Luhrmann (1998) provides a comparative piece on the overlaps and divergences between psychoanalysis and anthropology. Both fields look at an underlying human essence and the human experience. However, Luhrmann argues that the morals and underlying orientations of the two fields are different, therefore producing different academic cultures of research and discourse. Below were some helpful quotes for understanding this piece: 449 - “Anthropology and psychoanalysis are not unalike. The task of each is to understand other human lives. Their practitioners have trained for years. They have read extensively about the process of understanding. They have invested so much time-hundreds of analytic sessions, years of fieldwork-in the people they want to understand that they baffle most outsiders. “ 450 - “And yet at the end of their attempts they sometimes struggle with a sense of ignorance, and with what could perhaps be called the paradox of human knowing: that the more we un- derstand a person, the more acutely we become aware of the ways in which we do not know him or her. The struggle that anthropologists and psychoanalysts have in common, then, is the struggle to come to terms with a sense of partial failure. “ 451-452 - “My goal in this essay is to explore the question of why that difference may exist. There are, of course, great distinctions be- tween the disciplines in style, culture, history, and so forth. I will argue that the most illuminating difference here is the ultimate purpose of the discipline and the different kind of moral distress that this entails.” 471 - “The psychoanalytic work discussed here, epistemologically shocking though it may be, can be read as an affirmation to analysts to tell them to do as they have always tried to do: to listen to the patient, to understand the patient's point of View.”
- “Anthropological self- hood is founded on the notion that good fieldworkers connect with their field subjects, share their experience to some degree (they empathize with the Bedouin woman who recites poetry when she is gloomy), and from this experience produce good ethnography. “
Questions: I found this piece particularly helpful for thinking through how psychoanalysis and anthropology diverge and overlap. However, I still wonder what integrating more psychoanalytic theory into anthropology would look like in practice? Why isn’t there more contemporary overlap of the two? What can anthropology teach psychoanalysis and vice versa?