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Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: Explorations at the Edges of

Culture and Consciousness: ANTHROPOLOGY AND
PSYCHOANALYSIS

Article  in  Ethos · December 2016

DOI: 10.1111/etho.12138

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 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 399

Anthropology and Psychoanalysis:

Explorations at the Edges of Culture
and Consciousness

Tine M. Gammeltoft
Lotte Buch Segal

Psychoanalysis as an interpretive strategy aims to include the repressed and despised no

less than the exalted and approved, and especially to focus attention on that which, by
virtue of having been cast into the shadows of unconsciousness, does its work largely
unseen and is difficult to observe.
Robert A. Paul (1989:190)

Anthropology and psychoanalysis meet on a shared imperative to listen to the other in

their own terms rather than from preexisting knowledge . . . The destabilizing power
associated with Otherness is particularly important to preserve in a contemporary world
where making an other’s otherness opaque parallels a difficulty to make room for oth-
erness within oneself.
Ellen Corin (2012:110–111)

In what ways can psychoanalysis stimulate anthropological thinking? This is the key
question addressed by this special issue of Ethos. Whereas previous work considering
anthropological applications of psychoanalysis has often focused mainly on theoretical
issues, our primary intention is to explore how concepts deriving from psychoanalysis can
inspire ethnographic work. Psychoanalytic concepts can, we propose, contribute to the
development of heightened ethnographic sensibilities, helping to bring into analysis aspects
of human existence that are otherwise ignored, downplayed, and subdued. Drawing on
ethnographic fieldwork conducted in China, Denmark, Palestine, and Vietnam, the articles
in this collection demonstrate how this capacity to capture subdued aspects of life may hold
particular importance for anthropological analyses of power and dominance, helping to
refine our understanding of the mechanisms through which some forms of existence and
experience come to achieve social force and authority, while others are marginalized or
hidden from public view (cf. Devereux 1980:307).

Much has already been written about the theoretical convergences and points of contact
between anthropology and psychoanalysis.1 As Michel Foucault argued in The Order of
Things, psychoanalysis and anthropology have much in common; both can be seen as “coun-
tersciences” in the sense that they unmake the very individuals that they study, constituting

ETHOS, Vol. 44, Issue 4, pp. 399–410, ISSN 0091-2131 online ISSN 1548-1352. 
C 2016 by the American Anthropological
Association All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/etho.12138
400 ETHOS

“a perpetual principle of dissatisfaction, of calling into question, of criticism and contestation

of what may seem, in other respects, to be established” (Foucault 2009[1970]:407). Further,
there is, as Elizabeth Spillius has observed, a shared methodological attitude of mind in
the two disciplines “in which the analyst and the anthropologist need to be emotionally
and intellectually both inside and outside the situation that is being studied . . . The
anthropologist or psychoanalyst puts himself in the hands of his research reality and
endures its uncertainties as best he can” (2005:670).2 Given these affinities between the
two disciplines, we believe that much can be gained from closer anthropological contact
with psychoanalytic approaches and ideas; the anthropology/psychoanalysis intersection
holds, we find, considerable unexploited potential for the development of ethnographic
insights.

In this introductory essay we will proceed in three steps. First, we remind readers of the
long history of fruitful engagements between psychoanalysis and anthropology. Second, we
discuss the skepticism that previous efforts to establish closer contact between psychoanalysis
and anthropology have encountered. Third, we consider how the contributors to this special
issue have employed psychoanalytic tools to gain new insights on subjectivity, society, and
culture.

Psychoanalysis and Anthropology

Historical Intersections
Throughout its history as a discipline, anthropology has drawn inspiration from psycho-
analysis. Among the earliest examples is Bronislaw Malinowski’s engagement with Sigmund
Freud’s thoughts. The two met in London in 1938, and Malinowski found in Freudian theory
an important prism through which to interpret his ethnographic observations in the Tro-
briands (Fortes 1958; Stocking 1986). Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex, for instance,
played a vital role in the development of Malinowski’s insights on kinship. In the Preface to
Sex and Repression, Malinowski acknowledged his debt to psychoanalysis: “Psychoanalysis,”
he noted, “has plunged us into the midst of a dynamic theory of the mind, it has given to the
study of mental processes a concrete turn, it has led us to concentrate on child psychology
and the history of the individual. Last but not least, it has forced upon us the consideration
of the unofficial and unacknowledged sides of human life” (2007:[1927]viii). Even though
Malinowski questioned certain strands of Freudian thought, including the universality of
the Oedipus complex, it was psychoanalysis that compelled him to place the social force
of repressed passions and longings at the center of attention. “Nothing surprised me so
much in the course of my sociological researches,” he observed, “as the gradual perception
of an undercurrent of desire and inclination running counter to the trend of convention,
law and morals” (2007[1927]:102). This compelled Malinowski to approach kinship in less
schematic ways than were common at the time, paying attention to “the live forces which
flow from personal inclination and the experiences of individual life” (2007[1927]:103). In
short, despite Malinowski’s critical stance towards many of Freud’s ideas, the inspiration he
gained from psychoanalysis had a profound impact on his work and on anthropology as a
discipline. As Max Gluckman notes:
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 401

Freud gave us a view of human personality, previously accepted by novelists and play-
wrights but not touched by academic psychology, in which all of man is included:
physiological drives, sex urges, hunger, unconscious and conscious hate and aggression,
perversion, and so on. All theories of human personality, however they differ from
Freud, draw inspiration from him. Malinowski gave us a similar view of man’s life in
small societies, previously glimpsed by novelists and playwrights and historians, but not
handled by academic anthropology. This made a new discipline of anthropology, and
affected other social sciences. [Gluckman 2004[1963]:251]

Apart from Malinowski, the most significant early-20th-century British scholar to be influ-
enced by psychoanalysis was the anthropologist cum psychiatrist W.H.R. Rivers. In his work
with shell-shocked soldiers, Rivers interpreted the symptoms reported by soldiers as prod-
ucts of their attempts to repress the disturbing experiences they had gone through during
service. Further, reworking Freud’s theories of dreams, he explored in Conflict and Dream
(1923) how dreams may constitute not merely wish fulfilments, but also attempts to resolve
the conflicts that suffuse everyday lives. Rivers was explicit in his appreciation of Freud; he
concluded an article on Freud’s theory of the unconscious by asking, “are we justified in
ignoring it as an instrument for the better understanding of disorders of which at present
we know so little? Are we to reject a helping hand with contumely because it sometimes
leads us to discover unpleasant aspects of human nature and because it comes from Vienna?”
(1917:914).

Claude Lévi-Strauss also found inspiration in psychoanalysis; his structural analysis was
profoundly influenced by Freud’s ideas of the unconscious. Culture and society, Lévi-Strauss
suggested, cannot be understood without attention to the unconscious activity of the mind; as
the human psyche is layered, so is human culture. The effectiveness of symbols, he observed,
must be understood in light of the ways in which “formally homologous structures, built
out of different materials at different levels of life—organic processes, unconscious mind,
rational thought—are related to one another” (1969[1963]:201). In Tristes Tropiques, Lévi-
Strauss reflected on his debts to Freud, explaining that it was Freud who made the artificial
nature of divisions between the rational and the irrational, the intellectual and the affective,
the logical and the pre-logical, clear to him. Psychoanalysis showed him, he noted, “that true
reality is never the most obvious of realities, and that its nature is already apparent in the
care which it takes to evade our perception” (1961[1955]:61). Anthropology, he suggested,
in words that seem to speak to today’s anthropology too, must cultivate “a sort of super-
rationalism in which sense-perceptions will be integrated into reasoning and yet lose none of
their properties” (1961[1955]:61; italics in original).

In North American anthropology, culture and personality theorists such as Ruth Benedict,
Cora Du Bois, Abram Kardiner, Clyde Kluckhohn, Ralph Linton, and Margaret Mead were
strongly inspired by psychoanalysis. It was on the basis of Freudian ideas, for instance, that
Kardiner (1974[1939]) developed his influential concept of a “basic personality structure.”
The basic personality, Kardiner argued, is the product of primary institutions such as the
family, and it is expressed unconsciously in secondary institutions such as art or religious
practices. Building on Kardiner’s work, and seeking to avoid analyses that “reduce individuals
402 ETHOS

to a level of uniformity” (Du Bois 1944:4), Du Bois developed the notion of a “modal person-
ality,” which she defined as “the product of the interplay of fundamental physiologically and
neurologically determined tendencies and experiences common to all human beings acted
upon by the cultural milieu, which denies, directs, and gratifies these needs very differently
in different societies” (1944:3; see also Seymour 2015).

Even though culture and personality research fell from grace in the mid-20th century,
anthropological interest in the processes through which social and psychic lives precondition
one another has not waned, and psychoanalysis has continued to serve as a vital source of
methodological and conceptual inspiration. In the United States, key figures continuing
the psychoanalytically oriented work of Kardiner and Du Bois include Melford Spiro
and Robert I. Levy. Placing his own work in extension of the work of George Devereux
(1980) and A. Irving Hallowell (1955), Spiro (1965) argued that cultural systems attain their
social force by tapping into people’s unconscious beliefs and desires; dominant cultural
ideologies gain their grip by resonating with repressed wishes, fears, and anxieties. Based on
ethnographic insights from fieldwork conducted in Burma, Spiro famously framed religion
as a culturally constituted defense mechanism; one that channels potentially disruptive
feelings into socially sanctioned expressions. Ignoring the unconscious motivations that
drive individuals, he argued, renders it impossible to explain how cultural norms, values, and
ideas are accepted and reproduced; inner worlds and social worlds are mutually dependent.
Similarly, in his evocative ethnography of the Society Islands, Levy (1973) developed his
insights into Tahitian thought, emotion, and social practice by drawing on psychoanalytic
concepts such as fantasy, defense, projection, and disassociation. Over the next decades,
psychoanalytic perspectives have continued to inspire a range of works in psychological
anthropology, ranging from Vincent Crapanzano’s (1980) classic Tuhami, over Stefania
Pandolfo’s (1997) poetic analysis of “the Other Scene,” to John Borneman’s (2015) recent
work on the rehabilitation of child molesters in Germany.

Besides its far-ranging impact within the field of psychological anthropology, psychoanalysis
has also influenced other anthropologists. In his research on Tallensi social organization,
for instance, Meyer Fortes (1959) was inspired by Freud’s theories on Oedipal dynamics.
Initially, the inspiration from Freud remained largely implicit in Fortes’ writings, but he
later acknowledged how Freudian notions of father figures had influenced his understanding
of Tallensi ancestors (cf. Horton 1983). In a similar manner, Victor Turner’s analyses of
Ndembu rituals were strongly inspired by Freud and particularly by his Interpretation of
Dreams. Although, like Fortes, Turner did not openly acknowledge his debt to Freud in
the original text, he has later described how Freudian thoughts on dream symbols helped
him when he found himself at an interpretive impasse during fieldwork: “Freud, more
than anyone else, opened my eyes to the simple fact—monotonously confirmed by the
explanations of my Ndembu informants—that multireferentiality was a central characteristic
of certain kinds of symbols” (1978:573–574). Freud’s concept of sublimation also served as an
important source of inspiration for Turner. He used this concept, he stresses, in an analogous
and metaphoric way, applying it to collectivities rather than to individual psyches, “but the
concept of sublimation enabled me to picture the process of Ndembu ritual as involving
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 403

perhaps a ‘deflection’ of impulses, and of their ‘energy’” (1978:575). “Freud’s intellectual

cutting tools,” Turner notes, “were better honed to slice up the beast I was intent on
carving . . . than those bequeathed to me by the social anthropologists” (1978:576). Today,
too, many social anthropologists continue to find conceptual inspiration in psychoanalysis,
as exemplified, for instance, by P. Steven Sangren’s work on Chinese kinship (2013) or by
Lisa Stevenson’s research on Inuit suicide (2014).

Besides the theoretical ideas that psychoanalysis has offered anthropologists, many have
found methodological inspiration in psychoanalytic approaches. There are, as Corin sug-
gests in the opening quote, striking parallels between anthropologist-informant relations
and the relations between analyst and analysand. This similarity to psychoanalysis has stim-
ulated anthropological interest in the anxieties that suffuse anthropological fieldwork (e.g.,
Devereux 1967; Obeyesekere 1981), and in the psychodynamic aspects of ethnographic en-
counters (e.g., Corin 2007; Crapanzano 1980). In his work in the Society Islands, Levy
(1973) experimented with “psycho-dynamic interviewing,” a methodological approach that
enabled him to capture the information conveyed by his respondents’ silences, avoidances,
and slips of tongue. Along similar lines, Katherine Ewing (1987) has proposed the use of
clinical psychoanalysis as an ethnographic tool; an approach that can enhance our capacities
to grasp nonlinguistic and socially subdued aspects of what goes on between and inside
people. Drawing on the psychoanalytic notion of transference, Ewing encourages ethnog-
raphers to attend not only to what people say, but also to how and to whom they say it (see
also Crapanzano 1981; Herdt and Stoller 1990). Further, in his recent work in Indonesia,
Byron Good (2012) has worked towards the cultivation of a heightened sensitivity to that
which lies beneath or in between words. Describing the case of a young Javanese man who
suffered an acute psychosis, Good notes that in this case, anthropological understanding
“required another kind of listening, a different sort of intuition, and then an exploration
with this young man of what he could only tell us initially in the coded language of In-
donesian popular songs” (2012:31). Psychoanalytic approaches can, this indicates, help to
direct ethnographers’ attention to subdued aspects of human communication, enhancing
our capacities to grasp the significance of gestures, of tones of voice, of hesitations, silences,
omissions, of the “gaps and discrepancies that pierce the coherence of manifest discourse”
(Corin 2012:108). This suggests, in other words, that anthropological fieldwork can be en-
riched by a conscious cultivation of capacities to grasp social processes that unfold at the
limits of language and at the edges of awareness. As James Weiner observes, “In those
instances where words and memory fail us, we confront the limits of our representational
practice. What psychoanalysis offers social science, what it makes prominent, is the ne-
cessity to make the elucidation of such limits part of the technique” (1999:248; italics in
original).

In both classic and contemporary anthropology, in short, engagements with psychoana-

lytic concepts have played key roles, opening new questions, new avenues of thinking, and
new modes of engaging with ethnographic materials. Yet despite this history of productive
dialogue, many anthropologists have voiced skepticism regarding the relevance of psycho-
analysis for anthropology.
404 ETHOS

Critical Questions
First and foremost, it is the universalizing claims regarding sex and aggression that suffused
Freud’s work that have, for good reasons, met criticism from anthropologists; theories start-
ing from universal assumptions regarding biological drives seem to have little to contribute
to a discipline that aims to understand human variation and diversity. However, as Ewing
(1992) and others have pointed out, Freud’s theories were a product of their time; rather
than expecting to be able to apply them as they were written, it is possible to draw on
them in a more selective and critical manner.3 As Ewing notes, comparing the treatment
of Durkheim and Freud in the social sciences: “within the disciplines of anthropology and
sociology, there has been little careful working and reworking of Freud’s equally complex
body of theory and data, despite the profound, even revolutionary, impact of Freud’s work
on modern culture more broadly” (1992:251). Psychoanalytic theories have, moreover, as
Douglas Hollan remarks, developed considerably since Freud; much contemporary psycho-
analysis takes a relational view in which “experience of wishes and desires are understood
as emergent from a specific history of interpersonal engagements, rather than relatively
transparent expressions of underlying drives” (2012:44).

The relevance of psychoanalysis for anthropology has also been questioned with reference
to the focus on the dynamics of inner lives that lies at the heart of psychoanalysis. Clifford
Geertz’s rejection of psychology and his definition of anthropology as a discipline that studies
publicly shared cultural forms have been highly influential, leading many anthropologists to
see the study of inner tensions and conflicts as lying beyond the boundaries of the discipline.
However, few would dispute that it is through the creative minds of people that cultural
forms are created and recreated; this, then, turns the self into a significant unit of cultural
analysis. And if the self—as most anthropologists would by now agree—is far from unitary
or coherent, but an unstable product of ongoing social processes, then there does seem to
be reason to develop and refine analytic tools that can help to capture how subjectivity-
formation takes place through the internalization of—often intensely conflicted—social
relations. As Weiner notes, “The one thing we can say about the self in the social world
is that it is mediated: though it is most thoroughly concealed from us in our day-to-day
lives, our sense of self-identity and personality is dependent upon the confirming presence
of others, the reflection and assessment of our efficacy on others” (1999:246).

A third point of skepticism concerns whether analyses that focus on inner worlds can capture
the ways in which psychic lives are shaped by historical, social, and economic forces. In Mar-
ilyn Ivy’s words, “a psychologically oriented anthropology is always in danger of unwittingly
ignoring the contingencies of history” (1995:11). In a psychoanalytic perspective, however,
the human psyche is always a social and historical product. There is, as Obeyesekere writes,
“no way that deep motivation can be studied outside of the frame of social institutions and
of culture and history” (1990:xiv; see also Marcuse 1970:44). Psychoanalytically oriented
anthropological studies have, for instance, shown how the psychic experiences that individ-
uals strive to suppress are often associated with social phenomena that their society tries to
exclude; individual anxieties and defenses are bound up with societal pressures and prohi-
bitions. In Corin’s words: “Unsocializable residues are evacuated at the society’s periphery
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 405

but continue to be active subterraneally. Societies elaborate defensive systems against these
‘rests’: some protect themselves against risk of public drive overflow via rules, prohibitions,
and rituals; others install residues in niches at the core of the social life” (2012:107). By
enhancing anthropological capacities to capture forms of knowledge and sensation that are
suppressed by both individuals and societies, conceptual tools deriving from psychoanalysis
may, in other words, help to identify the “cultural unconsciouses” (Foucault 2009[1970]:414)
that enable the exercise and grip of sociopolitical power. In recent years, Judith Butler’s and
Slavoj Zizek’s readings of Freud and Lacan have served as particularly important sources of
inspiration for anthropological work exploring how societal power comes to be folded into in-
dividual psyches (see, for instance, Das 2007; Gammeltoft 2014; Moore 2007; Sangren 2013).

Finally, some critics have expressed methodological skepticism towards the use of psycho-
analysis in anthropology. The psychoanalytic emphasis on unconscious affects and desires
poses, it may seem, serious ethnographic challenges: given the reliance in anthropology on
people’s own narratives of their lives, how can we gain access to thoughts, feelings, and
motivations that lie outside the realm of consciousness, that people themselves are not aware
of? Is there not, as Jason Throop asks, “an inherent hubris to attempting to make sense
of putatively disguised motives and distorted mental processes by means of one’s own the-
oretical assumptions and interpretive commitments?” (2012:79). One may, however, turn
these questions around and ask whether the dominant focus in anthropology on immediate
forms of experience and expression does not place unnecessary limitations on the discipline’s
analytic capacities: by restricting our analyses to that which can be explicitly articulated and
apprehended, do we not blind ourselves to important aspects of human lives, pushing out of
analysis precisely the forces that move and motivate people? As Obeyesekere observes, any
good ethnography must always “go beyond the natives’ point of view and beyond the surface
reality of everyday understandings”; ignoring the unconscious would, as he concludes, leave
large areas of social life and symbolic expression uninvestigated (1990:224; see also Devereux
1980; Peletz 2001). In terms of methodology, a psychoanalytic orientation may help us to
attend more closely to worlds that lie beyond people’s immediate horizons of awareness,
to the unverbalized, and to the social force of images and sensations. This methodological
strategy does not entail a speculative approach to ethnographic work, but rather, as Hollan
points out, “a careful, almost moment-by-moment experience-near exploration of a person’s
stream of consciousness and sense of awareness, noting what draws attention and expression,
either verbal or nonverbal, but also what seems not to be expressed . . . ” (2012:45).

On this background, in sum, we find it worthwhile to explore how moods, motivations,

fantasies, and desires that unfold at the limits of life and language can be drawn into anthro-
pological analysis.

A Conversation to Be Continued
In 2012, a special issue of Ethos took stock of “the anthropology of experience,” noting
that both phenomenological and psychoanalytic approaches have played key roles in the
formation of this subfield of the discipline (Willen and Seeman 2012). The articles and
commentaries in this Ethos issue offered nuanced insights on the theoretical convergences
406 ETHOS

and divergences between psychoanalysis and phenomenology, illustrating the importance

of both traditions for the practice of anthropology in general and for the anthropology
of experience in particular. The present volume builds on the insights generated by the
2012 special issue but takes a different approach: rather than focusing on the ways in which
theoretical traditions engage with one another, our primary aim is to put psychoanalytic
concepts to work ethnographically; to explore how concepts deriving from psychoanalysis
can cast light on ethnographic materials, helping us to gain insights that could not have
been achieved using a conventional analytical vocabulary.

Each in their own way, the articles in this special issue illustrate how anthropological analysis
can be enriched by a psychoanalytically attuned attention to events that unfold at the margins
of individual consciousness and at the edges of collective life; to the socially submerged and
suppressed. Each article begins from a specific ethnographic question: Susanne Bregnbæk
investigates the ambivalent emotions towards parents that are expressed by young adherers to
a Beijing underground church; Tine Gammeltoft explores the question of how Vietnamese
women’s silence in the face of violence may be accounted for; Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen
studies the fears of loneliness that suffuse Danish welfare state provisions of social services;
Lotte Buch Segal investigates Palestinian women’s modes of living with loss; and Vibeke Stef-
fen explores the intersubjective exchanges taking place in clairvoyant therapeutic encounters
in Denmark. All authors turned to psychoanalytic concepts at a relatively late stage of their re-
search process; none went into the field thinking in terms of psychoanalysis, but all have found
significant conceptual inspiration in psychoanalytic theory when working with their ethno-
graphic materials. The articles show how psychoanalytic concepts—such as ambivalence
(Bregnbæk), fantasy (Gammeltoft), the Real (Mikkelsen), melancholia (Segal), or projective
identification (Steffen)—can offer fruitful analytical avenues for anthropological work.

Despite their different ethnographic bases, the articles in this issue all share a focus on the re-
lation between what Devereux has called “latent” and “official or manifest” cultural matrices
(1980:312). Each article explores the psychic underpinnings of a dominant social formation—
a Danish welfare state intent on defining what aging with dignity means (Mikkelsen); an
ideologically powerful East Asian state-family ideology prescribing gender and genera-
tional orders and hierarchies (Bregnbæk, Gammeltoft); a Palestinian ethos of heroism and
suffering (Segal); and a Danish system of alternative healing driven by assumptions of par-
ticular sensitivities (Steffen). Investigating the psychic—and often subconscious and socially
repressed—forces that animate shared cultural forms, the authors attend closely to the ways
in which personal efforts to reduce anxiety, manage anger, hold on to love, or handle loss
shape people’s participation in collective projects such as families, institutions, or states. A
psychoanalytical attunement in anthropology, these articles propose, holds the potential to
highlight the complex and conflict-ridden desires that underpin dominant social arrange-
ments and institutions, often in ways that elude conscious awareness. In order to comprehend
how some human experiences come to be socially downplayed and concealed from public
view, while others are officially celebrated and upheld, these articles show, close attention
must be paid to things that people may not know themselves that they know; to latent tensions
and inchoate desires; to subdued and repressed aspects of individual and collective lives.
 ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 407

As Du Bois suggested, in the attempt to describe the sociopsychic mechanisms that keep
societies together, classic anthropological work conducted with inspiration from psycho-
analysis sometimes tended to lose sight of individual variability. In contrast, building on the
insights gained by recent anthropologies of experience, the articles in this special issue place
individual existence—and the ways in which individual lives are fraught with doubt, hesita-
tion, ambivalence, and uncertainty—at the center of efforts to capture the dynamics of social
and cultural systems. Whereas Freudian psychoanalysis was developed with a view to the
treatment of individual mental health conditions, the contributors to this special issue bring
psychoanalytic concepts to bear on the human condition, examining existential conundrums
that we all confront. Psychoanalysis constitutes, the articles suggest, not merely a therapeu-
tic strategy, but also a theoretically inspiring set of assumptions regarding human existence;
an analytical lens that draws our attention to socially and affectively significant aspects of
human lives. Rather than focusing on pathologies, the contributors to this issue address the
existential challenges that the individuals they met during fieldwork were struggling with,
exploring how people confronted the givens of their existence; facing death, experiencing
isolation, living with loss, handling assaults on their selves, striving for attachment, finding
meaning in life. These ethnographic investigations—which address psychic lives in their
social context—have compelled the authors to frame the unconscious in ways that depart
from classical Freudian psychoanalysis. Whereas Freud depicted the unconscious as a layer
located within the individual psyche, the articles in this issue of Ethos place emphasis on the
ways in which the lives of human minds—whether conscious or not—are inseparable from
day-to-day social existence and the social tensions that form it. Rather than as a realm of
the individual mind, the articles suggest, it may be analytically more productive to approach
the unconscious as a collective terrain; a site where socially shared inclinations and sensi-
tivities condense. Ethnographic attention to events and experiences that lie at the margins
of attention and awareness can, then, stimulate analyses that cut across conventional dis-
tinctions between the psychic and the social, offering ethnographically grounded insights
into the processes through which the layered complexities of lived lives come to congeal as
phenomena known as “culture” and “society.”

TINE M. GAMMELTOFT is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen.

LOTTE BUCH SEGAL is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of

Copenhagen.

Notes
Acknowledgments. The articles in this special issue were originally written for a workshop on “Anthropology
and Psychoanalysis” held at the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, on March 3, 2015. We
are grateful to the Department of Anthropology for funding the workshop and to workshop participants – Helle
Bjerg, Susanne Bregnbæk, Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen, Vibeke Steffen, and Nana Katrine Vaaben – for
inspiring papers and discussions. We thank Ted Lowe for supporting this special issue and for constructive
comments on the first version of this introductory article, and Doug Hollan for his thoughtful commentary.

1. See for instance Paul (1989), Ewing (1992), Heald and Deluz (1994), Weiner (1999), Molino (2004), Mimica
(2006), Moore (2007), Corin (2012), Denham (2014), and Smadja (2015).
408 ETHOS

2. On the methodological analogues between psychoanalysis and anthropology, see also Ewing (1987), Paul (1989),
Obeyesekere (1990:217ff), and Corin (2012).

3. One prominent example of how this can be done can be found in the work of Gananath Obeyesekere (1990)
who—drawing on Wittgenstein’s thoughts—applies an adapted version of the Freudian notion of the Oedipus
complex to South Asian ethnographic materials: “I believe,” notes Obeyesekere, “this liberates us from a straight-
jacket of a single universalist Oedipus complex into a more humane and richer view of other lifeworlds” (1990:xxi).
For additional examples of creative use of the concept of the Oedipus complex, see Jackson’s (1979) work on Mande
hero myths and Bregnbæk’s (2016) analysis of intergenerational relations in China. In a similar manner, the work
of Sangren (2013) and Gammeltoft (forthcoming) illustrate how the psychoanalytic concept of desire can inspire
investigations of kinship, helping to bring into analysis subdued and repressed aspects of what it means to be related.

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