Delusions of Witchcraft: A Cross Cultural Study

Abstract

Since the Second World War the number of Italians working in Switzerland has greatly increased. In 1962 there were officially 454,000 Italian workers in that country and this is almost certainly an underestimate. In 1960 and 1961 one of the authors (Risso) investigated the social, cultural, genetic and other factors in the mental illnesses of 709 Italian patients in psychiatric clinics and mental hospitals in German-speaking Switzerland. These patients had rather unusual symptoms in that there was a mixture of normal ideas, which appeared to be derived from their cultural background, and psychotic or psychotic-like symptoms. It was therefore often difficult to allot these patients' illnesses to one of the usual diagnostic categories, so that it was not easy to decide if the patient had a schizophrenic episode, a schizophrenic reaction or a non-psychotic psychogenic reaction.