Description
Whereas most anthropological research is grounded in social, cultural and biological analysis of the human condition, this volume opens up a different approach: its concerns are the psychic depths of human cultural life-worlds as explored through psycho-analytic practice and/or the psychoanalytically framed ethnographic project. In fact, some contributors here argue that the anthropological interpretation of human existence is not sustainable without psychoanalysis; others take a less extreme radical stance but still maintain that the unconscious matrix of the human psyche and of the intersubjective (social) reality of any given cultural life-world is a vital domain of anthropological and sociological inquiry and understanding.
Read More
For anthropologists and psychoanalysts, Mimica (anthropology, U. of Sydney, Australia) brings together nine essays on psychoanalysis and ethnography that focus on the human culture as explored through psychoanalytic practice and ethnographic projects. The authors, who are psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, ethnographers, and political scientists, present anthropological work based on psychoanalysis. They consider the realities of the human condition and specific subjects such as cultural differences and psychoanalysis, human intersubjective relations among the Iatmul people of Papua New Guinea, and the father-son relationship among the Yagwoia people there. Other topics are Parintin shamanism, the Yaka people of the southwestern Congo, twentieth century Western psychiatric and psychoanalytic outlooks on mental health, the negative and the unconscious, and the dynamics of the religious experience. Both subjects and names are indexed. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Read Less