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Anthropology and psychoanalysis
A personal concordance1
My interest in anthropology began long before I encountered psychoanalysis. In the course of working for an undergraduate degree in general psychology I realized that I was really only interested in social psychology and in a subsidiary course in anthropology. At graduate school in Chicago my interest became even more focused: it was only social anthropology that I wanted to study, not cultural anthropology, linguistics or archaeology, all of which formed essential parts of anthropology as a subject in Canada and the USA in the 1940s.
The central idea of social anthropology that I found, and still find, so intriguing is that society is conceived as a system of interlocking social roles that shape peopleâs behaviour, beliefs and feelings without their being fully aware of it. I first encountered this idea in Emile Durkheimâs Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (Durkheim 1915). I went on to study the anthropological works of the two leading British anthropologists of the twentieth century, Bronislaw Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, whose ideas had developed, at least in part, from the work of Durkheim.
Malinowski had been virtually marooned in the Trobriand Islands in the Pacific Ocean during the First World War and while there he learned the language and made detailed observations of Trobriand economic, social and religious customs and beliefs. This was in contrast to earlier ethnographers who interviewed people but did not really observe closely what they did or what they thought and felt. Malinowski thought of the totality of Trobriand culture as interrelated and mutually supporting customs whose ultimate function was to satisfy human needs. Hence his sort of anthropology came to be called âfunctionalismâ (Malinowski 1929).
Malinowskiâs method of study was called âparticipant observationâ and it has become the standard research method of anthropology. I had some doubts about the âneed-satisfyingâ aspect of Malinowskiâs functionalism. Once one makes that assumption, I thought, one begins to think that because the culture is there it must be satisfying needs, and there is no room in Malinowskiâs system for cultural change except in the form of intrusion by outside influence.
Radcliffe-Brown used Durkheimâs idea of society as a selfmaintaining system of interlocking social roles, customs and beliefs in his understanding of a small âprimitiveâ society in the Andaman Islands. Like Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown was more interested in the idea of society as a self-maintaining system than in the idea of its satisfying human needs. His approach came to be called âstructuralismâ (Radcliffe-Brown 1933, 1952).
At this time, the late 1940s, I became interested not only in the ideas of Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown but also in the work of the sociologist Max Weber. He emphasized that societies were organized in social systems â that is, interlocking and interdependent social roles â but he thought of the systems as âideal-typicalâ. By this he meant that the social system was an ideal that people did not exactly follow; it was a guiding ideology which acted as a blueprint but allowed adaptation to practical necessities without making radical changes in the blueprint. (Much later I thought that one could think of Kleinâs ideas of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions in much the same way.)
By this time it was becoming clear to me that I was not very much interested in the ethnographic descriptive method that was customary in American anthropology in the 1940s or in the need-satisfying approach of Malinowski. What I wanted was to combine the approaches of Radcliffe-Brown and Weber with the research method of Malinowski. A helpful professor at Chicago put me on the right track: following his advice I came to England in 1949 and was delighted to find that the anthropologists I met were working with a combination of the ideas of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown.
It was an exciting time. There were only a few social anthropologists in Britain, we all knew each other and everyone had intensively studied a small âprimitiveâ society, a âtribeâ, according to Malinowskiâs method of âparticipant observationâ, and was analysing the rich data according to Malinowskiâs âfunctionalistâ approach or according to the much more social-structural and Durkheim-like approach of Radcliffe-Brown. Many were using some combination of the two approaches, which came to be called âstructural-functionalismâ. I was particularly lucky in that I shared an office with Edmund Leach, who was writing up his famous work on the Kachin of Highland Burma (Leach 1954). He was already reaching beyond the thinking of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown to the ideas of Claude LĂ©vi-Strauss, who, he said, always got the facts wrong and the theory right. I was happy enough with the research method and ideas of structural-functionalism.
But I realized I had to have a proper tribe. On the second evening after I had arrived in England a terrifying, ancient lady anthropologist with brilliant orange hair accosted me at an anthropological sherry party and demanded, âWell, young woman, what is your tribe?â I had made a very brief study of the kinship system of an American Indian group in Minnesota, but in England that would never do. âKinship algebra,â Leach said dismissively, âYou never found out how it really worked.â So, on the advice of yet another American professor I visited the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations to see what research they were doing, and emerged five hours later with a new sort of tribe. I was to be their anthropological field worker in a study of normal London families, because the Tavistock had just received a large grant of money for an exploratory multidisciplinary study of the urban family.
The next seven years were a sort of heaven. I worked in a supportive team of a psychiatrist who was also a psychoanalyst; a psychoanalyst, Isabel Menzies-Lyth, who was also a social scientist; a psychologist and two social psychologists. All of us were trying to understand the social and psychological variations in the organization and beliefs of 20 London families of similar age, all with young children, but varying widely in social class. My team was very tolerant of my Durkheimian attitudes. My anthropological colleagues, however, did not think much of my tribe. âGo away and write a novel,â said one of them when I presented my early findings. Even Leach was doubtful. Most of them thought I should be studying a village or a local urban community and were not at all impressed when I said I was comparing 20 little societies. Some said that the differences of familial organization and culture I was describing could all be attributed to social class. I said that was just a descriptive correlation and was no good as an explanation, for existing theories of social class were not proving to be helpful in understanding the data we were accumulating. I decided to describe the social situation that each family was actually living in: their relationships with friends, neighbours, relatives and people at their place of work, and the relationships of these various people to one another, in so far as we could discover it.
Eventually, after much painstaking work and sitting looking at the data and knowing there should be a way of understanding it, an idea floated into my head from nowhere. I remember silently saying to noone-in-particular, âI donât know who you are or how you thought of that, but thank you very much!â I felt as if Iâd found a real link, albeit on a very small scale. I was especially pleased that an anthropological colleague (Barnes 1954) had thought of a very similar idea when analysing a very different social situation, a Norwegian fishing village. In fact by this time my anthropological colleagues were much more interested in what I was doing and the Tavistock team were pleased too.
I will not describe in detail the argument of Family and Social Network (1957), the book I finally wrote about this work, but one part of it is important. I thought that the internal culture and social organization of a family depended on the particular way they were connected with the people and organizations outside the family. These external contacts formed what I called a ânetworkâ, not a group and not a âcommunityâ. Further, I showed that the internal organization and culture of the family were affected by the way the people and organizations of their external network were linked (or not linked) with one another. The more connected the network, the stricter was the division of labour between husband and wife. The looser the network, the more âjointâ was the relation between husband and wife. The structure of the network was itself affected not only by external economic and demographic factors but also, though to a limited extent, by the choices of the family members themselves. It was not entirely determined from outside. This study was my expression of the structural-functional approach, but, like Leach and others, I was tacitly recognizing that satisfying though it was, I did not want to go on forever committed to the study of families and other small-scale quasi-closed social systems.
By 1957, when Family and Social Network was published, I knew a lot more about psychoanalysis because of working at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations. I had been in analysis for several years for personal reasons. Several of my Tavistock colleagues were using psychoanalytic ideas in their social projects, and I had helped with some of this work. And I had read Klein, painstakingly and in detail â a revelation. I began to read Freud too, at long last. Neither had quite the emotional impact that Durkheim, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had had years before, but I could see that the theories of Freud and Klein were intended to do justice to facts. Once Iâd really grasped the idea of the unconscious I saw that it played the same role in psychoanalysis as society in Durkheimâs sociology â another unknown thing that governed oneâs life without oneâs realizing it.
I began psychoanalytic training at the British Society in 1956. Although I was a bit put off by the attitude of received wisdom of some of our teachers, I felt that because I was classified as a Kleinian I was in what was at that time a reassuringly small eccentric âgroupâ2 and could think what I liked. Sooner or later, however, regardless of group, some seminar leader or other would start explaining to us that primitive people had primitive minds, and I would shrink into myself thinking, âOh no, not this again!â It was evident that the anthropological attitude that all people have basically the same sort of mind had not been accepted by all psychoanalysts. In the anthropological view, culture varies, social organization varies, language varies, beliefs vary but, in spite of these differences in content, peopleâs minds work in basically the same way.
Before starting to analyse patients I got married and my husband and I embarked on an anthropological field trip to the Kingdom of Tonga in the south-west Pacific, another formative experience. Intellectually the main development was the introduction of history and myths of history into my anthropological thinking, something that continued in somewhat altered form in my psychoanalytic thinking. When I returned from Tonga I was put under a certain amount of pressure to continue in anthropology, but I thought I would be expected to continue working on families, which I did not want to do, and that network research would probably take a new form that I would not enjoy. (It did.) I was no longer so pleased with structuralfunctionalism. It was too rigid, too synchronic, too closed. But I was not attracted by LĂ©vi-Straussâs âstructuralismâ, which was the school of anthropological thought that was gaining ground in Britain, especially in the case of my friend Edmund Leach.
For many years after 1960 I was too busy with family matters and learning clinical psychoanalysis to think about much else, although I wrote up some of the Tongan material and a study of a mental hospital, and then began to teach and eventually to write about psychoanalysis. I went back to Tonga in 1994 and saw many of my old friends and their children and caught up with general events, but I did not think it would be practicable to drop my psychoanalytic work to take up work in Tonga again and in more detail. Both anthropology and psychoanalysis are âgreedyâ disciplines. If one is going to do either, one has to work in it empirically, read the relevant literature, keep in touch with colleagues, take part in its respective institutions. And by this time I was becoming increasingly out of touch with the burgeoning developments in anthropology in both Britain and the USA.
I realized that I had come to think of the two fields as parallel, not reducible to each other but using the same basic methods of thinking. Without quite realizing it, I began to think that the study of an individual through psychoanalytic sessions was much like the study of a small society by the structural-functional method, although of course the content of a social system is very different from the content of a personality system. And although the consulting-room setting of psychoanalysis is apparently very different from the field research setting of social anthropology, the exploring attitude of mind of the psychoanalyst is similar to that of the anthropologist.
By the late 1960s I realized I could not continue doing anthropological research; it was too hard to combine it with having children and with psychoanalytic work in the consulting room. I knew that if I had had Leachâs facility for scanning many societies and pulling out a crucial structural element I could probably have written something interesting linking the two disciplines. But I also knew that temperamentally I prefer to know everything about nothing rather than to know nothing about everything, and I knew that I could not know everything about everything as I often felt Leach did. I decided that for the time being I would settle down to learning how to be a psychoanalyst, which takes many years.
It was a long time before I began to think again about my two disciplines, the things they had in common, the things that were different. I want now to discuss the results of my musings: first, the basic aims and fundamental differences between anthropology and psychoanalysis; second, their research settings; third, problems of causation; and fourth, anthropological ideas in the consulting room.
Aims and differences between the two disciplines
Both disciplines aim to study human nature, especially the human mind, but they study different expressions of it: anthropology studies its expression in social behaviours and cultural practices and beliefs; psychoanalysis, or at least my sort of psychoanalysis, studies its expression particularly in the analyst-patient relationship. In both disciplines there is tension between deductive and inductive methods of thinking â a reaching after understandings that do justice to the details of particular situations while simultaneously looking at these situations in a wider context.
The two disciplines differ in that psychoanalysis usually has a therapeutic as well as a scientific aim and anthropology typically does not. When I began clinical work in psychoanalysis I found the therapeutic aim extremely intimidating. I thought I would never be able to cure anyone of anything. It was a relief some time later to discover that Freud himself thought that the wish to cure was not a good basis for psychoanalytic work. The therapeutic aim of psychoanalysis is necessary for psychoanalysis to occur at all, but it greatly complicates the psychoanalystâs involvement, making him financially and narcissistically involved in therapeutic success as well as in âscientificâ and aesthetic understanding. The difference of therapeutic aim also means that the two disciplines are typically embedded in different institutions: anthropology in universities and psychoanalysis mainly in privately-organized institutes. This is one of the social factors that makes it difficult to be equally involved in both disciplines at the same time.
The research setting: on being inside and outside
Anthropology began in social and political philosophy with the comparison of known civilizations with the findings of gentleman travellers about remote and âprimitiveâ societies. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, grew out of the study of neurotics according to the medical model of the doctor-patient relationship. In both cases there was at first a sharp distinction between âusâ the professionals and âthemâ the primitives or the neurotics.
In time this sort of hierarchical attitude has been modified in both disciplines. In anthropology, Malinowskiâs âparticipant observationâ relied on direct observation of behaviour rather than, or as well as, on statements of informants. Participant observation has its counterpart in psychoanalysis as its practitioners have come to realize that their immediate subject matter is not only the patient but also the analystpatient relationship. Hence the analyst is inevitably a participant as well as an observer.
In anthropology, Malinowskiâs participant observation has been modified still further. In modern anthropology, as Leach puts it â. . . the investigator soon discovers that those he is investigating have become his personal friends and fellow anthropologistsâ (Leach 1977: 362).
Psychoanalysts also know that they are the same sort of human creature as their subjects of study. There have been times when a psychoanalyst and his patient have become more totally committed to symmetrical involvement with each other â Ferencziâs âmutual analysisâ, for example, although he concluded in the end that it was not workable (Ferenczi 1985). And at least in my sort of psychoanalysis it is now accepted that there is a basic asymmetry in the therapeutic relationship.
Why should anthropology and psychoanalysis differ in this respect? I think it is because of the difference in their respective aims. The anthropologist aims to understand his informantsâ social behaviour and its implicit though not dynamically unconscious meanings, and usually there is no expectation of change. Further, neither informant nor anthropologist is focused on the relationship with each other as a central aspect of the investigation, which makes it comparatively easy for anthropologist and informant to become friends and colleagues without changing the aim of the enterprise, which, for both, is to understand social not individual behaviour and beliefs.
In psychoanalysis the relationship between analyst and patient cannot reach the easy familiarity that is sometimes â depending on the prevailing social and political situation â reached between anthropologist and informant. The therapeutic aim of psychoanalysis means that the relationship normally takes the form of the patient seeking help from the psychoanalyst. Study of the relationship between analyst and patient is central because it is largely through the understanding of this relationship that both analyst and patient can understand more about the patient. It is a means to the end of the patient understanding himself better, meaning to understand not only his conscious but also his dynamically unconscious mind in such a fashion that change in his beliefs and behaviour may become possible. The involvement of patient and analyst is basically asymmetrical and complementary, even though feelings of understanding and empathy may occur â or at times be felt not to occur â during the process of analysis.
There is another respect in which the emotional/intellectual âsetâ of the psychoanalyst is both similar to but different from that of the anthropologist. Both find that they have to be âinâ the field situation in order to understand it, but on the other hand both have to be âoutsideâ the situation in order to have enough alternative perspective to be able to think about it conceptually. In anthropology this is comparatively easy. The anthropologist has the feeling of âgoing nativeâ at least some of the time, especially while in the field situation, and the outside perspective tends to come into its own later, when he has left the field and is writing up his material. In psychoanalysis it is more difficult to be inside and outside the analytic situation because one has to do both in the session and at nearly the same time. I think, following a suggestion of Michael Feldman, that what happens is that there is a fluctuation, often very rapid, between being almost completely drawn into the immediate emotional situation with the patient and then withdrawing a little to see the situation from the perspective of oneâs profession and oneâs colleagues. When emotion runs high in the session, however, the analyst is likely to find that he cannot think very clearly until the session is over. I believe that this greater entanglement occurs not only because the psychoanalyst is more deeply involved emotionally than the anthropologist but also because he tries to be conscious of his involvement at the same time. The anthropologist is not obliged to understand his own unconscious as a means to understanding his field data.
Beliefs about method and causation
Both anthropologists and psychoanalysts have quite a lot of trouble with the concepts of time, the past and causation. Causal explanations have tended to be historical, based to a considerable extent on the view that what comes first causes what comes later. âHow did this society get this way?â asks the anthropologist. âHow did the patient get the way he is now?â asks the psychoanalyst. However, questions about the past take the investigator outside his immediate research setting, outside what can be directly studied in the small society if he is an anthropologist and outside the session if he is a psychoanalyst.
From times of antiquity there have been philosophical speculations about the nature of man, of society and its historical processes, speculations designed to explain the present and to predict the future. From todayâs perspective some of these speculations seem plausible, some ludicrous, but all are bound to be conjectural because any immediate field of empirical study is limited and cannot give answers to questions of general and historical causality.
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