Crazy Like Us Analysis

The book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the Western Mind by Ethan Watters is interesting in a variety of manners. In my humble opinion, the novel is a bit one sided and it appear as if the author makes it a mission to ensure the readers view is in comparisons as the authors. Personally, upon reading the book I didn’t enjoy it as much as I believed I would. However, upon continuation of reading, the cases became a bit more intriguing, but still very one sided. In class we recently discuss the research methods of quantitative and qualitative. In relation to Watters book, his research and perspectives within the novel relays a very quantitative approach because of how precise and determined Watters’ is about the Western culture being one
I believe a qualitative point of view is important when discussing psychology because when you only focus on things from a very precise outlook you are more prone to encounter a very one-sided argument. Watters’ almost makes it clear cut about his views of the Western culture. Where in all the cases discussed in the book Watters leaves me with the message of “here’s why the psychological research in this country is wrong, and here’s one case as to why it is”. It doesn’t focus on the future impact of psychology or how a lot of these psychological diagnoses were in the beginning stages of being introduced to the world so there were more prone to have faults. Also, I don’t believe Watters emphasizes enough how these countries are lacking in resources and psychological research. As a matter of fact, the book gears the attention to appear as though it’s America’s fault as to why people have been suffering in other parts of the country because we tried to implement our findings/standards of psychiatry to the rest of the
It was interesting to read about Wentz’s efforts in communicating to the world and in Sri Lanka about depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The tsunami that striked was very out of the blue and for a country that wasn’t doing so good even before the country was hit with the catastrophic natural disaster, it was prone to impact people in a very powerful way. Also, it was interesting to read about the money that was being investing into the roads but not into trauma counselors for the people. This case truly sparked my personal thoughts of how does a country differentiate what’s more important? The land in which people live on or the actual mental health of the induvial that live on the land? Furthermore, the case discusses how the psychological wounds of individuals were finally being treated and addressed after the tsunami and was again, impacted by the United States. However, it was interesting for me to read upon this because in the previous case, they emphasized so much on how the influence of the actions of the western world shouldn’t be transformed into different cultures, but the way of focusing on post-traumatic stress disorder in this case was viewed in a more positive light. Yet, that little bit of shine didn’t last too long. The author then later goes on to bash the way that Westerners were going about treating and handling psychological treatment for PTSD. Going on to mention how even the way