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This is Volume 9 of a series begun in 1960 by Werner Muensterberger and various collaborators as a successor to the series Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences established by Géza Réheim in 1947. The title change reflected the hope for real fusion (rather than mere juxtaposition) of psychoanalysis with one or more of the social sciences and humanities. Volume 9 continues that effort. It has 16 papers, connecting psychoanalysis with, respectively, anthropology (three papers), religion (two), mythology (two), literature (three), political science (one) and folklore (five). Except for the section on folklore, there is no unifying structure other than the general theme of interdisciplinary connection. All the papers are at least good, some outstanding. (Perhaps this is a bit invidious, but none in this volume seem to this reviewer as brilliantly pathbreaking as some in earlier volumes, such as Anne Parsons on the university of Oedipus complex [vol. 3] or Dale Meers's poignant intrapsychic portrait of ghetto Black children [vol. 5].)
It is impossible of course to evaluate all of these papers in a brief review. I'll mention several of note, then concentrate on those I consider of special interest.
Anthropologist Vincent Crapanzano analyzes circumcision ceremonies in Morocco, challenging earlier conceptions of this much-studied rite. Folklorist-anthropologist Alan Dundes fits the life of Jesus into the hero-pattern in the folklores and religions of the world, and psychoanalytically interprets its themes that either conform to that pattern or to depart from it. The classicist C. R. Badcock demonstrates Lévi-Strauss's intellectual debt to Freud, seeing structuralism as a de-libidinized Freudianism. Another classicist, Richard Caldwell, explicates Hesiod's Theogony (a world-origin story dating from 700 BC) in terms of symbiosis-separation-individuation. oh Medusa art historian Laurie Schneider gives an erudite psychoanalytically illuminated exploration of the transformations