Download Psychoanalysis and anthropology: An uneasy relationship

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY:
AN UNEASY RELATIONSHIP
ALEKSANDAR BOŠKOVIĆ
The aim of this presentation is to offer some elements for better understanding of an uneasy
relationship between psychoanalysis and anthropology. Like in any other relationship (and
this one is particularly long, going on for a full century now), the parties involved have had
different expectations, at times even quarrels and serious disagreements, all mixed with
periods of calm and understanding, but the fact that this relationship has persisted for such a
long time merits one to take a fresh look at it.
From the side of anthropology, Kroeber was already very critical of some aspects of
psychoanalysis (1920, 1939), while Gellner published his monograph on The Psychoanalytic
Movement, a scathing criticism of what he regarded to be a Freudian “church” almost half a
century later, in 1985. On the other hand, Rivers was one of the early champions of the new
approach (Pulman 1986), a view echoed by “culture and personality” school in the US
(Benedict, Mead), as well as by anthropologists like Kluckhohn (1942). Other
anthropologists, trained in psychoanalysis (like Kardiner) did produce influential and
important studies, culminating in Devereux’s “ethnopsychological” approach. There is also a
long line between Malinowski’s interest in the “sexual life of the savages,” just after the First
World War (with his original enthusiasm for psychoanalysis, later to be replaced with
skepticism during the famous LSE postgraduate seminars in the 1930s), via Leach’s grudging
acceptance that psychoanalysis did have some value (1958), to Obeyesekere’s studies of
“Medusa’s hair” (1981, 1990) and Spiro’s re-examination of Oedipus in the Trobriands
(1982). More recently, Heald and Deleuz (1994), in an edited volume, and Moore (2007) reexamined relationship between psychoanalysis and anthropology. On the other side of this
relationship, ever since Freud’s Totem und Tabu (1912/1913), psychoanalysts used examples
derived from the studies of other societies and cultures. Just after the Second World War,
Róheim combined his own research in Australia with it, and, much later, a psychoanalyst
(Stoller – who actually coined the term gender identity in 1960s, the term without which most
of the contemporary anthropology of gender would be much more difficult to be practiced)
and an anthropologist (Herdt) teamed up in order to prove how these two fields can
successfully be combined.
My paper will outline some points of convergences and divergences between psychoanalysis
and anthropology. They will include, but not be limited to, the ideas of relativism and
falsifiability, as well as to the shared Enlightenment roots of both of these disciplines. I am
not interested in presenting an overview of this relationship (for a useful one, cf. Paul 1989),
but instead, I will offer interpretation of some of the prejudices that still exist among scholars
and practitioners, as well as to emphasize how this relationship could be developed further.
After all, despite occasional misunderstandings (which characterize any form of prolonged
human communication), its longevity does indicate that the parties involved do intend to
remain together for a foreseeable future.
References
Devereux, George. 1972. Etnopsychanalyse complémentariste. Paris: Flammarion.
Freud, Sigmund. 1912/1913. Totem und Tabu. Einige Übereinstimmungen im Seelenleben der
Wilden und der Neurotiker. Wien: Hugo Heller.
Gellner, Ernest. 2000. [1985.] The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason.
Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Heald, Suzette, and Ariane Deluz (eds.). 1994. Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: An
Encounter through Culture. London: Routledge.
Herdt, Gilbert. 2005. The Sambia: Ritual, Sexuality, and Change in Papua New Guinea. (Case
Studies in Cultural Anthropology). Florence, KY: Wadsworth.
Jones, Ernest. 1924. Psycho-analysis and anthropology. The Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 54 (January-June), pp. 47-66.
Kardiner, Abram. 1939. The Individual and His Society: The Psychodynamics of Primitive
Social Organization. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kluckhohn, Clyde. 1942. Myths and rituals: A general theory. Harvard Theological Review
35(1): 45-79.
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1920. Totem and taboo: An ethnologic psychoanalysis. American
Anthropologist 22(1): 48-55.
--. 1939. Totem and taboo in retrospect. The American Journal of Sociology 45(3): 446-451.
Leach, E. R. 1958. Magical Hair. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great
Britain and Ireland 88(2): 147-164.
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1929. The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Mead, Margaret. 1961. Anthropology among the sciences. American Anthropologist, New
Series, 63(3): 475-482.
Moore, Henrietta L. 2007. The Subject of Anthropology: Gender, Symbolism and
Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Obeyesekere, Gannath. 1981. Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious
Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
--. 1990. The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Paul, Robert A. 1989. Psychoanalytic anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 18, pp.
177-202.
Pulman, Bertrand. 1986. Aux Origines du débat ethnologie/psychanalyse: W. H. R. Rivers
(1864-1922). L'Homme 26, No. 100 (Oct. - Dec., 1986), pp. 119-142.
Roheim, Geza. 1988. Children of the Desert, II: Myths and Dreams of the Aborigines of
Central Australia. Edited by John Morton and Werner Muensterberger; introduction by John Morton,
preface by Werner Muensterberger. Sydney: Oceania Publications.
Spiro, Melford. 1982. Oedipus in the Trobriands. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Aleksandar Bošković (b. 1962) is Director of Research and Head of the Center for Political
Studies and Public Opinion Research in the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, and
Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, Faculty of
Arts, University of Belgrade (Serbia). He was Visiting Professor in the Program in
Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), Visiting
Professor of European Ethnology at the University of Brasília (Brazil), and Senior Lecturer in
Anthropology at Rhodes University in Grahamstown (South Africa). Bošković is the author or
editor of ten books, including, most recently, A Brief Introduction to Anthropology (Zagreb,
2010), and Other People’s Anthropologies: Ethnographic Practice on the Margins (New
York and Oxford, 2008). His research interests are history and theory of anthropology,
contemporary theory, myth, ethnicity, nationalism, and gender.