Arthur Kleinman

Areas of Specialization: Medical Anthropology
Arthur Kleinman is a medical anthropologist and the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University. Kleinman is also the Professor of Medical Anthropology in Global Health and Social Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He earned his AB and MD from Stanford University and an M.A. in social anthropology from Harvard University. He completed his internship at the Yale University of Medicine, before completing his psychiatric residency in Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. He ranks among famous anthropologists for his contributions to both medical anthropology and cultural psychiatry, as well as global health, social medicine, and medical humanities.

From 1961–1978, Kleinman conducted research in China and Taiwan studying mental illness and examining public health aspects of mental illness and social suffering. He was appointed as the Victor and William Fung director of Harvard University’s Asia Center from 2008–2016.

He has authored hundreds of articles and several books about this work, including Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture, The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition, What Really Matters: Living a Moral Life Amidst Uncertainty and Danger, and Rethinking Psychiatry. His most recent book, The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor, gives a first hand account of the practical, emotional and moral aspects of caretaking.

A Distinguished Lifetime Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Kleinman continues to publish articles in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, among other journals on topics such as global mental health, the search for wisdom, and on culture, bereavement and psychiatry. Current research projects include the study of eldercare for dementia across Asian settings, a study examining trust within the doctor-patient relationship in China, and social technologies for aging and eldercare in China. He is the founder of the journal Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry and served as editor for a decade. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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