The Psychoanalytic Study of Society

Abstract

a varying degree of understanding of the methodological issues involved in widening the scope of psychoanalysis. L. Bryce Boyer and Ruth Boyer have contributed an excellent study of aggression among the Apaches during the acculturation to contemporary society. There is a good study by Robert Levy on the personality factors integrated by the Tahitians into their moral system. Some of the authors, however, have difficulty in relating to their subjects. J. L. Titchener's Day of a Psychoanalyst at Woodstock was a valuable chance for expert reportage; unfortunately the young seem more alien to him than aboriginal tribesmen, and his work is devoid of genuine understanding or empathy. The opposite extreme of overinvolvement is shown in Dale Meer's Sexual Identity in the Ghetto. He propounds a sociological thesis that ghetto conditions stem from a caste identity that developed when the blacks them¬ selves accept the prejudicial illu¬ sions of the whites. The author's lack of objectivity (countertransference) becomes clear when he attempts to bolster his sociology with some fanci¬ ful speculations about ancestral grief, a sort of sorrowful archetypal conscience inherited from the days of slavery. His attempt to justify his psychosocial theses with psychoana¬ lytic hypotheses seems to me a ques¬ tionable use of the theory. In general, the studies of literary and artistic problems fare much bet¬ ter, reflecting, perhaps, the appropri¬ ateness of psychoanalysis for dealing with individual rather than social conflicts. Bernard Meyer contributes a rather amusing study of the 19th century stagecoach robber and poet of sorts, Black Bart. There is a plau¬ sible study of Odilon Redon by F. Backeland, who attempts to correlate the artist's choice of media and color with his depressive states and mas¬ ochism. H. Edelheit has an important psychoanalytic study of crucifix¬ ion and primal scene fantasies. Methodological and technical prob¬ lems are involved in almost every dis¬ cussion in the volume, and it is unfor¬ tunate that methodology does not receive more explicit attention. The papers that do touch on these topics focus mainly on questions of tech¬ nique, and do not raise any issues about the appropriateness, validity, nature, and justification of the psychoanalytic explanations here. Perhaps a future volume in the series can be devoted to a more thorough ex¬ ploration of such issues.