Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: The Looping Effects of Persons and Social Worlds

Abstract

This article reviews work in anthropology over the last 30 years that has been informed by psychoanalysis, much of it drawing on contemporary schools of psychoanalytic thought that further develop or even directly challenge some of the fundamental assumptions of the original Freudian corpus. It assumes that what happens at the margins or horizons of human consciousness, as a body of work, should be closely examined and included in anthropological theorizing rather than ignored or downplayed, and it examines how such states of consciousness both affect and are affected by entanglements with the world. Focal topics of the review include work on dreams, fantasies, and imaginal thought; loss and melancholia; aspects of emotional suffering, distress, and alienation; the effects of transference and countertransference on fieldwork; the sense of being haunted by personal and social injustices; and how the contingencies of self-awareness affect the development of ethics and morality.