Psychoanalytic Anthropology

This brief essay provides an overview of publications in psychoanalytic anthropology since Robert Paul's (1989) review article on the subject in the Annual Review of Anthropology (18:177-202). Many observers of this field agree that there has been a resurgence of interest in psychoanalysis among anthropologists in recent years, producing a literature large enough to call for an overview like this one for psychoanalytic readers. The resurgence can be traced back as far as the late 1960's. After a drought that lasted for fifteen years—from the early 1950's to the late 1960's—there has been a steadily increasing rate of publication across the last three decades. This upsurge was associated with a growing number of anthropologists in training at psychoanalytic institutes; the founding of the journal, Ethos, in 1973, issued by the Society for Psychological Anthropology since its formation in 1977; and the establishment of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego, under the leadership of Melford E. Spiro in 1968, which gave an academic base to psychoanalytic anthropology. American anthropologists with psychoanalytic interests conducted field research during this period in Japan, Africa, New Guinea, the Indian subcontinent, and among the indigenous peoples of the Americas from the Arctic to the Amazon, and several Asian scholars—Takeo Doi, Sudhir Kakar, and Gananath Obeyesekere—made an important impact on the field. As we approach the end of the century, psychoanalytic anthropology is more of an established presence in the discipline of anthropology than it has ever been.

The resultant literature is sizable and spread across a wide range of journals and collections. For the years 1989 to 1994 relevant books of collected articles include the following: The last six volumes (14-19) of the forty-year-old series, The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, edited by L. Bryce Boyer and Ruth M. Boyer with various coeditors; Psychoanalytic Anthropology af