Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: The Looping Effects of Persons and Social Worlds
Annual Review of Anthropology October 24, 2022 Douglas Hollan 14 citations
Over the last 30 years, anthropologists have increasingly drawn on contemporary psychoanalytic thought to examine states of consciousness at the margins of awareness—such as dreams, fantasies, and imaginal thought—and how these states both shape and are shaped by social entanglements. This review covers work on loss and melancholia, emotional suffering and alienation, the influence of transference and countertransference in fieldwork, the experience of being haunted by personal and social injustices, and how self-awareness informs the development of ethics and morality. The article argues that such phenomena should be closely examined and included in anthropological theorizing rather than ignored.