Discussion: The Heritage of Imagination

The difficulty in applying the concept of imagination to anthropology is perhaps best exemplified by an anecdote. When I was applying for my first academic job at the London School of Economics, I was brash enough to favorably cite the work of the social psychologist Kurt Lewin regarding his ideas on topological psychology. Actually I knew little about this man's work, but thought I should mention it as the position was for a social psychologist in the department of sociology. Before the interview I had been given the names of the distinguished interviewing panel, daunting information which made me feel even less than the meager confidence I had applying for the job anyway. One member of the panel, the well-known sociologist Morris Ginsberg, asked me the following question: “Don't you think that Lewin's work is just a reformulation of what sociologists have been saying for decades?” As I had no idea what sociologists had been saying for decades, I answered cautiously: “Maybe,” I said, “but Lewin's formulation is such that it can be generalized to other fields. It's like mathematics in that respect.” “Are you a mathematician?” asked Ginsberg. “No,” I said. That ended the by-play, but it was sufficient to get Ginsberg off my back, and as a matter of fact I got the job despite this exchange. I cite this incident, as I might very well repeat Ginsberg's question, plus my rejoinder, for this symposium. I empathize very much with Dr. Villela's introductory remarks: namely, “is Freud's notion of the primary process adequate to explain the mythopoetic aspects of different cultures …, or do we need to rethink such questions so that we construct a metapsychology of the mind — a meta-anthropology?” which Dr. Villela finds paradoxically both impossible and necessary. I am inclined to think that we need to explore the latter track, but it is not easy and requires rather copious and tedious reexamination