Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: An Encounter Through Culture

257 Pages·1994·0.75 MB·English

by  Suzette Heald

Anthropology and psychoanalysis
What relevance does a psychodynamic understanding of culture have
for anthropology? The central argument of Anthropology and
Psychoanalysis is that, in order to explore the symbolic process and
the nature of subjectivity, anthropology must transcend many of its
traditional and self-imposed limitations and take on the lessons of
psychoanalysis—in particular its explorations into the darker aspects
of human experience.
In this collection of essays, an international group of anthropologists
and psychoanalysts explore the interface between the two disciplines
through the interpretation of culture. They reassess the project begun by
Freud and point to new ways of seeing the relationship between the two
disciplines and to new possibilities of collaboration. The first set of essays
take their stand with George Devereux, who argued for ‘complementarity’
between the disciplines, regarding both as relevant to the task of
ethnographic understanding but neither as being reducible to the other.
It moves on to consider the Lacanian revolution and the implications for
anthropology of this new synthesis between individual and society. A
final group of essays explores the relevance of various types of
psychoanalytic thinking for analysing ritual and symbolism.
The contributors’ concern with issues central to modern
anthropology—personhood, subjectivity, different modes of theorizing—
makes Anthropology and Psychoanalysis essential reading for teachers
and students of anthropology and a work of great interest to students of
psychoanalysis.
Suzette Heald is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of
Lancaster. Ariane Deluz is a Directeur de Recherche at the Laboratoire
d’Anthropologie Sociale (CNRS), Paris.

Anthropology and
psychoanalysis
An encounter through culture
Edited by Suzette Heald and
Ariane Deluz
London and New York
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1994 Suzette Heald and Ariane Deluz selection and editorial matter;
individual chapters the contributors.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Anthropology and psychoanalysis: an encounter through culture/[edited by]
Suzette Heald and Ariane Deluz.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-415-09742-8 ISBN 0-415-09743-6 (pbk)
1. Ethnopsychology—Congresses. 2. Social sciences and
psychoanalysis—Congresses. 3. Psychoanalysis—Congresses.
I. Heald, Suzette. II. Deluz, Ariane.
GN508.A65 1994
155.8–dc20 93–44324
CIP
ISBN 0-203-20056-X Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-20059-4 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-09742-8 (Print Edition)
Contents
List of contributors vii
Preface xi
1 Introduction 1
Suzette Heald with Ariane Deluz and Pierre-Yves Jacopin
Part I Complementarity
2 Interpreting the implicit: George Devereux and the Greek
myths 29
Giulia Sissa
3 Incestuous fantasy and kinship among the Guro 40
Ariane Deluz
Psychoanalytic postscript by Florence Bégoin-Guignard 51
4 Islam, symbolic hegemony and the problem of bodily
expression 54
David Parkin
5 Trauma and ego-syntonic response: the Holocaust and
‘The Newfoundland Young Yids’, 1985 70
Nigel Rapport
Comment by Dina Gertler and response by Nigel Rapport 90
Part II The analysis of dreams
6 Dream imagery becomes social experience: the cultural
elucidation of dream interpretation 99
Iain Edgar
vi Contents
7 Psychoanalysis, unconscious phantasy and interpretation 114
R.H.Hook
Part III The Lacanian perspective
8 Gendered persons: dialogues between anthropology and
psychoanalysis 131
Henrietta Moore
Comment by Florence Bégoin-Guignard 149
9 Lacanian ethnopsychoanalysis 153
Charles-Henry Pradelles de Latour
10 Lacan and anthropology: comments on Chapters 8 and 9 163
Bernard Doray
Part IV Working models
11 Indulgent fathers and collective male violence 171
L.R.Hiatt
12 Every man a hero: Oedipal themes in Gisu circumcision 184
Suzette Heald
13 Symbolic homosexuality and cultural theory: the
unconscious meaning of sister exchange among the Gimi of
Highland New Guinea 210
Gillian Gillison
14 Psychoanalysis as content: reflections on Chapters 11, 12
and 13 225
R.H.Hook
Index 239
Contributors
FLORENCE BEGOIN-GUIGNARD was born in Switzerland and studied
psychology under Piaget in Geneva. She now practises as a psychoanalyst
in Paris, has published extensively and is a member of the International
Psychoanalytic Association.
ARIANE DELUZ was born in Lausanne and came to Paris to study
anthropology under George Balandier and Claude Lévi-Strauss. She is
directeur de recherche at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique) and a member of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale du
Collège de France. She has done extensive field work in both West Africa
(particularly among the Guro and Youre of the Ivory Coast) and South
America.
BERNARD DORAY is French and is a practising psychoanalyst as well as
a technical consultant at the MIRE (Mission Interministérielle Recherche
Expérimentation). He has also published (with M.Bertrand) Psychanalyse
et Sciences Sociales (1988).
IAIN EDGAR lectures at Northumbria University. He studied the use of
myth, ritual and symbolism in a therapeutic community for his M.Phil, thesis
in social anthropology and is currently completing his Ph.D. thesis on the
cultural construction of dream interpretation in British dreamwork groups.
DINA GERTLER was born in Hungary. After the war she emigrated to
Israel and later to France. There she trained as a psychoanalyst and wrote
her doctoral dissertation under George Devereux. She now practises as a
psychoanalyst in Paris and is a member of the International Psychoanalytic
Association.
viii Contributors
GILLIAN GILLISON was born in Canada and is Associate Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Since 1973 she has done field
research among the Gimi-speaking peoples of the Eastern Highlands of
Papua New Guinea. Her monograph on the Gimi Between Culture and
Fantasy was published in 1993.
SUZETTE HEALD was born in Scotland and studied anthropology at
University College, London. She has done extensive fieldwork in East Africa,
most particularly among the Gisu of Uganda and the Kuria of Kenya. She is
a senior lecturer at Lancaster University and published Controlling Anger:
The Sociology of Gisu Violence in 1989.
L.R.HIATT is Australian and taught anthropology at the University of
Sydney. He has done fieldwork among the Australian Aborigines and
published Kinship and Conflict (1965), Australian Aboriginal Mythology
(ed.) (1975), Australian Aboriginal Concepts (ed.) (1978) and Aboriginal
Land Owners (ed.) (1984).
R.H.HOOK is Australian and graduated in medicine from the University of
Sydney, later returning to read history and philosophy. He is in private
psychoanalytic practice in Canberra, is a member of the International
Psychoanalytic Association and edited Fantasy and Symbol: Studies in
Anthropological Interpretation in 1979.
PIERRE-YVES JACOPIN was born in Switzerland and studied anthropology
under Claude Lévi-Strauss in Paris and psychology under Piaget in Geneva.
Later, he studied in Cambridge under Edmund Leach and did fieldwork
among the Yukuna of Amazonian Colombia. He is now a fellow of the
National Science Foundation of Switzerland.
HENRIETTA MOORE is British and studied anthropology at Cambridge.
She is now a lecturer in anthropology at the London School of Economics
and has done extensive fieldwork in Africa. She has published Space, Text
and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya (1986)
and Feminism and Anthropology (1988).
DAVID PARKIN is British and studied anthropology at the School of
Oriental and African Studies where he is now Professor. He has done
extensive fieldwork in East Africa, especially among the Luo and Giriama
of Kenya. His books include Palms, Wines and Witnesses (1972), The
Cultural Definition of Political Response: Lineal Destiny among the Luo
Contributors ix
(1978), Semantic Anthropology (ed.) (1982), Sacred Void, Spatial Images
of Work and Ritual among the Giriama of Kenya (1991).
CHARLES-HENRY PRADELLES DE LATOUR is French and studied
anthropology in Strasbourg and in Paris. He has done extensive fieldwork
in the Cameroons among the Bamileke and the Pere. He is directeur de
recherche at the CNRS and a member of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie
Sociale. For the past 15 years he has also studied psychoanalysis at L’Ecole
lacanienne de psychanalyse. He has recently published Ethnopsychanalyse
en pays bamiléké (1991).
NIGEL RAPPORT was born in Cardiff and studied anthropology at
Cambridge and Manchester. He now lectures at the University of St Andrews
and has conducted anthropological research in England, Newfoundland and
Israel. He has published Talking Violence: An Anthropological Interpretation
of Conversations in the City (1987) and The Prose and the Passion:
Anthropology, Literature and the Writing of E.M.Forster (1994).
GIULIA SISSA was born and educated in Italy and is now chargé de
recherche at the CNRS and a member of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie
Sociale in Paris. As a classicist, her main interest is in the anthropological
analysis of Ancient Greek culture and she has published (together with
M. Detienne) La Vie Cotienne des Dieux, Grecs (1989) and Greek
Virginity (1990).