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.
In Genres of Listening Xochitl Marsilli-Vargas explores a unique culture of listening and communicating in Buenos Aires. She traces how psychoanalytic listening circulates beyond the clinical setting to become a central element of social interaction and cultural production in the city that has the highest number of practicing psychologists and psychoanalysts in the world. Marsilli-Vargas develops the concept of genres of listening to demonstrate that hearers listen differently, depending on where, how, and to whom they are listening. In particular, she focuses on psychoanalytic listening as a specific genre. Porteños (citizens of Buenos Aires) have developed a “psychoanalytic ear” that emerges during conversational encounters in everyday interactions in which participants offer different interpretations of the hidden meaning the words carry. Marsilli-Vargas does not analyze these interpretations as impositions or interruptions but as productive exchanges. By outlining how psychoanalytic listening operates as a genre, Marsilli-Vargas opens up ways to imagine other modes of listening and forms of social interaction.
In this ambitious new book, Henrietta Moore draws on anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis to develop an original and provocative theory of gender and of how we become sexed beings. Arguing that the Oedipus complex is no longer the fulcrum of debate between anthropology and psychoanalysis, she demonstrates how recent theorizing on subjectivity, agency and culture has opened up new possibilities for rethinking the relationship between gender, sexuality and symbolism. Using detailed ethnographic material from Africa and Melanesia to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a range of theories in anthropology, feminism and psychoanalysis, Moore advocates an ethics of engagement based on a detailed understanding of the differences and similarities in the ways in which local communities and western scholars have imaginatively deployed the power of sexual difference. She demonstrates the importance of ethnographic listening, of focused attention to people’s imaginations, and of how this illuminates different facets of complex theoretical issues and human conundrums. Written not just for professional scholars and for students but for anyone with a serious interest in how gender and sexuality are conceptualized and experienced, this book is the most powerful and persuasive assessment to date of what anthropology has to contribute to these debates now and in the future.
Through a dual engagement with the unconscious in psychoanalysis and Islamic theological-medical reasoning, Stefania Pandolfo’s unsettling and innovative book reflects on the maladies of the soul at a time of tremendous global upheaval. Drawing on in-depth historical research and testimonies of contemporary patients and therapists in Morocco, Knot of the Soul offers both an ethnographic journey through madness and contemporary formations of despair and a philosophical and theological exploration of the vicissitudes of the soul. Knot of the Soul moves from the experience of psychosis in psychiatric hospitals, to the visionary torments of the soul in poor urban neighborhoods, to the melancholy and religious imaginary of undocumented migration, culminating in the liturgical stage of the Qur’anic cure. Demonstrating how contemporary Islamic cures for madness address some of the core preoccupations of the psychoanalytic approach, she reveals how a religious and ethical relation to the “ordeal” of madness might actually allow for spiritual transformation. This sophisticated and evocative work illuminates new dimensions of psychoanalysis and the ethical imagination while also sensitively examining the collective psychic strife that so many communities endure today.
"A book about theory and method in the humanities and social sciences. It reacts to what has become known as the "cultural turn," a shift toward semiotics, discourse, and representations and away from other sorts of determinations that started in the early 1980s and that has dominated social thinking for a long string of years. The book is based in a reconsideration of the meeting of two disciplines that helped to launch the cultural turn: anthropology and history. Specifically, it criticizes the ideas of hermeneutics and "thick description" (Clifford Geertz) that have come to play a key role in the encounter of anthropology and history and then in the cultural turn. It led to the renewed cherishing of what Gupta and Ferguson have called paradigms of "peoples and places," saturated pictures of universes, both small and large, of meaning ina more of less frozen standstill-an intellectual precursor to the cultural xenophobia of our times. Against this, the present book embraces praxis and "critical junctions": the connections in space (in and out of a relations of power and dependency, and what Eric Wolf has called the "interstitial relations" between apparently separate institutional domains. In this way the book adds to the current revival of institutionally based "global ethnography," which studies "up and outward" (the journal of Ethnography is a good example)."--Preface
Medicine, Faith and Politics in Agogo examines the development of health care delivery at a former mission hospital in Ghana. It reveals the configurations of interests, values, and ideologies that shaped the development and implementation of health care practices, strategies, and concepts. By providing an in-depth analysis, the book contributes a particular perspective on the history of health care delivery in rural Africa and beyond. It addresses topics that are still heavily under-researched. These include the 'decolonisation' of health care as well as the development and implementation of medical concepts for 'developing countries' such as primary health care. Dissertation. (Series: Swiss African Studies / Schweizerische Afrikastudien / Etudes africaines suisses, Vol. 13) [Subject: African Studies, History, Religious Studies, Health Care Studies, Sociology]
The second edition of this groundbreaking text represents a complete departure from the structure and format of its predecessor. Though still exhaustive in scope and designed to provide a knowledge base for a broad audience -- from the beginning student to the seasoned analyst or academician -- this revision emphasizes the interdisciplinary nature of psychoanalytic thought and boldly focuses on current American psychoanalysis in all its conceptual and clinical diversity. This approach reflects the perspective of the two new co-editors, whose backgrounds in linguistics and social anthropology inform and enrich their clinical practice, and the six new section editors, who themselves reflect the diversity of backgrounds and thinking in contemporary American psychoanalysis. The book begins with Freud and his circle, and the origins of psychoanalysis, and goes on to explore its development in the post-Freud era. This general introduction orients the reader and helps to contextualize the six sections that follow. The most important tenets of psychoanalysis are defined and described in the "Core Concepts" section, including theories of motivation, unconscious processes, transference and countertransference, defense and resistance, and gender and sexuality). These eight chapters constitute an excellent introduction to the field of psychoanalysis. The "Schools of Thought" section features chapters on the most influential theories -- from object relations to self psychology, to attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis, and includes the contributions of Klein and Bion and of Lacan. Rather than making developmental theory a separate section, as in the last edition, developmental themes now permeate the "Schools of Thought" section and illuminate other theories and topics throughout the edition. Taking a more clinical turn, the "Treatment and Technique" section addresses critical subjects such as transference and countertransference; theories of therapeutic action; process, interpretation, and resistance, termination and reanalysis; combined psychoanalysis and psychopharmacotherapy, child analysis, ethics, and the relationship between psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. A substantive, utterly current, and meticulously referenced section on "Research" provides an in-depth discussion of outcome, process, and developmental research. The section entitled "Psychoanalysis and Other Disciplines" takes the reader on a fascinating tour through the many fields that psychoanalysis has enriched and been enriched by, including the neurosciences, philosophy, anthropology, race/ethnicity, literature, visual arts, film, and music. A comprehensive Glossary completes this indispensable text. The Textbook of Psychoanalysis is the only comprehensive textbook of psychoanalysis available in the United States. This masterful revision will both instruct and engage those who are learning psychoanalysis, those who practice it, and those who apply its theories to related disciplines. Though always controversial, this model of the human psyche still provides the best and most comprehensive insight into human nature.
A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Social Trauma presents a thorough introduction to social trauma from a range of perspectives, exploring several key themes, specific causes and symptoms and clinical interventions. With chapters from a diverse range of authors, the book considers social trauma as it relates to stories and history, group identity, the consulting room, migration, and post-traumatic conditions. These topics are explored via a range of frames, including individual therapy, group analysis, social dream matrix, large groups, case studies, narrative recollections, and cinematographic expression. The book also considers the implications of new technology in causing and treating social trauma. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Social Trauma will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists in practice and in training, psychoanalysts, and psychoanalytically informed professionals working with trauma.
This book investigates how anthropologists can make use of the emotions fieldwork generates within them to deepen their understanding of the communities they study.
A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World: On the Body examines the importance of the body in everyday psychoanalytic practice and beyond. Written by world leading clinicians and international scholars, this important book aims to relocate the psychoanalytic body in the modern, more challenging world. Bringing together perspectives from across the range of psychoanalytic schools of thought, it covers essential analytic topics such as family and parenting, sex and gender, illness and psychosomatics, and concepts of the body in infancy. Though in Freud’s writing the intertwining of body and psyche is fundamental, psychoanalytic thought has sometimes downplayed or ignored this idea. This book returns the body to its rightful place in psychoanalysis, and brings the body into the contemporary world of technology and change, offering fresh insight into the sick body, the sexual body, the speaking body, the body of the changing family in which the traditional gendered labels no longer fit seamlessly, gender dynamics and much more. A Psychoanalytic Exploration of the Body in Today's World gives renewed and increased emphasis to an essential tenant of psychoanalysis. With contributions from some of the most important modern psychoanalysts, this book will prove an essential work for both psychotherapists and academics.
