Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon conversations with psychiatrists and their patients as well as transcriptions of consultations in clinics in Latvia, I hope to provide a greater understanding of innovation in psychiatric taxonomies and changes in self-conceptualisations, and how these relate to wider social changes.

Paper long abstract:

The introduction of a market economy in Latvia has opened up life opportunities for some but closed them off for others. EU enlargement has worked to the benefit of the more developed regions of the country but has not improved the conditions of less developed regions. The new discourse works for the economic winners but not the losers.

However, the economic discourse of individual effort and responsibility has generally spread to all sectors of the population. It has re-shaped idioms of psychological distress and re-framed unhappiness and failure in individual rather than collective terms. Encounters in the psychiatric clinic show up the non-functionality and contradictions of the market economy as they are played out in individuals' lived experience.

My paper will be based upon recently acquired research material, which will form part of a two year ESRC funded programme of work on "Economic and Psychiatric Transformations in post-Soviet Latvia" (2006-8). My fieldwork will be based in the economically well-developed north west region of Vidzeme as well as in economically deprived S.E. region of Latgale. I will draw upon conversations with psychiatrists and their patients as well as transcriptions of the actual consultations in psychiatric clinics. I hope to provide a greater understanding of innovation in psychiatric taxonomies, changes in the figurative language of the emotions, changes in conceptualisations of the self and how all of these relate to changes in the economic status of individuals. Drawing on evidence of socio-economic trends in these two groups, I anticipate that such changes will be more readily embraced in Vidzeme than in Latgale.