting Corporation, June, 1996
* CBS, Last Call Show, February, 1995
* CNN Radio Network, April, 1994
* NBC, Dr. Dean Show, October, 1992
* CBS, KPIX TV, People Are Talking Show, 1990

Books

* "PsychoBible: Behavior, Religion and the Holy Book" (2004). ISBN 0-9728875-0-4, 0-9728875-1-2 (pbk)
* "Bodies Under Siege: Self-mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry" (1987, 1996). ISBN 0-8018-5299-4, 0-8018-5300-1 (pbk)

External links

* [http://buslist.org/ Bodies Under Siege Community]